TAIPEI (Taiwan News) — Former US Defense Department official Tony Hu (胡振東) said that if China were to invade, US forces would not land in Taiwan but would defend it from surrounding areas.
In an interview with CTS that aired on Wednesday, Hu said that if war were to erupt, Taiwan would experience significant chaos in its early stages based on scenarios that have been studied, per Liberty Times. He said that if the US immediately deployed troops to Taiwan, it would only worsen that chaos.
US assistance does not require landing on Taiwan, Hu said, as the country has sufficient resources to defend itself with layered defenses in the air and on land. Bringing US forces ashore would force Taiwan to fight while also coordinating with American personnel.
He said that if war breaks out, the US would carry out the mission of defending Taiwan's surrounding areas. Forces stationed at bases in the Philippines and Japan would move closer to Taiwan and eliminate threats from the air, land, and sea.
“When people say, ‘The United States is not going to come to Taiwan,’ you’re right. We're not going to come to Taiwan, but we will be around Taiwan to help protect Taiwan," explained Hu.
“That’s all Taiwan needs,” Hu said, adding that Taiwan would only need to focus on defending the strait, while US forces and other allies such as Japan and Australia would secure the flanks. He said that there would be no foreign “boots on the ground,” apart from a small liaison team of 20–30 personnel at Taiwan’s command center to coordinate joint actions.
Hu said Taiwan’s situation differs fundamentally from that of Ukraine and Russia, which share a land border that allows invading forces to use terrain such as hills and trees for cover. The Taiwan Strait offers no such concealment for the attacking side.
If China were to launch a sustained attack on Taiwan for two to three months, the strait would become “a hellscape,” with all PLA assets in the air and at sea targeted and destroyed. “China can't survive that, there's an attrition rate,” he said, before concluding that the PLA could not last more than two to three months.
Hu added that once the PLA sustains a 30% to 40% attrition rate and major surface vessels are destroyed, it would no longer be able to continue crossing the strait by sea. If China attempted helicopter-borne or airborne assaults, Taiwan’s thousands of Stinger missiles would pose a major threat, with missile operators able to launch attacks from "behind any tree.”
Hu said that even when he was still in Washington, it was well understood that “Taiwan is the key.” He said this is because, “If the United States cannot help Taiwan survive, then our prestige in the Asia-Pacific region would be zero.”
US allies would begin to develop nuclear weapons and seek ways to defend themselves, while countries such as the Philippines, Malaysia, and Vietnam would align with China, as no country or international organization would remain capable of constraining Beijing. The international order would collapse and “the United States would have to go back to Guam and Hawaii.”
“We cannot allow that to happen because this whole region is so important to us both economically and militarily," said Hu.
