In their article “The War That Never Was?” in this month’s issue of Proceedings, former vice chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral James Winnefeld and former CIA acting director Michael Morrell envisage a scenario in which Beijing “unites” with Taiwan by force in three days.
Viewed together with the live-fire exercise conducted by the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA), with anti-ship ballistic missiles being fired into the South China Sea on Wednesday, the imagined scenario calls attention to potential misunderstandings and blind spots.