The cold war in the Taiwan Strait threatens to
turn hot.
By John Feffer
October 24, 2021 -- "Information
Clearing House -
"FPIF"-
When he was running for office in 2008,
Barack Obama wanted to put an end to the war in Iraq
in order to focus U.S. troops and resources on the
conflict in Afghanistan. This August, the Biden
administration finally withdrew the remaining U.S.
troops from Afghanistan. It’s hard not to get the
sense that it has done so in order to perform a
similar military pivot—this time toward China.
After all, U.S. policy toward China remains as
provocative today as it was under Trump. Tariffs and
economic sanctions against Beijing remain largely
intact. Little has been done to resolve disputes on
trade, security, and human rights. The Pentagon is
cutting back on the kinds of weapons it was using in
the Middle East
in favor of munitions more suited to the Pacific
theater. There hasn’t been much in the way of
cooperation on the major global problems of pandemic
and climate change. Biden and Chinese leader Xi
Jinping have barely talked with one another, though
there are plans for a virtual meeting by the end of
the year.
All of that would suggest merely a continuation
of the cold war that has settled on U.S.-China
relations since the tail end of the Obama
administration.
But recent events point to the possibility of the
cold war turning hot.
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In early October, China sent 150 jets into
Taiwanese air space. Although Beijing periodically
tests Taipei’s air defenses, this was
a record number of incursions. And the flights
came after
military exercises the month before that looked
suspiciously like a dry run of an invasion of the
island with China launching missiles into the sea
south of Taiwan and conducting an amphibious assault
on a beach in southern China. It was enough to
prompt Taiwanese Foreign Minister Joseph Wu to
announce that his country was preparing for a war
that “we will fight to the end.”
For those primed to expect the worst from China,
it looks as though Xi Jinping has cracked down on
the Uyghurs in the far east and consolidated control
over Hong Kong all so that he can now focus his
attention on the central prize of speeding the
“reunification” of Taiwan with the mainland. China’s
more strident nationalism and more robust military
capabilities under Xi are not the first steps of a
new Chinese imperialism. But the People’s Republic
of China (PRC) has never viewed Taiwan as a foreign
country to be conquered so much as a rebellious
province to be subdued.
The problem lies not just with China. The United
States has been subtly altering its longstanding
policy of “strategic ambiguity” as it relates to the
triangular relationship connecting Washington,
Beijing, and Taipei. The United States has
recognized the PRC as the “one China” and kept its
relationship with Taiwan strictly unofficial. As
part of this policy, Washington hasn’t extended
diplomatic recognition to Taiwan but nevertheless
sends heaps of military hardware in that direction.
The Trump administration, however, began to
elevate relations with Taiwan. Trump himself set the
stage as president-elect by
accepting a congratulatory phone call from
Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen, the first direct
communication between U.S. and Taiwanese leaders in
nearly four decades. In 2020, Health and Human
Services Secretary Alex Azar and Undersecretary of
State Keith Krach were the highest-ranking officials
to visit Taiwan since 1979. Also in 2020, the
administration announced
more than $5 billion in arms sales to the
island. And in 2021, as one of his last acts as
secretary of state, Mike Pompeo
abolished prohibitions against meetings between
U.S. and Taiwanese diplomats.
Although Biden was careful not to take any
congratulatory calls from Taiwan, his administration
did not roll back Pompeo’s decree. In fact, U.S. and
Taiwanese diplomats
met for lunch in France in early May, prompting
a stern rebuke from Beijing. The U.S. ambassador to
Palau also
visited Taiwan last spring. Meanwhile, the
administration authorized
its first military sale to Taiwan in August:
$750 million worth of howitzers and similar
artillery. It
sent warships through the Taiwan Strait eight
times in the first eight months of 2021, and
American troops have been conducting training
sessions with Taiwanese forces for the better part
of a year.
Influential voices outside the administration
have been urging the United States to put an end to
strategic ambiguity and more vigorously support
Taiwan. Richard Haass, the head of the Council on
Foreign Relations,
made this case in a September 2020 issue of
Foreign Affairs: “Ambiguity is unlikely to
deter an increasingly assertive China with growing
military capabilities.”
Some members of Congress want to act accordingly.
At a recent Politico event, both Thom Tillis (R-NC)
and Ami Bera (D-CA)
supported the abandonment of “strategic
ambiguity.” And Elaine Luria (D-VA) recently joined
her Republican colleagues
in calling for legislation that authorizes the
president to use military force to defend Taiwan.
And The Washington Post
has called for—ugh, not this again!—an increased
Pentagon budget to push back against China.
Even as it encourages more effort from
Taiwan, Japan and others in the region, the
United States itself needs to invest more
heavily in the hard-power assets — especially
naval forces — required to back up its
commitments in East Asia. The president,
however, proposed a defense budget that barely
kept up with inflation, albeit with $5.5 billion
earmarked for deterrence in the Pacific. On a
bipartisan basis, the House has approved
a bigger spending plan, with money for 13 new
ships. That might impress China more than even
the sternest words.
Some of this posturing reflects an understandable
frustration that the United States has done so
little to stand up for the beleaguered Uyghurs and
the besieged residents of Hong Kong. Analysts and
lawmakers want to draw a more clearly visible red
line through the Taiwan Strait. Unlike Xinjiang and
Hong Kong, Taiwan is not legally part of the
mainland. Surely the United States would stand up to
aggression against a prosperous, democratic state
even if it’s not a member of the United Nations and
is only recognized by 14 countries (plus the
Vatican).
The question is not whether the United States
should or should not go to war with China over
Taiwan. The question is: how can we best avoid such
a war?
The usual argument against any imminent Chinese
attack on Taiwan is that Beijing knows that it would
suffer a tremendous economic blow if it were to do
so—on top of the military casualties it would incur.
The problem with this argument, of course, is that
Beijing experienced just such an economic shock in
1989 in the wake of the crackdown on the Tiananmen
Square protests—and survived the few years it spent
in the time-out corner. Since that time, China has
both become more economically powerful and developed
institutions independent of the IMF and World Bank
that can function, in effect, as a global economy of
its own. China, in other words, is better prepared
than in 1989 to weather the West’s disapproval.
China’s calculation would not, however, be purely
economic. China might decide that it doesn’t have a
choice but to launch a war across the strait—not so
much to force the issue of reunification with Taiwan
but to avoid being fully encircled.
Consider the big movie hit in China today:
The Battle at Lake Changjin.
Much has been made about the propaganda value of
Chinese moviegoers cheering the spectacle of Chinese
soldiers beating back American GIs during this key
Korean War battle.
The film, though, is about the Chinese not only
prevailing over the U.S.-led UN forces in North
Korea at the battle of Chosin Reservoir in 1950 but
the People’s Liberation Army helping to break
through the encirclement of enemy forces and
preventing the collapse of North Korea. If China
attacks Taiwan, it may similarly view the campaign
as a defensive maneuver to push through the
encircling forces of the United States and its
allies.
Tightening the military containment of China,
then, is precisely the opposite of what the United
States should do if it wants to avoid a war in the
region. Beijing will not so much be deterred by such
displays of strength as incited by them.
What, then, is the alternative?
The first step is to bring together a broad
coalition of analysts and policymakers who believe
it’s a terrible idea to dispense with strategic
ambiguity. The participants in this coalition could
have a range of opinions about economic relations
with China. They could be rightly concerned about
events in Xinjiang and Hong Kong. They could be
strong advocates of Taiwanese independence. What
draws them together is one thing: the importance of
avoiding a war with China.
In the last five years, the right has
successfully pushed the political debate in
Washington in a
distinctly anti-Chinese direction. It’s time to
push back by brokering an anti-war coalition that
draws from the broadest possible range of opinion
leaders.
The second step is to identify a concrete agenda
of U.S.-Chinese cooperation. The two countries have
no choice but to cooperate on reducing carbon
emissions, strengthening pandemic response, and
curbing nuclear proliferation. The United States and
the Soviet Union found ways to cooperate during the
worst years of the Cold War. Washington and Beijing
have far stronger economic ties and shared global
responsibilities. Despite differences on a host of
issues, China and the United States can work
together for mutual benefit.
Ending the two-decade war in Afghanistan will
eventually redound to Biden’s benefit—but not if he
starts an even costlier conflict with China. Obama
discovered soon enough the disadvantages of jumping
out of the Iraqi frying pan and into the Afghan
fire. A war with China would be no mere fire. It
would be a world-altering catastrophe.
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