China could contemplate seizing the island to demonstrate American decline. But world reaction to such a breach of the peace would likely be great.
One can more or less take it as read that the United States does not want to go to war with China over Taiwan, even if China’s 70-year-old belligerence about reuniting with its rebel province by force comes to actual hostilities. Likewise with Australia, which has recently declared that it was prepared to fight alongside Americans and Taiwanese against any takeover. Much as Australia has counselled China against forcible reunion over the years, we have never previously indicated that an invasion would be an act of war.
Indeed, until recently, even the United States has been deliberately ambiguous about what it would do if China turned up the heat on the issue — whether by shooting down Taiwanese aircraft, sending missiles towards population centres, or even in setting out for an amphibious landing. In recent times, President Joe Biden has seemed to suggest that America might fight alongside the Taiwanese.
But every time he has used loose words with this implication, the US Administration has “clarified” his remarks to say that the US position on involvement has not changed. That means the US will supply arms and equipment to a Taiwanese resistance, almost certainly promote a strong world reaction to it, and probably, with or without UN support, promote sanctions, boycotts and attempts to punish China’s trade. Getting into any military engagement with the Chinese, or bringing its navy in so close as to expose it to Chinese missiles, would run enormous risks, including of a wider shooting war the results of which one could not predict.
Taiwan, after all, is right alongside China. American has bases, or potential bases, in Guam, Japan, the Philippines, or even Australia, that could support an American military engagement in the South China Sea, but the logistics of supplying Taiwan or any international force in any sort of armed conflict would be a nightmare.
Moreover, the US (like Australia) has always acknowledged a one-China policy. It, like Australia, and Japan and other countries is appalled at the possibility of conflict, can and has fashioned fresh words about a gallant little autonomous province bravely resisting forcible incorporation — perhaps even being worthy of being granted independence. There would be nothing new if the import of such words was a strong plea — perhaps a warning — to China to play nice, but something altogether different were it to suggest that not doing so represented a breach of international law, or the invasion of another country.
Could conflict be confined to a limited war?
But then there are bigger problems. Supposing China, in the opinion of the US, or perhaps Australian Defence Minister Peter Dutton, went too far? How far does the reaction go, and, if Western allies or neighbours attempt some sort of limited military response, how can they confine it? China is, after all, a nuclear superpower, capable of regarding a challenge to its sovereign borders from another superpower, or group of them, as the casus belli of a major conflict. Fairly soon it might be beyond the power of either party, or both of them, to restrict its scope.
How, in any event, would a US-led coalition define its war-aims? Would they be restricted to evicting China from the Taiwanese islands? Or would it go further —perhaps to liberate Hong Kong from the new Chinese yoke, or at least to force a chastened China to agree to be nice to everyone, even its own citizens in future?
China itself faces similar dilemmas. It reckons, reasonably enough, that the power and the will of the US and its allies to resist a reincorporation of Taiwan is in decline. It can hardly have failed to note that its crackdown on Hong Kong was met by little more than hand-wringing, in spite of strong warnings from US spokesmen.
It sees its own power, particularly in its immediate neighbourhood, as increasing; it is almost certainly now able to launch and supply an invasion, and to prevail quickly against mere Taiwanese resistance. It probably was not 10 years ago, primarily because the US has long been generous in supplying defensive equipment and the country is heavily militarised.
China could contemplate moving on Taiwan as a way of demonstrating American impotence, or the declining American will to get involved in foreign conflicts, or the general emptiness of a good many pledges that the US has made in recent years to countries in Eastern Europe and the Middle East. It might bring to a head the long developing struggle for hegemony in the region, inviting the US, in effect, to consider when the cost of resisting Taiwanese incorporation would be far greater than any benefits to be achieved if — and that would have to be a big if — its military intervention were to succeed.
China, on the other hand, must contemplate whether bringing on the conflict will be worth the enormous world reaction that such a breach of the peace would involve. That reaction might be too great even if the US and its allies did not become militarily engaged. An American-led boycott and sanctions agreed with the European community and other industrial countries could severely affect China’s growth, not least as it wrestles with its economic problems.
It could inflame some of its internal conflicts, not least over the human rights of Uyghurs, Tibetans and Muslims. It could stir strong neighbours — Japan, South Korea, Vietnam, ASEAN nations, Australia and India — to take stronger action against potential Chinese aggression. It could even threaten one of China’s long-term foreign policy aims — largely achieved — of the security of trade transit through the South China Sea.
But before China moves — if it is to move — it must have a clear idea of the likely military reaction from the US and its allies. That’s one reason why, until now, America has been deliberately vague about what it would do in response to an attack, about what it would consider to be an attack triggering an American response were it to have decided on one.
What Australians should be asking themselves is whether the peace, or the ambiguity is being served by the aggressive commentary from Dutton — seeming both to be barracking for a war, as well as going further than Australia has ever gone in making it clear that we would scarcely hesitate to stand alongside the Taiwanese resistance.
I will discuss this at greater length tomorrow.
John Waterford AM, better known as Jack Waterford, is an Australian journalist and commentator.
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