The Institute for National Defense and Security Research on Thursday issued a report on the threat to Taiwan posed by China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA), which concluded that Beijing’s strategy is to extend superior military force to the second island chain, with an eye on becoming the dominant military power in the region.
The first island chain refers to a line of major archipelagos extending from the Aleutians in the northeast to the Philippines and Borneo in the south, and includes the Japanese archipelago, the Ryukyu Islands and Taiwan. The second island chain lies to the east of this line, further out into the western Pacific.
The island chain strategy was developed by the US after the Korean War as a way to contain the spread of communism, first of the then-Soviet Union and then of China.
Taiwan is in the middle of the first island chain, a geographical position that proves a double-edged sword for its national security.
The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) leans on rhetoric of “reuniting” the Chinese nation by bringing its “Taiwanese compatriots” back into the fold, to cap its previous “century of humiliation” and to achieve the “Chinese dream.”
However, the core reason behind the party’s preoccupation with unification likely has more to do with the strategic advantage controlling Taiwan would have as part of its maritime strategy. This puts Taiwan in considerable jeopardy.
The US might speak of its legal — the Three Joint Communiques, the Taiwan Relations Act and former US president Ronald Reagan’s “six assurances” — and moral commitments to protecting Taiwan from the CCP’s threats of forced unification. However, it is again the military strategic objective of maintaining the integrity of the first island chain that most likely informs the core US interest in keeping Taiwan beyond China’s control.
In the years since the development of the island chain strategy, China has managed to reinvent the first island chain from a containment strategy benefiting its rivals to a buffer zone in which it could prevent any activity it disapproves of, and from which it can project its power to the second island chain and beyond.
This process has long been in development. Liu Huaqing (劉華清), commander of the PLA Navy from 1982 to 1988, outlined a three-step process in which China would between 2000 and 2010 develop a navy that could operate in the area within the first island chain, become a regional force able to project power to the second island chain by 2020 and develop a blue-water navy by 2040.
Speaking at the US’ Hudson Institute in July, institute senior fellow Arthur Herman said that there is absolutely no possibility of a first island chain strategy working the way China wants, unless it takes Taiwan.
Seth Cropsey, director of the institute’s Center for American Seapower, said at the same event that Taiwan’s central position within the chain would give it the ability to threaten Japan and the Philippines.
Protecting the first island chain, then, is not only of paramount importance for the US and its allies to be able to contain China’s military expansionism, but is also crucial for the US to signal its commitment to protecting its regional allies and being a reliable partner in the region.
If the US wants to maintain its dominance in the Asia-Pacific region, maintenance of the integrity of the first island chain is crucial, and the protection of Taiwan will play a central part in this.
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