Whether Ma can rally Taiwan’s defenses remains to be seen. With Taipei’s talk of peace accords and win-win situations, the popular tendency will be to assume the worst is past in the cross-strait standoff. If so, Ma may find it difficult to convince constituents to devote even 3 percent of GDP — the modest figure of which he has spoken — to defense. Indeed, news reports suggest the defense budget will decline this year — a stark contrast to China’s annual double-digit increases.
If Taiwan seems ambivalent, the US is distracted. Taiwan should expect little from the Bush administration in its final months, while neither the campaigns of senators Barack Obama nor John McCain have made cross-strait relations a major issue. Taiwan barely registers with US voters, and public support for defending Taiwan against China, a major US trading partner, is tepid at best.
With US military supremacy on the wane in Asia, moreover, the probable magnitude and duration of a conflict in China’s backyard will rise. Clausewitzian logic suggests Washington may hesitate in a time of crisis.
Some election-year advice from Clausewitz to Taiwan: Stand to your defenses.
James Holmes is an associate professor of strategy at the US Naval War College. The views voiced here are not necessarily those of the US Naval War College, the US Navy, or the US Department of Defense.
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