Upon Russia’s abrupt, full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February last year, Taiwan displayed great empathy and sympathy with Ukraine. Taipei immediately announced economic sanctions against Moscow, and Taiwanese expressed solidarity, with protesters gathering outside Russia’s representative office in Taipei, while Taipei 101 was lit up in the colors of the Ukrainian flag. Despite distinct historical and geopolitical differences, as well as the great distance between the countries, Taiwan and Ukraine have long borne the existential threats posed by a large neighboring military power.
A month after the invasion, the Washington Post published an op-ed by Representative to the US Hsiao Bi-khim (蕭美琴) that articulated Taipei’s view by emulating the US-led Western narrative: Russia launched an unprovoked attack against Ukraine amid a struggle of liberal democracy versus authoritarianism.
Having taken full advantage of the righteous narrative, Washington has justified substantial military aid to Ukraine and issued economic sanctions against Russia, with many Western allies following suit.
While the Russian invasion constitutes a quintessential international legal case of aggression, the Global South has largely not followed the Western narrative, as their historical perspectives and geo-economic interests are starkly incongruent from those of the West. That enables Russia to continue its war efforts, prolonging the conflict.
Given its conspicuous relative decline over the past few decades, the US faces a hard choice between Taiwan and Ukraine in employing its substantial, but limited, military and security powers. The US no longer has global military and economic preponderance.
During the Cold War, the US was capable of simultaneously dominating three geostrategically vital regions: Western Europe, the Middle East and Northeast Asia. More specifically, its power projection capability was sufficient for two concurrent major regional conflicts, while holding its own in a limited regional conflict on a third front.
After the Cold War, the US cut its defense spending, before becoming mired in protracted counterinsurgency operations in its global war on terror. For the past few decades, the US military was first capable of conducting two-and-a-half regional wars at a time, to two, then one-and-a-half and finally just one.
In 2013, then-US president Barack Obama said that “America is not the world’s policeman.” Meanwhile, the US sat by and watched as China and Russia, Washington’s great-power competitors, substantially built up their militaries with high-end weapons.
However, the US must retain a major regional war capability to deter and potentially defeat armed aggression by China, the US’ only military equal. Obviously, Washington’s current approach, devoted to Ukraine, demonstrates a grand misordering of priorities.
Until most recently, Washington had maintained a policy priority on Ukraine by taking advantage of the pro-Ukraine righteous narrative to mobilize domestic and overseas adherents for that priority.
Most conspicuous were the adherents in Washington who defended their policy position with Hsiao’s May 3 remarks at the McCain Institute’s Sedona Forum saying that there is no trade-off between aiding Ukraine and deterring a Chinese invasion of Taiwan.
The remarks were followed by commentary illustrating the pros and cons, most visibly in the form of two Washington Post op-eds.
The adherents justified continuation of the Ukraine policy because even the Taiwanese representative saw no such trade-off and no negative effect on Taiwan’s security. On the other hand, the opponents argued against the fallacy of the justification by pointing out the highly strained state of the US defense system such as munition stockpiles and arms delivery, as well as the dearth of political capital and other defense resources.
Hsiao reinforced her position in a C-SPAN interview on May 30, which gave the impression that the debate remained inconclusive.
Yet, with the war in Ukraine dragging on, it appears that US public support for Washington’s military aid policy to Kyiv is shrinking, an indicator that a major policy shift could be coming on Capitol Hill.
A CNN poll released on Aug. 4 showed that 55 percent of Americans surveyed said the US Congress should not authorize additional funding to support Ukraine. Meanwhile, the majority of Republicans in the US House of Representatives are increasingly turning against aid to Kyiv.
As the pro-Ukraine narrative is becoming increasingly less tenable in US domestic politics, Taipei should not continue touting it as the central pillar of its value-based diplomacy. Doing so might be popular to Taiwanese, as shown in its support for Ukraine, and might be politically valid for the Democratic Progress Party in the prelude to January’s presidential and legislative elections. However, such a move would alienate the strategically rational who prioritize Taiwan over Ukraine.
Amid the clear and present danger of a Chinese attack, Taipei should put more weight on realpolitik rather than political semantics.
Masahiro Matsumura is a professor of international politics and national security at Momoyama Gakuin Daigaku, also known as Saint Andrew’s University, in Osaka, now with its summer research grant at National Chengchi University Institute of International Relations’ Taiwan Center for Security Studies.
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