On Jan. 24 at George Washington University, Scott Bates, president of the Center for National Policy, elaborated on his provocative “Taiwan 21” plan, in which he outlined his ideas to enhance Taiwan’s security and its regional standing within East Asia. While his proposals are well intentioned, they fail to take into account the realities on the ground in Taiwan, both militarily and politically.
Bates said that Taiwan should make a “solemn pledge that in the event of hostilities, the Republic of China will never conduct any military action on the shores of China.” This declaration would give Taiwan “the moral high ground” and cause China to “lose face” in such a conflict, causing China to become too “humiliated and embarrassed” to continue such an attack on Taiwan.
Beijing has shown that it places little value in international perception when it comes to “internal affairs.” The Tiananmen Square Massacre of 1989, as well as continued military and police crackdowns in Xinjiang and Tibet, shows that the notion of Taiwan taking a moral high ground in a military conflict with China would have little or no value in the international arena, save for token condemnations and expressions of anger from nations that have repeatedly shown to be guided in their actions by an economic compass rather than a humanitarian one.
In strategic terms, the notion of Taiwan publicly renouncing any military means of retaliation from a Chinese initiated attack on it is beyond comprehension.
Although Taiwan’s ability to launch a counter-offensive in the scenario listed above could be limited in scope and effectiveness due to initial damage from military action, it is a possibility the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) would have to weigh heavily before taking any military action against Taiwan.
To lose military personnel and hardware over the Taiwan Strait is one thing; to have ports, fuel and missile depots and military installations damaged or destroyed in China is another, and could have a devastating impact on the psyche of both the PLA and the civilian population. Such a valuable tool should not be abandoned by Taiwan for the sake of potential goodwill among the international community.
Bates also suggested that the Taiwanese army be modified and recast as a “self-defense force.” This new force could then, according to Bates, become a premier disaster response team in Asia, providing states in need with airlift capacity and logistical support. While this idea is noble in theory, it is not grounded in reality.
The reason? The same international community that Bates feels Taiwan should garner goodwill with to solidify its future will undoubtedly be under pressure from Beijing to refuse such aid from Taiwan.
China’s successful lobbying in 2004 excluded Taiwan from the international tsunami donors coordination conference and similar pressure from Beijing could force states to refuse humanitarian assistance from Taiwan, so even the most advanced, well-trained disaster response force in Asia could find itself remaining in Taiwan, helpless to carry out its primary mission of disaster relief in the region.
Bates places unrealistic expectations on what the reactions of the international community would be if a benign Taiwan were attacked by the People’s Republic of China. If history is any indicator, states around the globe would protest, but China, seeing Taiwan as the last territorial remnant of Western imperialism that has not been reclaimed by the motherland, would pay little attention.
No amount of well-intentioned pledges from Taipei would stop Beijing in the case of conflict if it sensed an opportunity to close its last geographic wound from 1949 that has not yet healed.
Brian Benedictus is a research fellow at the Formosa Foundation.
We are used to hearing that whenever something happens, it means Taiwan is about to fall to China. Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) cannot change the color of his socks without China experts claiming it means an invasion is imminent. So, it is no surprise that what happened in Venezuela over the weekend triggered the knee-jerk reaction of saying that Taiwan is next. That is not an opinion on whether US President Donald Trump was right to remove Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro the way he did or if it is good for Venezuela and the world. There are other, more qualified
China’s recent aggressive military posture around Taiwan simply reflects the truth that China is a millennium behind, as Kobe City Councilor Norihiro Uehata has commented. While democratic countries work for peace, prosperity and progress, authoritarian countries such as Russia and China only care about territorial expansion, superpower status and world dominance, while their people suffer. Two millennia ago, the ancient Chinese philosopher Mencius (孟子) would have advised Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) that “people are the most important, state is lesser, and the ruler is the least important.” In fact, the reverse order is causing the great depression in China right now,
This should be the year in which the democracies, especially those in East Asia, lose their fear of the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) “one China principle” plus its nuclear “Cognitive Warfare” coercion strategies, all designed to achieve hegemony without fighting. For 2025, stoking regional and global fear was a major goal for the CCP and its People’s Liberation Army (PLA), following on Mao Zedong’s (毛澤東) Little Red Book admonition, “We must be ruthless to our enemies; we must overpower and annihilate them.” But on Dec. 17, 2025, the Trump Administration demonstrated direct defiance of CCP terror with its record US$11.1 billion arms
The immediate response in Taiwan to the extraction of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro by the US over the weekend was to say that it was an example of violence by a major power against a smaller nation and that, as such, it gave Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) carte blanche to invade Taiwan. That assessment is vastly oversimplistic and, on more sober reflection, likely incorrect. Generally speaking, there are three basic interpretations from commentators in Taiwan. The first is that the US is no longer interested in what is happening beyond its own backyard, and no longer preoccupied with regions in other
RSS