Before Saturday's presidential election, the US dispatched two aircraft carriers to the Taiwan Strait area. The USS Nimitz came with its entire carrier battle group, including submarines, while the other aircraft carrier, the USS Kitty Hawk, brought a guided missile destroyer.
A few days earlier, Nobushige Takamizawa, head of the Bureau of Defense Policy at the Japanese Ministry of Defense, stated that it would affect Japan's national security if something were to happen in the Taiwan Strait, which Japan sees as lying in its "surrounding area."
It was clear that the US and Japan were very concerned that the election could cause unrest in Taiwan, and also that Beijing might use such unrest to its own advantage.
It is unknown whether these actions by the US and Japan were in reaction to concrete intelligence, but there is no doubt that the US flexing its military power can deter China. The US and Japan have demonstrated once again that the Taiwan Strait is an important area for them and that they both benefit from stability in the area.
Within Taiwan, this may have been overlooked in the excitement that came with the election, but the moves by the US and Japan may have had quite an impact in China.
Although both the US and Japan thought that neither of the two referendums on applying for UN membership would pass in Saturday's elections, they were still worried that the referendums could be a source of tension in the Strait. Japan and the US had to tread carefully, as China could have interpreted the referendums as a "major incident entailing Taiwan's secession from China" according to Article 8 of its "Anti-Secession" Law, which could prompt Beijing to resort to "non-peaceful means" in dealing with Taiwan.
Some people think that the US military's posturing in the Strait will be a counterweight that will force the People's Liberation Army (PLA) to focus less on protesters in Tibet, but at the moment China is well capable of fighting "1.5" wars on two different fronts.
If it started a large-scale war against Taiwan, it could still keep up a war on a smaller scale in Xinjiang or Tibet. The PLA's 13th and 14th armies have received special training and are capable of handling the eruptive situations in Tibet and elsewhere. The PLA has even established rapid reaction forces within these two armies.
If China wants to use military means to suppress Tibet, it doesn't need to use its forces stationed along the east and south coast to do so. Similarly, Taiwan should not hope that unrest in other areas of China would in any way diminish the danger in the Taiwan Strait.
It is highly significant that, just as during the 1996 presidential election, the US dispatched two aircraft carriers to the vicinity of Taiwan. This shows the strategic importance of the Strait to the US and Japan, perhaps even more clearly than the February 2005 meeting of their joint Security Consultancy Committee. But Taiwan will still have to take care of itself and it cannot use this as a reason to lower its guard.
Cheng Ta-chen is an independent defense analyst.
Translated by Anna Stiggelbout
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