On Wednesday last week, the Voice of America’s Cantonese service broadcast a commentary titled “Neither renouncing the use of force against Taiwan, nor firing the first shot — what is China trying to do?”
A transcription of the broadcast was also published on the Cantonese Voice of America Web site.
The commentary was written in response to an editorial published on Aug. 17 in the Chinese-language edition of China’s Global Times under the heading “All sides involved in the Taiwan Strait should firmly adhere to the principle of not firing the first shot.”
The Global Times editorial highlighted the contradictory nature of China’s “muscle flexing” against its call for “not firing the first shot.”
None of the three main countries — Taiwan, the US and China — would want to fire the first shot, but does that mean that Taiwan would not turn into a battlefield? Unfortunately, it does not, because the first shot might be fired by Dubinin.
Who is this Dubinin, you might ask. He is a fictional character in a movie, the 2002 film The Sum of All Fears, distributed by Paramount Pictures and based on Tom Clancy’s novel of the same name.
In the movie, after the US city of Baltimore is hit by a nuclear bomb, Russian general Dubinin, falsely claiming that Moscow is under attack by intercontinental ballistic missiles, orders the first shot to be fired by sending warplanes to attack a US aircraft carrier, thus escalating the conflict between the US and Russia, in the hope of sparking a nuclear conflict between the two countries for his own nefarious purposes.
The plot of the movie begs the question of whether someone like Dubinin could appear in the context of the Taiwan Strait.
Various conflicts on a greater or lesser scale are likely to occur between Taiwan, the US and China in the foreseeable future, and when they do, they could give the likes of Dubinin the opportunity to act out their dastardly plans.
In such a scenario, a single missile or torpedo could cause the three countries to attack one another, sinking them into a sea of fire, while the Dubinins of the story watch from a safe distance.
Military exercises are an essential part of a country’s national defense, but would the leaders of any country wish to see a situation where someone like Dubinin gets the chance to provoke a military conflict with their rivals?
This, perhaps, is the most worrying thing about the current situation in East Asia, which is more unstable and uncertain now than it has been at any time this century.
Shih Ya-hsuan is an associate professor in National Kaohsiung Normal University’s Department of Geography.
Translated by Julian Clegg
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