After Japanese officials finish practicing their foreign policy irony, hopefully they will settle on a serious and sustained national security approach to the growing China threat.
Leading up to and during Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga’s visit to Washington, the administration of US President Joe Biden pressed for a more forthcoming statement on the regional dangers presented by China’s aggressive behavior.
The US effort failed to eke out more than a tepid expression of hope for “peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait.” Mild as that aspirational expression was, it was touted by the administration and the global news media as some kind of diplomatic breakthrough because it last appeared in a joint statement in 1969.
Beijing was quick to take offense at even that innocuous phrase, calling it Japanese interference in China’s “internal” affairs, while simultaneously making the opposite point that Washington had failed to gain Tokyo’s explicit pledge of anti-China “collusion” on Taiwan.
The Tokyo government ensured that no one would construe the statement as a Japanese commitment to help US militarily in defending Taiwan — like Washington’s inclusion of the Senkaku Islands (Diaoyutai Islands, 釣魚台) in the US-Japan Mutual Defense Treaty. Suga quickly made a post-summit “clarification” that it “does not presuppose military involvement at all.”
Suga’s reticent performance seemed ungracious and shortsighted, considering four matters: the long history of Japan-Taiwan relations during and after 50 years of Imperial Japanese occupation of Taiwan; the shared values between the two emergent democracies; Taiwan’s leading role in the humanitarian assistance effort after the Fukushima nuclear disaster; and Taiwan’s critical geostrategic location for the security of Japan.
However, even former Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe, Suga’s more hawkish predecessor, felt the need to observe a delicate balance between friendship with Taiwan and maintaining workable relations with China.
In the past weeks, however, a more assertive voice from the Japanese government was heard. Japanese Deputy Prime Minister Taro Aso made refreshingly direct remarks about the existential connection between Taiwan’s security and Japan’s: “If a major incident happened [over Taiwan], it’s safe to say it would be related to a situation threatening the survival [of Japan]. If that is the case, Japan and the US must defend Taiwan together. … We need to think hard that Okinawa could be next.”
What is remarkable about Aso’s public declaration is that it was so late in coming. Tokyo hardly could be unaware of the intimate security nexus between Japan and Taiwan given that the Imperial Japanese regime used Formosa to launch its attack on the Philippines on Dec. 7, 1941. Beijing has made clear that it would use Taiwan’s geostrategic location as a fulcrum for expansion into both Southeast and Northeast Asia.
It is also obvious that the nation seeking to reincarnate the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere today is not peaceful, democratic Japan, but expansionist communist China — even as it deflects attention from its aggression by constantly bringing up memories of the earlier historic period.
The starkly contrasting views of Suga and Aso regarding the Taiwan issue reflect Japan’s conflicting anxieties over its security relations with the US: the fear of either being “dragged into” a China-US conflict over Taiwan or the South China Sea, or being abandoned by Washington when Japan’s direct security is at stake.
The irony now is that while Suga worries the US would entangle Japan in a Taiwan conflict, his deputy is concerned that Washington will abandon Taiwan, whose security is intimately linked to Japan’s.
Aso’s anxieties hardly have been alleviated by the comments of US Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman General Mark Milley and US National Security Council Coordinator for the Indo-Pacific Kurt Campbell, who is China policy coordinator for US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan.
Milley focused on China’s capabilities, telling the US Congress: “[I]n order to seize an island that big, with that many people and the defensive capabilities the Taiwanese have, would be extraordinarily complicated and costly. At this point in time — next 12 to 24 months — I’m not seeing any indicator warnings.”
He made no mention of the myriad lesser military actions against Taiwan the Chinese People’s Liberation Army is well prepared to carry out. US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, also present at the hearing, affirmed Milley’s statements.
Campbell commented on the question of Chinese and US intentions. First, he rejected any need to do away with the US’ public ambiguity on defending Taiwan. “I believe that there are some significant downsides to the kind of what is called strategic clarity,” he told a discussion hosted by the Financial Times.
Days later, Campbell dredged up a warning to Taiwan favored by the administration of former US president Bill Clinton, saying: “The United States does not favor independence for Taiwan.”
China’s Taiwan Affairs Office spokeswoman Zhu Fenglian (朱鳳蓮) welcomed Campbell’s remarks, but urged Washington to go further and explicitly “oppose ‘Taiwan independence.’”
In a discussion hosted by the Asia Society, Campbell was asked to comment on the diplomatic and public relations impact on China if it attacked Taiwan. He said they would be “catastrophic.”
It is not clear whether Campbell’s sudden lurch to a discredited China policy was a deliberate administration decision to quell the mounting perception that the combined policies of Biden and former US president Donald Trump represent a permanent shift in US policy, or whether it was a reflexive return by Campbell to his own personal predilections on China and Taiwan.
At a Center for Strategic and International Studies conference in 2016, Campbell was asked about Korean unification. He endorsed it, equating it with “one China”: “I have to say that the greatest foreign policy success of the last 60 years in Asia is the general acceptance of the notion that there is one China, and the fact that that is such an undergirding policy part of everything that we do with Beijing. I think that is something that South Korean friends should continue to pick up. It’s my view.”
Campbell’s skittishness about doing or saying anything about Taiwan that could offend “our Chinese friends” — a phrase he used when he served in the administration of former US president Barack Obama administration — might reflect the trauma he says he felt during the 1995-1996 Taiwan Strait missile crisis. He described it to a Washington audience as “our own Cuban missile crisis. We had stared into the abyss.”
Those who have worked with Campbell and believe they know his personal views describe him as a “friend” of Taiwan, yet Beijing can be expected to pocket what is on the public record.
Washington’s coyness about defending Taiwan and the recent remarks by Milley and Campbell encourage China to continue preparing for a military showdown that it expects the Biden administration to avoid or sidestep — and they explain Beijing’s expectation that its relentless pressure on Taipei, Washington and Tokyo ultimately will succeed.
Joseph Bosco served as China country director in the office of the US secretary of defense, and is a fellow of the Institute for Taiwan-American Studies and a member of the Global Taiwan Institute’s advisory committee.
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