The US must think carefully about its commitments to Taiwan, an Australian academic wrote in this week’s edition of the US magazine National Interest.
When the US passed the Taiwan Relations Act (TRA) in 1979, China’s GDP was 5 percent the size of the US’, its place in the global economy was miniscule, its navy and air force were negligible and its prospects for progress depended completely on Washington’s goodwill, wrote Hugh White, a professor of strategic studies at the Australian National University in Canberra.
However, China’s economy is now so big and so central to global trade and capital flows that the consequences of any disruption would be just as serious for the US as for China, White said.
“Militarily, America can no longer expect a swift and certain victory in a war [with China] over Taiwan,” he said. “China’s anti-access/area-denial capabilities would preclude direct US intervention unless those capabilities had first been degraded by a sustained and wide-ranging strike campaign against Chinese bases and forces.”
“China would very likely respond to such a campaign with attacks on US and allied bases throughout Asia. The US has no evident means to cap the resulting escalation spiral, and no one could be sure it would stop below the nuclear threshold. The possibility of nuclear attacks on US cities would have to be considered,” he added.
White questions whether Taiwan’s “status quo” is worth a global economic collapse or the real risk of a nuclear war, saying that these are questions that US leaders would have to confront in considering military action to defend Taiwan.
“Their answer would very likely be that ‘the status quo’ of Taiwan is not worth risking nuclear war or economic collapse over,” he wrote.
He also doubts that any US allies in Asia would provide much meaningful aid in a military conflict with China.
“So no one should lightly assert that America or its allies would help defend Taiwan from China,” White wrote, adding: “Suffice to say here that the question is not answered simply by using the word ‘appeasement’ to invoke memory of Munich.”
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