The Bush administration for its part needs to reevaluate our strategic objectives in regard to China and Taiwan. Far too much decision-making power has been voluntarily ceded to circumstances that can be created by others – thus encouraging China and Taiwan to be less responsible than if both parties were reacting only bilaterally to each other’s moves. We need a clarification of our defense relationship with the Taiwanese so that neither China nor Taiwan miscalculates.
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Dan tdaxp:
July 15th, 2005 at 10:32 pm
What about a Hammes-like 4GW defense?
Taiwan would (through independent development, through a deal with Pakistan, etc) aquire nuclear weapons, pre-position these weapons in China (“suitcase nukes for freedom”), give “strategic corporals” the ability to detonate these weapons independent of Taipei’s command (so a quisling cannot subvert the defense), and wait.
Anonymous:
July 16th, 2005 at 2:14 am
As I commented over in Glittering Eye, why in the world would we risk possible nuclear war with China over an issue, Taiwan, where we agree WITH China that Taiwan is an inseperable part of the country. Please explain how it is any different than China threatening war with the U.S. should we use force to prevent Hawaii from seceding. You say that we have a defense agreement with Taiwan; O.K. then I suggest it be renegotiated. Taiwan is NOT an issue that is critical to the U.S. If Taiwan is deemed important, then I agree completely with Dan. Find a way to get Taiwan to go nuclear.
Barnabus
Dan tdaxp:
July 16th, 2005 at 4:32 am
Barnabus,
Defending democracy and freedom, as well as international security of Core states, is in the interests of the United States. Abandoning a more-free and more-connected to a less-free country and less-connected sends a warning to all nations that they are not safe, and that even Core states but have their own Leviathan army.
While we have to be careful not to repeat 1914, where the lesser good of protecting Belgium led to the greater evil of destroying Europe, a poor party dictatorship’s conquest of a rich multiparty democracy would be a disaster.
One of the reasons we should up our conventional security relationship with Taiwan is that the rational alternative is a nuclear Taiwan. And while that may be more rational for Taipei than the current regime, nuclear pre-positioning is obviously dangerous.
-Dan tdaxp
TM Lutas:
July 16th, 2005 at 2:38 pm
I expect surprising things out of Taiwan during the next KMT government. They are no longer at war with the CCP. Since there is no war, why remain separate? Would the PRC do a grand deal for legalization of the KMT on the mainland in exchange for reunification? I think they might already have done it. All that is needed now is for the KMT to gain sufficient power in the ROC to hold up its end of the bargain.
mark:
July 16th, 2005 at 2:53 pm
TM,
That’s a very provocative possibility. I’m not sure if the CCP is going to surrender its dominant/monopoly position but they might negotiate some kind of ” coalition” arrangement with the KMT, which they prefer to native Taiwanese parties.
Dan tdaxp:
July 16th, 2005 at 3:21 pm
Brilliant point TM
Simon:
July 17th, 2005 at 5:23 am
The CCP aren’t going to legitimise the KMT on the mainland. The potential deal, if (it’s not necessarily a when) the KMT regain power in Taiwan, would be a fig-leaf overarching sovereignty with two arms, the PRC and RoC. It would involve compromise on both sides but would mostly likely solidify the status quo. The question is whether the CCP could “sell” the idea to a Chinese public that have grown to expect nothing less than full control. It could become part of a massive re-organisation of the relations between all of China’s provinces and the central government, but Taiwan wouldn’t, even under the KMT, accept being “just another province”.
As for the post itself, Taiwan’s defense establishment base their theories on defending the island for two weeks until the Americans arrive. Is that enough? Would the Americans be able to arrive that quickly and in sufficient numbers? And under what scenarios? I agree America should clarify its stance, but it can’t and won’t because ambiguity is the name of its game.
Zhang Fei:
July 17th, 2005 at 9:25 am
Barnabus: Please explain how it is any different than China threatening war with the U.S. should we use force to prevent Hawaii from seceding.
Wrong analogy. We are in physical control of Hawaii. China’s threats against the US over Taiwan are like – during the Cold War – the East Germans threatening war against the US if Uncle Sam acted to stop an East German invasion of West Germany. Or, equivalently, North Korea threatening war against the US if Uncle Sam acts to stop a North Korean invasion of South Korea.
Dan tdaxp:
July 17th, 2005 at 1:36 pm
China has a native rule-set to deal with “captured parties.” Frightfully, the KMT has a native rule-set to deal with being “captured.”
A pro-Mao faction of the nationalists, the China Revolutionary Committee of the KMT, still exists on the mainland.
Does the CRCKMT have political power as we understand it? No, and that’s not the point.
Like modern bribery in China, side payments serve to appease losers by paying them off in cash and patronage. For decades this is how the KMT ran Taiwan – as a corrupt capitalist state.
The Chinese Communist Party and the KMT may be prepared to work out a very similar deal, with the CCP diverting money and patronage to the KMT in exchange for the KMT diverting political support to the CCP.
Heck, the CCP could even “return” the CRCKMT to the KMT, like Beijing might “return” the Chinese Patriotic Catholic Association to the Vatican.
The terms on a Beijing-Vatican raproachment would be allowing the Church to operate inside China in exchange for Beijing approving Rome’s bishops. The KMT-CCP deal could be made the same way: KMT is allowed to operate as a political party in China, as long as Beijing appoves its political leadership.
Would this be a happy ending or a sad ending?
-Dan tdaxp
mark:
July 17th, 2005 at 2:55 pm
Simon wrote:
“As for the post itself, Taiwan’s defense establishment base their theories on defending the island for two weeks until the Americans arrive. Is that enough?”
Quite frankly, no.
The point is not to repel a Chinese amphibious invasion, which I think Taiwan can do because amphibious invasions are exceedingly difficult to pull off under the best of circumstances. China does not have this kind of logistical capability yet anyway so much as the capacity to ravage Taiwanese cities by air.
The point is to prevent a Chinese attack from occurring in the first place , one that would undoubtedly devastate Taiwan’s infrastructure and severely disrupt the global economy.
Even a short non-nuclear war, which China would certainly lose if PACOM intervened to assist Taiwan, would be a disaster for all concerned. The geoeconmic ripple effect alone could tip the global economy into a recession. Sino-American relations would be set back a half-century, Japan would almost certainly embark upon a major arms build-up in response and China would become, in the short-term, a pariah state.
( though I think losing a Sino-Taiwanese War would bring down the CCP in short order the way the Falklands War ruined Argentina’s junta or the Russo-Japanese War sparked the Revolution of 1905)
Simon, I like your CCP-KMT analysis. Very sound.
Dan tdaxp:
July 17th, 2005 at 3:33 pm
though I think losing a Sino-Taiwanese War would bring down the CCP in short order the way the Falklands War ruined Argentina’s junta or the Russo-Japanese War sparked the Revolution of 1905
Mark, what is your view on the possibility of China fracturing into its linguistic/cultural component parts if China “loses” Taiwan, like the fall of the Soviet Union after the loss of Eastern Europe?
-Dan tdaxp
mark:
July 17th, 2005 at 5:18 pm
Hi Dan,
Historically, China does not fragment on linguistic lines but on economic ones.
Jonathan Spence ( if I’m recalling correctly)detailed what he called ” macroregions” in his The Search for Modern China that acted as the nodes for centrifugal forces against the Chinese state. Some of these overlapped with dialectical-cultural centers ” Sichuan” and others had a more purely economic rationale.
Linguistic-dialectical differences are common in nations with a long North-South axis – Italy, old Yugoslavia have changes sometimes every ten miles of latitude which is destabilizing to a degree. What you do not get is agitation for separatism unless the speakers are fairly well compact ( Basques) or have additional cultural/sectarian/ethnic differences in play( Tamils, Shan,Kosovar Albanians, Southern Sudanese etc.).
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