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Articles by Eric Heginbotham
Lights Out? Wargaming a Chinese Blockade of Taiwan
Since 2022, China has conducted numerous military drills and exercises simulating blockades of the island of Taiwan, a democracy of 23 million that sits astride one of the world's maritime chokepoints. What would happen if China initiated a blockade of Taiwan in the coming years? To understand the military challenges in countering a blockade, CSIS ran 26 wargames using a wide variety of scenarios.
China’s Defense Spending: The $700 Billion Distraction
American political and military leaders are amplifying flawed estimates that China’s annual defense spending is much higher than it actually is. In these mistaken calculations, China’s defense spending has reached $700 billion, approaching the level of the U.S. defense budget. These exaggerated estimates have gained traction in Congress, the media, and defense circles.
Estimating China's Defense Spending: How to Get It Wrong (and Right)
China’s defense spending is difficult to quantify because some assessments make methodological errors that result in inflated figures. Rick talks with Taylor, George, and Eric, who explain these flaws and offer a novel method for a more accurate assessment. Their article appears in the summer 2024 issue of TNSR. Image: Mussi Katz
Texas National Security Review
When I was a young scholar, I was torn between two models of academic writing. I was trained as a historian, but my mentors, research subject, and professional background had exposed me to international relations theory and security studies. These groups displayed different characteristics in their academic scribblings.
America Needs a Single Integrated Operational Plan for Economic Conflict With China
Editor’s Note: If China escalates pressure on Taiwan, the United States might enact economic punishments—and China, in turn, might respond in kind, creating a devastating nonmilitary struggle.
SPF Policy Proposal: Shaping Pragmatic and Effective Strategy Toward China
Proposal 1: Japan and the U.S. coordination for the long-standing competition with China Proposal 2: How narratives of defending the rules-based international order can help in winning the soft power competition with China Proposal 3: We must rebuild our global policy to deal with China Proposal 4: The establishment of Japan and the U.S. Track 1.5 dialogue for military resilience Proposal 5: Japan and the U.S. cooperation for securing Japan’s Southern Flank Proposal 6: Formulation of new...
Why We Believe the U.S. Still Has the Upper Hand in War Over Taiwan | Opinion
U.S. arms left in Afghanistan are turning up in a different conflict SRINAGAR, India — Weapons left behind by U.S. forces during the withdrawal from Afghanistan are surfacing in another conflict, further arming militants in the disputed South Asian region of Kashmir in what experts say could be just the start of the weapons’ global journey. Authorities in Indian-controlled Kashmir...
The First Battle of the Next War: Wargaming a Chinese Invasion of Taiwan
CSIS developed a wargame for a Chinese amphibious invasion of Taiwan and ran it 24 times. In most scenarios, the United States/Taiwan/Japan defeated a conventional amphibious invasion by China and maintained an autonomous Taiwan. However, this defense came at high cost. The United States and its allies lost dozens of ships, hundreds of aircraft, and tens of thousands of servicemembers. Taiwan saw its economy devastated. Further, the high losses damaged the U.S. global position for many years.
Japan's Dual Hedge
Sign in and save to read later Print this article Share on Twitter Share on Facebook Get a link Page url Request Reprint Permissions NOT ANOTHER BRITAIN Last fall, just eight days after the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, D.C., Japan's prime minister, Junichiro Koizumi, announced that his country would provide military support to the United States for the war in Afghanistan. His statement seemed to signal a long-awaited shift in Japan's foreign and security policy.
Strait of Emergency?
Don’t Fall for the Invasion Panic Rachel Esplin Odell and Eric Heginbotham Oriana Skylar Mastro’s article “The Taiwan Temptation” (July/August 2021) is one of many recent articles that warns of the growing risk of Chinese aggression in the Taiwan Strait. Such articles have become so common that they have created something of an invasion panic in Washington—one that is damaging to both the United States’ and Taiwan’s interests.
Strait of Emergency?
(AP Photo/Chiang Ying-ying)
China Maritime Report No. 14: Chinese Views of the Military Balance in the Western Pacific
Home > USNWC-REPORTS-STUDIES > CMSI > CMSI China Maritime Reports > 14 CMSI China Maritime Reports Files Description This report examines Chinese views about the military balance of power between China and the United States in the Western Pacific.
China’s Coming Transformation
THE MAIN EVENT Social forces unleashed by China's economic reform over the last 20 years are now driving inexorably toward a fundamental transformation of Chinese politics. Since the suppression of the 1989 student protests in Tiananmen Square, China's leaders have struggled to maintain the political status quo, even while pursuing rapid economic reform. The result today is a nonadaptive, brittle state that is unable to cope with an increasingly organized, complex, and robust society.
Tokyo's Transformation
The earthquake and tsunami that struck northeastern Japan on March 11, 2011, caused almost unimaginable damage and misery. In a surge of floodwater that lasted just two minutes, Japan lost nearly as many people as a proportion of its population as the United States did during the entire Vietnam War. The subsequent meltdown of the Fukushima nuclear reactors deepened the crisis. But some see a silver lining to these dark tragedies.
International Security
Steven E. Miller, Editor-in-ChiefSean M. Lynn-Jones and Owen R. Coté Jr., Editors Diane J. McCree, Managing Editor International Security publishes lucid, well-documented essays on the full range of contemporary security issues. Its articles address traditional topics such as war and peace as well as more recent dimensions of security, including the growing importance of environmental, demographic, and humanitarian issues, and the rise of global terrorist networks.
Taiwan's Balancing Act
With the U.S.-China relationship descending rapidly into acrimony and indeed frequently characterized as a new Cold War, Taiwan remains a particularly dangerous flashpoint. Although maintaining peace in the Taiwan Strait has never been easy, it has now become even more challenging for several reasons. Taiwan’s economic prosperity and dynamic democracy have endowed it with increased confidence and an increasingly separate identity.
Why Japan Needs a New Military Strategy
Japan confronts an increasingly difficult security environment. Despite the current media attention on North Korea, a very real but largely one-dimensional nuclear threat, Japanese strategists are concerned primarily with the broader and more multidimensional challenge posed by the rise of China and its territorial ambitions in the East China Sea. Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has been more forward-looking regarding security affairs than his predecessors.
With Friends Like These: Japan-ROK Cooperation and US Policy
Previous Post Next Post post navi Prev Next List Although they share a common ally, history and politics keep Japan and South Korea at arm’s length and severely limit their defense cooperation. Since at least the mid-1990s, American realists—and not a few Japanese and South Korean analysts—have anticipated that the regional environment, growing steadily more dangerous, would bring these status quo democracies closer together, not least because Washington would drive them to cooperate.
Beijing's Major Power Engagement with the Developing World
What are Beijing’s objectives towards the developing world and how they have evolved and been pursued over time? Featuring contributions by recognized experts, China Steps Out analyzes and explains China’s strategies in Southeast Asia, Central Asia, South Asia, Africa, Middle East, and Latin America, and evaluates their effectiveness. This book explains how other countries perceive and respond to China’s growing engagement and influence.
Chinese and Indian Strategic Behavior Growing Power Alarm
This book offers an empirical comparison of Chinese and Indian international strategic behavior. It is the first study of its kind, filling an important gap in the literature on rising Indian and Chinese power and American interests in Asia.
Will Tokyo’s Arms Exports Help or Hurt U.S Interests in Asia? | RealClearDefense
Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's current political problems obscure the striking speed with which he successfully tackled thorny and long-standing security policy problems, including the lifting of the country's arms export ban. In very short order, Abe adjusted Japan's security institutions, selectively enhanced its military power, and diversified its strategic partnerships, all while committing even more fully to the U.S. alliance relationship.
The PLA in 2026. | China Policy Institute: Analysis on WordPress.com
In 2015, RAND Corporation colleagues and I published a net assessment of U.S. and Chinese capabilities in two scenarios – the Spratly Islands and Taiwan. In it, we examined trends from 1996 to 2017 (projected) in the maritime, air, space, cyber, and nuclear domains. The analysis suggested that in virtually all areas, China had dramatically improved its relative capabilities. It is highly unlikely that China today could prevail in a high-intensity conflict with U.S. forces, even in the Taiwan case.
China's PLAAF Pilot Training Program Undergoes Major Overhaul
In the ongoing military scorecard between the United States and China over who has the most “stuff” – be it troops, tanks, guns, ships or airframes – the human element is sometimes overlooked. By human element we mean the operators behind the hardware making the decisions on what, how and when to shoot and how to employ tactics and counter-tactics based on the environment and the adversary.
China's Air Force Is Fixing Its Shortcomings
In a seminal RAND Project Air Force report written over two decades ago, entitled “Russia's Air Power at the Crossroads” ( ), the author concluded that the Soviet air force had achieved marked improvement in the tactical skills of its fighter pilots, yet most pilots were still “bound by a heavily scripted tactical repertoire that was all but completely dominated by ground control.” Such scripted training scenarios, the report continued, “left [pilots] little room for exercising the free-form...
Poor Substitute | Foreign Affairs
The announcement last week that Australia will replace its aging submarine fleet with Shortfin Barracuda submarines from France is an enormous missed opportunity, not only for Australia, but also for its most important allies, Japan and the United States.
Chinese Attacks on U.S. Air Bases in Asia An Assessment of Relative Capabilities, 1996–2017
China's missile program is arguably the most active in the world and has provided the PLA with the ability to launch hundreds of ballistic and cruise missiles at air bases and other critical targets in Taiwan, Japan, or the Philippines. The PLA is also able to strike targets as distant as Guam with air-launched cruise missiles.
China's Military Modernization Increasingly Challenges U.S. Defense Capabilities in Asia
Over the past two decades, China's People's Liberation Army has transformed itself from a large but antiquated force into a capable, modern military. Its technology and operational proficiency still lag behind those of the United States, but it has rapidly narrowed the gap. Moreover, China enjoys the advantage of proximity in most plausible conflict scenarios, and geographical advantage would likely neutralize many U.S. military strengths.
China's Military Modernization Increasingly Challenges U.S. Defense Capabilities in Asia
A new RAND Corporation report suggests that although China continues to lag behind the United States in terms of aggregate military hardware and operational skills, it has improved its capabilities relative to those of the United States in many critical areas. Moreover, the report finds that China does not need to catch up fully to the United States in order to challenge U.S. ability to conduct effective military operations near the Chinese mainland.
The Foreign Policy Essay: China’s ADIZ in the East China Sea
Editor’s Note: China’s establishment last November of an Air Defense Identification Zone (ADIZ) shook many observers, who feared it was a first step in a more aggressive Chinese foreign policy. Here at the Foreign Policy Essay, we’ve already taken an early look at the issue. However, as the months have passed and a crisis has yet to emerge, analysts are beginning to take a second look at the issue.
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