China’s likely strategy is to overwhelm Taiwan with a massive attack with little warning. Xi doesn’t want to repeat Russian President Vladimir Putin’s mistake in Ukraine in 2022, when Russia’s initial full-scale invasion failed and devolved into a long war of attrition.

The key to thwarting Xi’s assumed strategy is a U.S. strategy called “Hellscape,” Adm. Samuel Paparo, the new head of U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, told me in an interview. The idea is that as soon as China’s invasion fleet begins moving across the 100-mile waterway that separates China and Taiwan, the U.S. military would deploy thousands of unmanned submarines, unmanned surface ships and aerial drones to flood the area and give Taiwanese, U.S. and partner forces time to mount a full response.

“I want to turn the Taiwan Strait into an unmanned hellscape using a number of classified capabilities,” Paparo said. “So that I can make their lives utterly miserable for a month, which buys me the time for the rest of everything.”

“I can’t tell you what’s in it,” he replied when pressed about details. “But it’s real and it’s deliverable.”

As a military official, Paparo has no official role in international diplomacy, but he does have strong opinions on what he calls China’s “revanchist, revisionist and expansionist” government. He believes that four decades of the West trying to convince China to liberalize politically has failed, giving way to a new, more dangerous era for Asia.

“The region has got two choices. The first is that they can submit, and as an end result give up some of their freedoms … or they can arm to the teeth,” he told me. “Both cases have direct implications to the security, the freedom and the well-being of the citizens of the United States of America.”

Read the entire column: The U.S. military plans a ‘Hellscape’ to deter China from attacking Taiwan

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