Now matter how one looks at it, diplomacy -- the course Taipei has chosen to adopt, despite the arduousness and slowness of it -- is the most reasonable option to advance state interests. Sad to say, however, regardless of whether one is in favor of militarization of the Taiwan Strait or against it, Taiwan must, in the face of potential aggression by China, stand on guard.
But as it builds its defenses, the country must juggle defensive and countervailing measures. In other words, it is one thing to reinforce command-and-control nodes and have alternative airstrips and missile defense systems, but in order to be truly effective, the state must also possess a deterrent force, one that compels the enemy (assuming its decisionmakers are acting rationally) to calculate the costs and benefits of launching an attack.
However pessimistic this may sound, people who argue that Taiwan should only purchase and develop defensive weapons have, at best, a tenuous grasp of how military decisions are made.
Hence, the sporadic rumors that Taiwan is developing missiles capable of reaching major Chinese cities or, more recently, the ado over the possibility that Taiwan would deploy surface-to-surface missiles on Kinmen and Matsu.
Whether such a deployment will become reality or not (and the maintenance of a little secrecy on the matter wouldn't necessarily hurt), the very existence of a possibility is enough to play into Beijing's calculations should the moment come when it feels compelled to launch an attack against Taiwan.
But Taipei's juggling act involves a third ball, one that it must keep airborne with great caution. A state's ultimate defense lies not in the quantifiable -- eg, the number of aircraft, subs and missile defense systems it owns -- but rather in its capacity to avert armed conflict in the first place. So, putting diplomacy aside and focusing on the purely military, Taiwan's military build-up must be accompanied by the necessary mechanisms mitigating the risk that war will come not out of will, but through error.
As we have seen, defenses alone are insufficient, and a state facing a threat of invasion must also have a deterrent. However, as countervailing forces imply offensive weapons, the risk that human or technical error will result in an accidental launch and spark a conflict increases exponentially as the arsenal grows. The greater the number of weapons, the higher the complexity.
We can all be grateful that Taiwan isn't a warlike country and that in the Strait, only one half of the equation has adopted an aggressive stance. The risk to us all would be all the greater if both were rattling their sabers, or much more threatening if Taipei had chosen to go down the nuclear path.
In the end, it all boils down to keeping everything in balance: Building forces while managing to avoid an arms race that, by virtue of its disproportionate opponent, Taiwan cannot hope to win. It means reducing the risks of error by establishing better communication and greater transparency with the opponent without, on the other hand, revealing one's every position.
All that being said, the value of deploying missiles on Kinmen and Matsu, among other options, is open to debate, as is the veil of mystery that surrounds that possibility. But no matter what it does, every offensive capability Taiwan acquires comes with a responsibility to ensure that it doesn't create more danger than it prevents.
A little secrecy can't hurt, but too much of it and we're all left in the dark, bound to react in alarm at every whisper.
Congressman Mike Gallagher (R-WI) and Congressman Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-IL) led a bipartisan delegation to Taiwan in late February. During their various meetings with Taiwan’s leaders, this delegation never missed an opportunity to emphasize the strength of their cross-party consensus on issues relating to Taiwan and China. Gallagher and Krishnamoorthi are leaders of the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party. Their instruction upon taking the reins of the committee was to preserve China issues as a last bastion of bipartisanship in an otherwise deeply divided Washington. They have largely upheld their pledge. But in doing so, they have performed the
It is well known that Chinese President Xi Jinping’s (習近平) ambition is to rejuvenate the Chinese nation by unification of Taiwan, either peacefully or by force. The peaceful option has virtually gone out of the window with the last presidential elections in Taiwan. Taiwanese, especially the youth, are resolved not to be part of China. With time, this resolve has grown politically stronger. It leaves China with reunification by force as the default option. Everyone tells me how and when mighty China would invade and overpower tiny Taiwan. However, I have rarely been told that Taiwan could be defended to
It should have been Maestro’s night. It is hard to envision a film more Oscar-friendly than Bradley Cooper’s exploration of the life and loves of famed conductor and composer Leonard Bernstein. It was a prestige biopic, a longtime route to acting trophies and more (see Darkest Hour, Lincoln, and Milk). The film was a music biopic, a subgenre with an even richer history of award-winning films such as Ray, Walk the Line and Bohemian Rhapsody. What is more, it was the passion project of cowriter, producer, director and actor Bradley Cooper. That is the kind of multitasking -for-his-art overachievement that Oscar
Chinese villages are being built in the disputed zone between Bhutan and China. Last month, Chinese settlers, holding photographs of Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平), moved into their new homes on land that was not Xi’s to give. These residents are part of the Chinese government’s resettlement program, relocating Tibetan families into the territory China claims. China shares land borders with 15 countries and sea borders with eight, and is involved in many disputes. Land disputes include the ones with Bhutan (Doklam plateau), India (Arunachal Pradesh, Aksai Chin) and Nepal (near Dolakha and Solukhumbu districts). Maritime disputes in the South China