President Joe Biden will meet with his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping near San Francisco Wednesday, and hanging over the summit is the threat of war over the island of Taiwan, a conflict that would likely cripple the world economy and plunge the U.S. and its allies into a devastating global conflict. Experts are divided on how Biden can best avoid such an outcome, but there is a consensus that a war with China would be extremely costly in economic, political and human terms. China has long seen self-ruled Taiwan as a breakaway province.
Also read: Biden says his goal for Xi meeting is to get U.S.-China communications back to normal “The U.S. Air Force and Navy would have to operate in an environment unlike anything they’ve seen since World War II,” said Mark Cancian, a former Marine Corps colonel, Defense Department official and senior adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Earlier this year, Cancian led a wargame simulation of what would happen if China attempted an amphibious invasion of Taiwan and found that if the U.S. intervened to defend the island, it would likely lead to the loss of dozens of ships, hundreds of aircraft and 15,000 U.S. casualties in just the first month of the war. Other experts argue that this is too optimistic a scenari …
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