The Davidson window closes
China was never going to invade Taiwan in 2027
Amid the horrific news of war in Western Asia (aka the Middle East, from a Eurocentric perspective), there’s some good news about East Asia that will come as a surprise to many.
The idea of an imminent Chinese invasion of Taiwan has been abandoned by the US intelligence community “China does not plan to invade Taiwan in 2027, according to the U.S. intelligence community’s 2026 Annual Threat Assessment report published this week. “
https://news.usni.org/2026/03/19/china-not-committed-to-2027-taiwan-invasion-u-s-intel-report-says
The 2027 target date has been central to discussions since it was put forward by US Admiral Phil Davidson in 2021 (hence the name “Davidson window”). An even closer deadline, proposed by the Nine Papers in their “Red Alert” series in 2023 passed recently without incident (and of course without any acknowledgment of error).
While China remains committed to reunification by 2049, the likely time to be ready for a military assault has been pushed out to the late 2030s. Xi Jinping’s recent purge of senior military figures suggests that he is planning for a long period of reconstruction rather than imminent action.
The intelligence reassessment is more striking given that it is increasingly unlikely that the US would intervene to defend Taiwan in such a hypothetical event. The assessment was undertaken before the Iran war, which has required the withdrawal if missile defences from South Korea, but the betrayal of Ukraine and the “Donroe doctrine” made it clear that the Trump administration is more interested in the aggressive pursuit of looting opportunities than in ideas of collective self-defence. The course of the war so far will only reinforce this conclusion.
In particular, we have learned a lot more about naval power. When Davidson gave his estimate in 2021, discussions of naval warfare (including amphibious landings) were essentially theoretical. Apart from the ambiguous case of the Falklands War, where a third-rate military dictatorship came close to beating the Royal Navy, the most recent relevant experience was that of World War II.
We have a lot more to go on now, as a result of the Ukraine and Iraq wars, and the Houthi blockade of the Suez canal. The evidence, to put it as simply as possible, is that navies are useless.
The most obvious case is that of a small country facing a powerful attacker (Ukraine, Iran and if war were to break out, Taiwan). Both the Ukrainian and Iranian navies were wiped out instantly. Every cent spent on them and every sailor trained to crew them was wasted[1}
But the great powers haven’t done much better. The remains Russia’s much vaunted Black Sea fleet are sheltering in ports as far away from Ukraine as they can get. They are still being used to launch missiles because that is what they were built for. But in retrospect, it would have been much more sensible for the Russians to base the missiles on land, rather than on vulnerable, but effectively immobile floating platforms.
The US Navy, having failed in its attempt to end Houthi control of the Red Sea, has now repeated the failure with the Straits of Hormuz. Trump’s pleas for help from the other great naval powers, the UK and France, fell on deaf ears, partly for obvious political reasons, but also because they were obviously incapable of delivering. The idea that navies are needed to protect vital shipping routes has been refuted about as conclusively as possible.
The converse of this point applies to blockades. As we’ve seen, imposing a blockade from land is easy. Doing it with easily sinkable ships would be silly.
Turning to the war itself, it was obvious that a carrier battle group, or even two, would come nowhere near defeating Iran. The bulk of the bombing campaign (still nowhere near achieving its goals) has been undertaken by land-based aircraft.
The implications for China are obvious. If the US Navy can’t guarantee the safety of ships in the Red Sea or the Straits of Hormuz, the PLA Navy will do no better in protecting the civilian ferries that are supposed to transport tens of thousands of troops across the Taiwan Strait. A seaborne invasion of Taiwan is impossible, even without any US support.
This isn’t going to change by the 2030s, and probably not by 2049. But Xi Jinping can safely leave that problem to his successors.
What are the implications for Australia? I’ll leave that for later, but feel free to discuss.
fn1. Including the Iranians killed by an attack by a US submarine, with three Australian crewmembers, which then left survivors to drown.
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There is also the issue of Japan which has made it clear it is there to protect Taiwan for obvious reasons (not being hemmed). It knows China has a very long memory particularly of its century of humiliation in which Japan featured in the later years.
A very minor point on "the Falklands War, where a third-rate military dictatorship came close to beating the Royal Navy"
There was no way Argentina came close, which is why the sinking of the Belgrano was so controversial. While the UK certainly took casualties, and various tactical engagements had greater or lesser success, the landing at San Carlos was the best opportunity to contest and it was never in doubt. Operationally, it wasn't even close...