The next war in East Asia will consume the region. It will not be confined just to Taiwan, argue Markus Garlauskas and Matthew Kroenig in a new article in Foreign Policy.
Increased Chinese and North Korean military activity this month suggests that both regimes are contemplating going into battle. For instance, two days before Foreign Policy posted the piece, Kim Jong Un delivered a speech announcing the deployment of “250 new-type tactical ballistic missile launchers” to positions near the Demilitarized Zone.
Kim praised North Korea’s “munition industry workers” for developing the launchers “by their own efforts and technology.” However, Richard Fisher, a China military analyst with the International Assessment and Strategy Center, told me it is far more likely that the launchers are of Chinese origin and were built with Chinese parts and advice.
In any event, the launchers can carry four tactical nuclear weapons each. As Kim boasted, they have “great military significance.”
Garlauskas and Kroenig wrote that any conflict between the U.S. and China over Taiwan “would almost certainly become a region-wide war, engulfing the Korean Peninsula and pulling in both North Korea and South Korea.” The battle would give China “a strong incentive to strike U.S. bases in South Korea” and “urge North Korea to provoke and tie down U.S. forces there.”
They added that North Korea could fight beside China “to preempt a feared U.S. attack, take advantage of a distracted........