Giving China what it wants by isolating Taiwan makes war more likely, not less.
Giving China what it wants by isolating Taiwan makes war more likely, not less.
W riting for the New York Times, my American Enterprise Institute colleague Oriana Skylar Mastro argues that the United States must work to “restore” a “delicate balance of deterrence and reassurance” in order to avoid war with China over Taiwan. She is right to raise concerns about presiding trends in the Taiwan Strait. She correctly notes that “it was China that began rocking the boat first,” emphasizing Beijing’s turn to military coercion and “other pressure tactics” beginning in 2016. Mastro also points to a series of American actions — most notably President Biden’s repeated suggestions that he would use force to defend Taiwan — that leave Beijing concerned that Washington may be embarking on a fundamental shift away from its traditionally cautious approach to Taiwan policy.
Mastro neglects to fully consider, however, why China began rocking the boat in the first place. And because her policy prescription entails that Washington accept Beijing’s coercion of Taiwan while being complicit in Taiwan’s international isolation, it may ultimately make war more likely.
In her piece, Mastro suggests that China’s pressure campaign came as a response to the election in Taiwan of Tsai Ing-wen of the “independence-leaning” Democratic Progressive Party. Although Tsai’s election might fairly be considered a proximate cause of Xi Jinping’s lashing out, Mastro elides the larger context. Three decades of public-opinion polling have shown Taiwan’s people to be increasingly supportive of at least de facto independence and increasingly opposed to unification. Polling has likewise shown that Taiwan’s people increasingly identify as Taiwanese rather than Chinese or as “both Taiwanese and Chinese.”
Hence, the effort at détente by Tsai’s predecessor, Ma Ying-jeou, stoked a significant domestic backlash. It turns out that for many Taiwanese, distance from China did not make the heart grow fonder. And indeed, the opening act of Xi Jinping’s pressure campaign came not after Tsai’s election but during the latter Ma years, when he was forced to back away from his attempt to draw closer to Beijing.
By the time of Tsai’s election in 2016, it was becoming increasingly clear to China that peaceful, uncoerced unification was a pipe dream. Nothing China had done — neither carrot nor stick — had reversed the obvious and enduring fact of Taiwan’s separateness from the People’s Republic. For a country intent on unification, coercion and meddling were all that was left. That hasn’t changed.
Another key trend was evident in 2016 as well: the cross-Strait balance of military power was continuously shifting in China’s favor. At the turn of the century, a successful Chinese use of force to settle cross-Strait differences was virtually unthinkable, even absent American intervention. Now, China has advantages in air and naval power and may be just a few years from fielding a military capable of mounting a successful cross-Strait amphibious invasion — even with American intervention.
Together, these two trends — Taiwan’s ever deepening commitment to its de facto independence and China’s growing military advantages — make it increasingly likely that Beijing will ultimately opt for force. American reassurances, or American provocations, are a secondary consideration.
But even secondary considerations can be impactful, and Mastro’s suggested approach would be more likely to be inflammatory than not. “In the best-case scenario,” she writes, “the United States and China would reach a high-level agreement, a new communiqué, in which Washington reiterates its longstanding political neutrality and China commits to dialing back its military threats.”
But Mastro effectively posits something quite different from the traditional American approach she claims to commend. The United States has never maintained a position of true “political neutrality.” For example, the 1979 Taiwan Relations Act created the legal framework for the ongoing provision of arms to Taiwan. Sales of them continued even after the United States imposed an arms embargo on China after the Tiananmen Square massacre. That is not neutrality, properly understood.
In a since-declassified secret presidential directive in 1982, Ronald Reagan described the PRC threat as the sole premise for determining the quantity and quality of arms sold to Taiwan. In 2000, Bill Clinton stated that cross-Strait issues “must be resolved peacefully and with the assent of the people of Taiwan.”
In other words, Washington has long thrown its weight behind Taiwan, including with the provision of arms. “Political neutrality” would look quite different, essentially giving China a free hand. Mastro argues that Washington’s position should be to “ensure” that unification does not come about via “coercion,” but her stated position is to stand aside while Beijing poaches Taiwan’s allies, employs “pressure,” and works to “isolate Taiwan” — all coercive approaches.
Ultimately, Mastro neglects to consider what happens if, and arguably when, China fails to “convince the island’s people that it should strike a deal with Beijing.” Her suggested approach would leave Beijing emboldened, despite the U.S. and allied maintenance of “a robust military deterrence.” Mastro calls for President Biden to state that “ultimately, Taiwan’s fate is up to Taipei and Beijing” (emphasis added), for Washington to abandon attempts to “create international space for Taiwan,” and for members of Congress to eschew visiting Taiwan. The end result would be to leave Taipei isolated, with weakened ties to both Washington and other capitals, and facing a Beijing to which Washington would have openly, bafflingly granted a vote over Taiwan’s future.
Put simply, this is not a recipe for the peaceful resolution of disputes. Rather, it would greenlight coercion and make a violent outcome all the more likely. This is how the United States would get the war it has long hoped to avoid.