Bernard Cole, a professor at the National War College, said that China’s decision to send warships to the Arabian Sea to help with the fight against Somali pirates indicated a degree of confidence on Beijing’s part “about the Taiwan situation, a perhaps increasing confidence that de jure Taiwan independence is no longer in the offing, and that the PLA [People’s Liberation Army] may safely be dedicated to situations fitting China’s increasing role as a global power.”
“This in turn may indicate Beijing’s reordering or at least loosening of strategic priorities … If the PLA no longer has to devote its attention and resources almost solely to a Taiwan scenario, then it has forces available for Beijing to employ in military operations other than war. This possibility may be supported by China’s 2008 Defense White Paper, in which Taiwan was mentioned only once,” Cole said.
Retired Rear Admiral Eric McVadon pointed out the “seeming contradiction” of simultaneously engaging with a modernizing China and hedging against an emerging China “obsessed with Taiwan.”
“What is new is an influential China that now increasingly must be taken seriously militarily — as is dramatically illustrated by the existing submarine-launched cruise-missile threat to US Navy forces and the impending ballistic missile designed to hit ships at sea,” McVadon said.
“Even with the Taiwan issue unresolved, cooperation while hedging makes sense ... Maritime engagement with China would give the US Pacific Command and Pacific Fleet an added link for operational cooperation in the region and a means in this sensitive arena to maintain personal contacts and close communications both routinely and during a crisis,” he said.
“It would reinforce the idea of cooperation despite continuing differences across the Strait. Put another way, the Taiwan issue is not the whole story. The macro-view of US-China relations encompasses many areas of strategic alignment and cooperative efforts on profoundly important international security issues where expanded Chinese influence is not feared but welcomed,” he said.
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