America's Coming War with China: A Collision Course over Taiwan
227
America's Coming War with China: A Collision Course over Taiwan
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Overview
One issue could lead to a disastrous war between the United States and China: Taiwan. A growing number of Taiwanese want independence for their island and regard mainland China as an alien nation. Mainland Chinese consider Taiwan a province that was stolen from China more than a century ago, and their patience about getting it back is wearing thin. Washington officially endorses a "one China" policy but also sells arms to Taiwan and maintains an implicit pledge to defend it from attack. That vague, muddled policy invites miscalculation by Taiwan or China or both. The three parties are on a collision course, and unless something dramatic changes, an armed conflict is virtually inevitable within a decade. Although there is still time to avert a calamity, time is running out. In this book, Carpenter tells the reader what the U.S. must do quickly to avoid being dragged into war.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781466893016 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | St. Martin's Publishing Group |
| Publication date: | 05/01/2024 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 227 |
| File size: | 604 KB |
About the Author
Ted Galen Carpenter is vice president for defense and foreign policy studies at the Cato Institute. He is the author of six books and the editor of ten books on international affairs.
Ted Galen Carpenter is Vice President for Defense and Foreign Policy Studies at the Cato Institute in Washington, DC. He is the author of The Captive Press, among other titles.
Read an Excerpt
America's Coming War with China
A Collision Course Over Taiwan
By Ted Galen Carpenter
Palgrave Macmillan
Copyright © 2005 Ted Galen CarpenterAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4668-9301-6
CHAPTER 1
2013
How the War Began
The war that erupted between the United States and China in 2013 was a classic case of miscalculation by both parties. Neither Beijing nor Washington thought that the other side would escalate the long-standing tensions over Taiwan to the point of armed conflict. Yet armed conflict was the result, and the world has been paying the price ever since. For a quarter century, the world's two leading powers have been locked in a cold war that has been at least as intense as the earlier surly confrontation between the United States and the Soviet Union. The prospects for global peace and prosperity that looked so promising in the 1990s following the end of the first cold war have turned to ashes. U.S. policymakers have undoubtedly asked themselves many times whether the brief but intense war that broke out in July 2013 could have been avoided. They probably have asked themselves at least as many times whether defending Taiwan was worth the price.
As the secretary of state prepared to enter the White House on the morning of June 2, 2013, he wondered whether Taiwan's president had finally pushed Beijing too far. The day before, the Taiwanese leader announced that he would seek an amendment to the constitution changing the island's official name from the Republic of China to the Republic of Taiwan, a move that was certain to infuriate the PRC. It may not officially have been a declaration of Taiwanese independence, but it was the functional equivalent of one. And it certainly would be the surprise of the century if Beijing did not regard it as such.
Typically, Taiwan's president had made that blockbuster of an announcement without any advance notice to the United States. That seemed to be his standard operating procedure since his re-election to the presidency in March 2012. Even more than his predecessor, Chen Shui-bian, the current leader had a habit of blindsiding Taiwan's protector, the United States, with potentially dangerous initiatives. This was just the latest and most provocative one.
Although both presidents were members of the Democratic Progressive Party, the similarities tended to end there. For all of his faults, Chen Shui-bian had displayed a shrewd sense of what was and what was not possible in Taiwan's delicate relationship with mainland China. His pro-independence rhetoric could at times be a bit much, but his actual policies tended to be relatively cautious. Chen's successor showed little of that caution. His boldness was not all that surprising since he came from the hard-line independence faction in the DPP. To many hard-liners, Chen Shui-bian had been squishy and a disappointment.
The current president believed he also had a broader mandate to push his independence agenda. Throughout his presidency, Chen had had to deal with a national legislature controlled by the more moderate Kuomintang Party (KMT) and its allies. Whatever his private inclinations might have been, that political reality restrained his actions. Chen's successor had no such political constraints. The DPP now controlled 55 percent of the Legislative Yuan, and the party's even more rabidly pro-independence ally, the Taiwan Solidarity Union, controlled another 8 percent. The president himself had been re-elected with nearly 58 percent of the vote against the increasingly moribund KMT and what was left of the relatively pro-Beijing People First Party. Chen Shui-bian had never come close to getting a popular mandate of that magnitude.
The U.S. president had assembled the members of his national security team to hear the secretary of state's report on the latest news out of Taipei and Beijing. The news was not good. Throngs of DPP and TSU supporters had gone into the streets of Taipei and other cities on the island to support their president's proposed change of the country's name. Most of them were waving the green flag of Taiwan's independence movement. As yet there was no official reaction from Beijing, but the latest online edition of People's Daily was more than a little ominous.
The patience of the People's Republic of China is not unlimited, and the latest actions by the authorities on Taiwan are testing that patience to the breaking point. The government of the PRC has made it clear on numerous occasions that moves to establish so-called Taiwan independence are unacceptable and will lead our Taiwan compatriots to the abyss of disaster. Yet the current Taiwanese authorities and the other splittist forces seem determined to wrench Taiwan away from the motherland regardless of the danger. Make no mistake. The forces of the People's Liberation Army are prepared to defend the unity of China at whatever cost. Taiwan separatism will not be allowed to succeed. It is time for sober-minded Taiwan compatriots to let the DPP, the TSU and the rest of that ilk understand that the Taiwanese people will not follow them into the abyss. It is also time for the United States to make it clear to the Taiwan authorities that any effort to establish a so-called Republic of Taiwan will gravely endanger the peace and stability of the entire region.
The U.S. president queried his advisors about how to respond to the latest moves. The director of national intelligence reported on the latest satellite data, which showed an unusual amount of activity at several Chinese military airfields in Fujian Province, directly across the Strait from Taiwan. That was a troubling indicator, but manned aircraft was only one element of the firepower the PRC could deploy against Taiwan. China also had more than twelve hundred missiles targeted against the island, and those would play a major role if Beijing ever decided to use military force. The secretary of state recommended that the president personally issue a statement reiterating the U.S. position against any unilateral changes in the status quo by either Taipei or Beijing. The secretary further recommended that the president explicitly condemn the Taiwanese leader's call to amend the constitution as precisely the kind of unilateral change that jeopardized peace in the Taiwan Strait and make it clear that the United States would oppose such a change.
The president hesitated. Taiwan had a lot of friends in Congress and the media who would react badly to any statement that seemed to be appeasement of Beijing. He recognized that a statement of criticism had to be made, but he wanted it handled at a lower level to minimize the publicity and the resulting outcry. The president instructed the secretary of state to have the deputy secretary issue the statement — and to soften the condemnation of the Taiwan president's proposal to "the United States cannot support" instead of the United States "opposes" the proposed name change to the Republic of Taiwan. The secretary protested that more subtle formulations were unlikely to dissuade DPP hard-liners, but the president would not be moved.
Before the meeting adjourned, the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff recommended that the United States begin the process of redeploying some of its aircraft carrier battle groups in order to be prepared if the crisis escalated. Two carriers were the best candidates. The USS Stennis was just completing a call at Pearl Harbor, and the USS Ronald Reagan was conducting joint training exercises with the navies of India and several Southeast Asian nations in and around the Strait of Malacca. The JCS chairman suggested that both carrier battle groups be relocated to waters closer to Taiwan. The president expressed his view that the diplomatic crisis would probably blow over in a short time just as all previous ones had, but he agreed that the redeployment of the two carriers was probably a prudent step.
Reactions from Beijing and Taipei to the State Department's criticism of unilateral changes in the status quo were not encouraging. Speaking at a DPP conference the following day, the Taiwanese president bluntly rejected the U.S. criticism. "The Republic of China has been a sovereign state for more than a century and a full-fledged democracy for nearly two decades," he stated. "It is up to the people of Taiwan to decide if we should change the name of our country to the Republic of Taiwan. The communist authorities on the mainland have nothing to say about it, and even a friend like the United States has no right to interfere in the affairs of a sister democracy." His comments seemed to confirm the secretary of state's worst fears, that the DPP government would not be dissuaded by gentle criticisms.
If the reaction from Taipei was disappointing, the subsequent reaction from Beijing was alarming. The Taiwan Affairs Office issued a shrill statement of condemnation coupled with a threat.
The separatist traitors do not represent the best interests of the people of Taiwan. We urge our Taiwan compatriots to repudiate this irresponsible leadership before it is too late. The People's Republic of China has said repeatedly that it wants to settle the issue of Taiwan's reunification by peaceful means. Some provocations are simply intolerable, however. If the Taiwan authorities insist on proclaiming a so-called Republic of Taiwan, it will prove impossible for the PRC to adhere to a peaceful course.
The PRC's embassy in Washington, too, was unimpressed with the statement issued by the State Department. In a meeting with the secretary of state, China's ambassador dismissed the U.S. position as "anemic and utterly inadequate." In a rare display of anger, the ambassador stated:
We are weary of your government's supposed adherence to a one-China policy when you constantly take actions that run contrary to that policy. We have put up with your sales of advanced weaponry to Taiwan — including offensive weapons — despite your commitment in the Third Communiqué signed by Ronald Reagan to gradually eliminate all arms sales. We have tolerated your willingness to issue visas to Taiwanese officials to visit the United States despite our protests. We have even tolerated those officials meeting with prominent members of Congress and giving public speeches in which they condemn the PRC. But we will not tolerate having your government give quiet encouragement to a so-called Taiwan leader while he creates an entity called the Republic of Taiwan. You need to bring serious pressure to bear on him NOW, if you wish to preserve friendly relations between China and the United States.
The secretary was taken aback by the intensity of the ambassador's protest. Beijing had long been unhappy about Washington's arms sales to Taiwan as well as other aspects of U.S. policy. But most PRC protests had acquired a rote aspect to them over the years. This was different. There was an uncompromising undertone of menace to Beijing's position.
Any hope that the crisis might dissipate ended on June 4, when the Taiwanese administration formally introduced its proposed constitutional changes. Once again there was an unpleasant surprise for the United States. Not only did the executive propose to change Taiwan's name from the Republic of China to the Republic of Taiwan, but there was another provision delineating the boundaries of the new republic. The territory claimed was Taiwan itself plus Kinmen (Quemoy) and other small islands just off the Chinese mainland. Gone was any claim to represent any portion of the mainland. If the name change was not the functional equivalent of a declaration of independence, the second provision certainly was.
To this day it is uncertain why the Taiwanese president decided on such a daring course of action in June 2013. His own long-time commitment to the cause of an independent Taiwan was undoubtedly a key factor, but there appeared to be some other elements. Part of the move may even have been defensive. At the time he submitted the proposed constitutional amendments, only sixteen countries had diplomatic relations with the Republic of China. That number had been shrinking for years; a decade earlier, nearly thirty countries maintained diplomatic ties with the ROC. Beijing's strategy of isolating Taipei diplomatically was clearly working. Even the sixteen countries that still recognized the ROC were all small, poor countries, mainly in Central America, the Caribbean, and Africa. They were all prime candidates to be bribed by the PRC to change their diplomatic allegiance — as so many others already had done. Taiwan's leaders may have thought that they had nothing to lose by being bold, since the alternative was slow, but inexorable, diplomatic extinction.
Another factor appears to have been pervasive Taiwanese confidence that the United States would defend the island's security if the PRC tried to resort to coercive measures. Granted, America's obligations under the 1979 Taiwan Relations Act were not the same as a clear-cut defense commitment. The TRA obligated the United States to sell Taiwan arms of a defensive nature (loosely defined) and to regard any PRC threat or use of force as a grave breach of the peace of the East Asian region. The latter provision implied that the United States would use its own military forces to defend Taiwan from attack. Although previous U.S. administrations had sometimes cautioned Taiwanese leaders that the commitment was not unconditional and that they should refrain from provoking the PRC, the current Taiwanese president and his followers were convinced that if a crisis erupted — regardless of its origins — the United States would defend a thriving democracy against aggression from a dictatorial China.
Taiwan's supporters in the U.S. Congress and much of the American media encouraged Taipei to think in those terms. The Taiwan government had added confidence about the current administration, since the sitting American president was a conservative Republican and the conservative wing of the GOP had always been the most supportive of Taiwan's ambitions. Consequently, Taipei may have concluded that the time was propitious for making a bold bid for permanent separation from China.
The changing military balance across the Taiwan Strait may have been another factor leading to the conclusion that it was "now or never." In the late 1990s and the early years of the twenty-first century, Taiwan seemed capable of matching — and perhaps more than matching — the PRC's military capabilities. Indeed, Taiwan's modern air force with its F-16s and Mirages was probably superior to anything China could put into the air. But that situation had been slowly changing. In recent years, the PRC had been spending close to $70 billion a year on its military and was purchasing cutting-edge planes, ships, and other hardware from Russia and the nations of the European Union. Meanwhile, Taiwan had steadily trimmed its defense budget, choosing instead to spend money on a variety of domestic priorities. The military balance between Taiwan and the PRC was already shifting in favor of the latter. There was no doubt that in a few years China would have a decisive military edge over Taiwan, and then the island would have to rely entirely on the United States for its security. In 2013 the nature of the balance was still uncertain, but time clearly was not on Taiwan's side.
Whatever the specific motivations, the government in Taipei decided to cross what Beijing had repeatedly indicated was a bright red line. The PRC had made it clear that crossing that line would bring extremely unpleasant consequences, and Beijing's response to the Taiwan administration's proposed constitutional amendments was not long in coming. On June 5 the PRC president ordered the mobilization of the People's Liberation Army.
Both Taiwanese and U.S. officials seemed caught off guard by Beijing's action. Taipei immediately ordered the mobilization of its forces, including calling reserves to active duty. The United States increased the alert level for its forces stationed in South Korea and Japan. That move in turn caused some agitation in both Seoul and Tokyo. The South Korean foreign ministry issued a statement emphasizing that its mutual security treaty with the United States did not cover contingencies in the Taiwan Strait. Seoul reiterated its adherence to a one-China policy and admonished Taipei to stop provoking a crisis with the PRC. Officials in the Philippines, Thailand, Singapore, and other East Asian countries issued similar statements over the subsequent week. Even America's long-standing ally, Australia, made it clear that if an armed conflict erupted in the Taiwan Strait neither Taiwan nor the United States could expect help from Canberra.
Only Japan refrained from publicly chastising the Taiwanese and stating that it would not back the United States in a conflict with the PRC. Yet even Japan's response was hedged and murky. The prime minister reaffirmed his country's commitment to the alliance with the United States and stressed how important a vigorous U.S. military presence was to the security and stability of the East Asian and western Pacific regions. However, on the burgeoning crisis in the Taiwan Strait, the Japanese leader merely urged both Taipei and Beijing to "exercise restraint and display a commitment to settle this dispute by peaceful means."
(Continues...)
Excerpted from America's Coming War with China by Ted Galen Carpenter. Copyright © 2005 Ted Galen Carpenter. Excerpted by permission of Palgrave Macmillan.
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Table of Contents
2013: How the War Began * The Origins of the Taiwan Problem, 1895-1979 * The Taiwan Problem Evolves, 1979-2000 * Some Ominous Trends in Taiwan * Some Ominous Trends in the PRC * Washington's Muddled Policy * The Dynamic Military Balance * Avoiding Calamity