The earliest case is Kublai Khan’s 1283 surprise attack to bypass Vietnam’s fleet and achieve a land victory at Thin Nai Bay. The most famous case is Pearl Harbor, even though it was a limited raid whose principal goal was to inflict political costs on a U.S. government that had already faced German U-boat warfare. The other cases are the 1894 Yalu River attack, the 1718 British attack at Cape Passaro during the War of the Quadruple Alliance, and the Dutch Raid on the Medway in 1667. These cases demonstrate the rarity of surprise naval attacks, primarily because naval operations are intended to support land operations, whose logistical and diplomatic preparations for war are more easily detected. A planned Third World War with the Soviet Union would have forced Moscow to choose between sending its sub-fleet into the Atlantic versus preparing its mechanized forces in Germany, not both.

Strategically decisive naval battles are those that significantly shape the outcome of a war, most often by foreclosing the option of a maritime invasion by one of the sides, by the destruction of its fleet, but are not sufficiently calamitous as to compel either side to seek war termination. Of the forty-seven cases of successful Mahanian naval battles (or 63 percent of the total of seventy-five cases), seventeen of these strategically significant Mahanian naval battles, or 36 percent of the sub-total, were also politically strategic, resulting in immediate peace negotiations. There were another eleven failed attempts to bring about a decisive Mahanian naval battle. Thus, of the fifty-eight attempts at a decisive Mahanian battle, eleven, or 19 percent of the sub-total, failed. The earliest case of a strategically decisive naval battle was the Battle of the Damme in 1213 over the English, and the most recent case was the 1916 Battle of Jutland. The most famous case is the 1805 Battle of Trafalgar.

There are eight exceptions, or 11 percent of the total of seventy-five cases, in which a navy achieved victory through local and temporary Command of the Sea. These instances are Kublai Khan’s 1283 defeat of Vietnam at the battle of Thi Nai Bay, the Dutch supplanting of the Portuguese at the Strait of Malacca in 1641, the Spanish defeat of the British in the 1739-1748 War of Jenkins’ Ear, the naval operations facilitating the continued Siege of Yorktown in 1781, the Russian defeat of Turkey in the 1787–1792 Russo-Turkish War, the Battle of the Atlantic during the Second World War, the Indian amphibious operations against Cox’s Bazaar in 1971, and the British defeat of the Argentines in the Falkland Islands. 

These cases are critical because they constitute the conditions under which China can achieve its fait accompli strategy to capture Taiwan and obtain a peace settlement. Three of the eight cases were won by land-bound defenders against naval incursions, leaving five relevant instances, of which another two were very long-drawn campaigns that ended because of mutual exhaustion. This leaves the coastal advances by Kublai Khan on Vietnam and the Indian carrier flotilla at Cox’s Bazaar, and thus only the Falkland Islands that are relevant. While Julian Thompson’s 1985 No Picnic and the companion Michael Clapp’s 1996 Amphibious Assault Falklands are instructive for a multi-battalion level landing, China is expected to land a minimum of ten brigades in the first wave in Taiwan. Thus, it may not be a relevant analog of the unprecedented challenges faced by the PLAN. 

Colomb argued that amphibious assaults are highly averse to operating in the absence of naval supremacy, especially as the landed troops are often in slower and less well-protected transports and because of the catastrophic outcome of an interception. The low frequency of exemplarily disastrous interceptions of amphibious forces is the result of the selection effect of most admirals diligently avoiding such catastrophes. The double capture of French troop transports by the Royal Navy at the 1747 First and Second Battles of Cape Finisterre netted 7,000 prisoners and immediately provoked peace negotiations in Paris. A Chinese amphibious operation conducted within the stand-off reach of the U.S. Navy may be stopped before disembarkation.

Colomb’s amphibious dataset shows the rarity of amphibious operations against any naval presence at all, with just four exceptions (6 percent of seventy-one cases): the bold 1704 Dutch-British seizure of Gibraltar while being confronted by a larger Franco-Spanish fleet; the Royal Navy came quite close to intercepting Napoleon’s 1798 convoy to Egypt; the Anglo-French confidence that the Russian fleet would not make a sortie to stop the 1854 landings at Balaklava; and the 1778 French attack on St-Lucia because they were unaware of the presence of the Royal Navy. 

Of the ninety-four cases of major amphibious operations from 1938, there are another six exceptional cases of opposed landings, all but one of which have extenuating circumstances. Overwhelming air superiority during the 1941 German troop ferries to Crete, the 1941 Japanese landings in Malaya, and the 1944 U.S. landings at Leyte mean that any maritime patrol would have been severely punished. The Tokyo Express during the Guadalcanal operation was feasible only because of its intermittent and clandestine use. Operation Sutton, the landings on the Falkland Islands, and the 1940 German seizure of Norway demonstrate the high cost and risk of conducting an amphibious operation against even a sporadic enemy air and maritime presence.

However, Colomb’s certainty that a naval power would not even attempt an amphibious landing until after it has secured sea control and dealt with any fleet-in-being farther afield must be tempered with the discrepancy evident in the older timeline of the war dataset. This shows that there are eighteen cases, or 24 percent of the total, in which naval battles took place to stop an amphibious attack in progress. Of these cases, in which the attacker was clearly not deterred by the risk of interception, ten were associated with Anglo-French-Spanish-Dutch attempts to force the British Channel, two implicated Sweden, and another two involved the Ottoman, with the remainder being the War of 1812, the Second World War in the Mediterranean, Japan’s moves against U.S. landings in the Philippines, and Genova versus Venice. With modern long-range weaponry, China is far more vulnerable than is suggested by these cases.

Examining the probabilities in a worst-outcome sequence, China has a cumulative 5 percent chance of achieving surprise and a 24 percent likelihood of being undeterred and taking the risk of conducting an amphibious attack against Taiwan. There is a further 24 percent likelihood that the United States would unadvisedly intercept, in which case China would have only an 11 percent chance of capturing Taiwan using only local sea control. If the conquest of Taiwan is successful, then China has a 17 percent chance of being able to leverage its new bases against any approach by the U.S. Navy. 

There is a subsequent 20 percent chance that China will pursue some interdiction of U.S. commerce to incentivize peace negotiations. There is a further 20 percent chance that China can achieve war termination if it wins both a land victory in Taiwan and a naval battle against the United States and its allies. Still, this likelihood is low if the U.S. Navy avoids seeking a decisive battle in the Taiwan Strait. Thus, even if China could dominate the immediate waters around Taiwan, the historical behavior of amphibious attackers suggests that even a risk-acceptant Beijing would either hesitate or falter at one of the later steps.

The United States, on the other hand, has only a 28 percent likelihood of being able to lure the PLAN to fight a decisive battle according to a preconceived plan and a 19 percent chance of failing to lure out the PLAN at all. Conversely, the United States is still 81 percent likely to improvise a clash with the Chinese eventually. If it achieves victory, it then has a 33 percent chance of blocking any further amphibious operations, including the resupply of Taiwan. Furthermore, it would have a 28 percent likelihood of immediately compelling Beijing to sue for peace. Otherwise, it has a 65 percent probability of having a decisively favorable impact on the conduct of an ultimately victorious war in the defense of Taiwan. The next phase of research is intended to identify the factors that enable a successful luring and destruction of an enemy amphibious force.

Dr. Julian Spencer-Churchill is an associate professor of international relations at Concordia University and the author of Militarization and War (2007) and Strategic Nuclear Sharing (2014). He has published extensively on Pakistan security issues and arms control and completed research contracts at the Office of Treaty Verification at the Office of the Secretary of the Navy and the then Ballistic Missile Defense Office (BMDO). He has also conducted fieldwork in Bangladesh, India, Indonesia, and Egypt and is a consultant. He is a former Operations Officer of the 3rd Field Engineer Regiment from the latter end of the Cold War to shortly after 9/11. He tweets at @Ju_Sp_Churchill.