“The greatest military threat to U.S. vital interests in Asia may be one that has received somewhat less attention: the growing capability of China’s missile forces to threaten U.S. bases in the region,” write Thomas Shugart and Javier Gonzalez in a report released last month by the Center for a New American Security (CNAS). In the report, they argue that China could use its missile forces to conduct a surprise preemptive strike against U.S. military bases in the region to prevent U.S. intervention in a conflict over Taiwan or the Senkaku Islands. Shugart and Gonzales run two different models of a simulated preemptive attack, keeping in mind what they know about U.S. and allied missile defense systems in the region. In both models, “enough ballistic missiles seemed likely to leak through to cause highly significant damage to U.S. bases and forces in the region.”
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