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Of all the many wild cards in the wartime deck — whether Saddam has weapons of mass destruction and how he'll use them, what role Israel will play, how Turkey, the Gulf states, and Europe will react — China is the wildest, and probably the most dangerous.
China views itself not as America's strategic partner, but as America's strategic competitor. In Asia and around the world, China is vying to replace the old Soviet Union as the next challenger to what it sees as America's ambitions toward hegemony. To this end, China's People's Liberation Army (probably the most misnamed military in the world — it neither belongs to the people nor liberates them) issued an annual white paper predicting war with the United States within ten years. An American war with Iraq might just offer China the opportunity to test our resolve as well as our ability to deal with multiple threats simultaneously. It might even offer China the chance to invade Taiwan. Since 9/11, China has made a public show of supporting the war on terror. As it turns out, this support has mostly been a gambit to justify cracking down on dissident groups at home. Late in 2001 China declared the religious sect Falun Gong a "terrorist group." If the horror stories can be believed, since then China has been ruthless in seeing to the group's extermination:
The same may well happen to Christians and others not worshipping in China's government-sanctioned churches. It's similar to the old Soviet canard of dubbing dissidents "insane," and it will be similarly effective — if the Chinese government comes and pulls a citizen out of bed and calls him a terrorist, he'll never be seen or heard from again. Whether he is in fact a terrorist is irrelevant, because he'll become a nonperson. But calling local sects terrorists isn't what has the Pentagon's war planners staying close to the Maalox. That is a terrible human-rights abuse, but not of strategic interest for the moment. What is of profound strategic interest is an old score China wants to settle with Taiwan, one that dates back to the Communist revolution, and the next year or two may be the time to settle it. Taiwan and China are separated by 100 miles of water and 50 years of history. It was to Taiwan that the nationalist Chang kai-Shek and his supporters retreated after losing the Communist revolution to the forces of Mao tse-Tung. Though Chang and Mao and their generation are gone, the animosity between the two Chinas has only grown with the passage of time. Lately, it's been getting even worse: Taiwan seems destined for a vote on full independence, and its president, Chen Shui-bian, had this to say about the so-called "One China:"
In ordinary times, such a statement would be incendiary. These are no ordinary times: Mainland China has begun to growl again that it could attack Taiwan if it declares independence. Adding spice to the mix is America's ambiguous relations with both entities. While officially recognizing the mainland as the "One China," we are sworn to defend Taiwan should China attack. We also sell Taiwan its most advanced military hardware, and trade heavily with both Chinas. Additionally, this past spring the Bush administration leaked what it will do should China invade Taiwan: Our response will be swift and devastating, and likely nuclear. The Bush team was clearly thinking, even then, that China could seize the moment if favorable circumstances appeared, and sought to warn them off. What would such circumstances look like? A somewhat likely scenario involves an American military that's simply overstretched. Currently, the U.S. military is heavily engaged in Afghanistan and moderately to lightly engaged in a handful of other conflicts: Hunting terrorists in the Philippines and Georgia, and still taking part in peacekeeping missions in Europe. Should the Iraqi war turn sour — if, for instance, Saddam pulls his most loyal troops into Iraq's cities to force a drawn-out, street-to-street fight, the U.S. might be forced to pour additional troops into the battle. For China, our difficulty would be a golden opportunity to take on Taiwan, provided it could be sure the Bush administration's nuclear threat was a bluff. China can't be sure of that right now, but given the potential world reaction to an American nuclear attack on China's invading forces, especially as America may be engaged in a highly unpopular war in Iraq, she might just take the chance. What will China do? — Bryan Preston is a writer and television producer. He is also the author of Junkyardblog. |
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war with Iraq nears, a slightly modified version of the popular phrase
"What would Jesus do?" is undoubtedly on the minds of Bush-administration
officials and Pentagon strategists: What will China do?
