Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is in its second month. Pundits have debated the similarities and the differences between the incursion into Ukraine and a potential Chinese invasion of Taiwan.
Rational thinking has prevailed as NATO and the US do not want to inadvertently escalate the conflict into a third world war and most do not believe the Ukraine issue has risen to the level that threatens US national security interests.
If China apes Russia and invades Taiwan to return it “to the motherland,” it is conceivable that direct Western military aid would descend upon Taiwan. No longer will the US hide behind its outdated (and shameful) “strategic ambiguity” policy.
Unlike Ukraine, Taiwan is of great national security interest to the US and the rest of the nonauthoritarian and (mostly) democratic world. The long history of the US supplying Taiwan with defensive arms also indicates a robust US-Taiwan relationship that is lacking in the Ukrainian scenario.
The first island chain stretches from the Japanese archipelago to the Philippines. Like Pennsylvania, which served as the geographically central “keystone state” that held together the first 13 states, Taiwan is the main and central cog of the first island chain in East Asia. To control Taiwan is to anchor the defense of this chain and, subsequently, dictate the security operations of the western Pacific.
The US expanded its line of defense to the coast of continental Asia after its victory in the Pacific in World War II. In a then-top secret June 14, 1950, memo, US General Douglas MacArthur wrote: “The western strategic frontier of the United States rests ... on the littoral islands extending from the Aleutians through the Philippine archipelago. Geographically and strategically Formosa [Taiwan] is an integral part of this offshore position” and, in the event of hostilities, the essential capability of the US is dependent upon the retention of Taiwan by a friendly power.
A 2014 US Naval Institute article by US Naval War College professor James Holmes echoed MacArthur’s sentiments when it reaffirmed that the first island chain is the most effective point to counter a potential Chinese invasion of the western Pacific and beyond.
Would the US risk losing Taiwan to China so the Chinese People’s Liberation Army Navy could use the island to sail unimpeded to Honolulu and onto the coast of California? Would Asian countries tolerate being at the mercy of whimsical and untethered Chinese naval vessels that could either turn northward toward Japan or southward toward the Philippines to link up with its fortified atolls in the South China Sea immediately after crossing the Taiwan Strait?
As the key linchpin in the first island chain, Taiwan’s strategic location and its historic significance will not and cannot be easily ceded by the US to any nation unfriendly to it without significant amount of kinetic demonstrations of US firepower.
Semiconductors are the oil of the 21st-century economy. Everyone needs them and everyone wants to control them. Advocates of green energy also need chips to push the power generated by windmills and solar panels. Chips are ubiquitous and omnipresent in people’s daily lives and in nearly every industry, commercial and military.
At ground zero of the global semiconductor industry stands Taiwan; its chipmakers account for 60 percent of the global market. Moreover, according to a January Center for a New American Security report, “Taiwan accounts for 92 percent of the world’s most advanced [below 10 nanometers] semiconductor manufacturing capacity.”
No country exemplifies the need for updated and more powerful chips than the US, especially as it continues to maintain and upgrade its defense and aerospace programs. The advanced 10-nanometer chips are essential to the US’ national security, economy and infrastructure. Unfortunately, nothing has changed for the US since a 2016 congressional report that said the US Department of Defense would continue to rely heavily on non-US suppliers for most of its electronic hardware and that its domestic supplier program would only be used for a small fraction of the chips in its defense systems.
Today, the list of chip suppliers for US consumption is short: Taiwan, South Korea, China and Israel; China and Israel, the third and fourth-largest suppliers, account for just 6 percent of global needs.
While Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co has deals to produce chips outside of Taiwan, that is, to build a US$12 billion plant in Arizona to be operational in 2024, a plant to supply Sony in Japan and new facilities in Europe in an agreement with Germany, the majority of semiconductors will still originate from Taiwan in the near future.
Until the US can be self-sufficient in chip production, it will continue to depend on Taiwan. Therefore, it does not seem possible that the US and the rest of the world would or could sit idly and tolerate a potential attack by China on Taiwan and watch it take control of global chip supply.
If and when China invades Taiwan, the best and only course is for the US is to officially shed the benign “paper tiger” policy known as “strategic ambiguity,” and intervene and aid Taiwan militarily.
We know China is, at the very least, an “unfriendly power” to the US with the potential to be hostile. The only question is whether the current US administration has the will power and the conviction to defend Taiwan if/when China invades, and secure the first island chain and global chip supply.
Dean Chang is the first Taiwanese American to graduate from the US Military Academy at West Point, New York. He is a retired US Army colonel and a retired US Department of State foreign service officer.
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