Strategic thinker Carl von Clausewitz has said that “war is politics by other means,” while investment guru Warren Buffett has said that “tariffs are an act of war.”
Both aphorisms apply to China, which has long been engaged in a multifront political, economic and informational war against the US and the rest of the West. Kinetically also, China has launched the early stages of actual global conflict with its threats and aggressive moves against Taiwan, the Philippines and Japan, and its support for North Korea’s reckless actions against South Korea that could reignite the Korean War.
Former US presidents Barack Obama and Joe Biden, as well as incumbent Donald Trump, have all been traumatized by the prospect of World War III caused by an escalation of Russia’s war in Ukraine, although Trump genuinely supports Russian President Vladimir Putin’s “genius” aggression against Ukraine.
Yet, US support for Taiwan’s de facto independence holds the same potential for cataclysmic major power conflict. Biden sought to deter Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) from acting on his long-stated intention to conquer Taiwan by stating — five times — that he would use force to defend it. However, he allowed each of his threats to be hollowed out by his administration’s milder follow-on disclaimers.
So far, Trump has spoken more softly about Taiwan, even accusing it of “stealing” US chip technology and stinting on its military defenses, but he has wielded a very big stick against China on tariffs. The standoff on reciprocal US-China tariffs is a stand-in test of wills that bears directly on the kinetic confrontation that would follow a Chinese move against Taiwan.
The dynamics of the two scenarios are similar. Trump’s tariffs are a response to decades of the Chinese Communist Party’s relentless campaign of cheating, stealing and discriminating against Western rules-based economic dealings. China responded to Trump’s preliminary punitive action by imposing further tariffs against US exports.
Now, the danger of escalation threatens the prospect of a full-blown trade war with disastrous economic consequences, in effect, an economic nuclear winter. Neither side is willing to blink first, fearing the domestic and international damage to its reputation. The solution to that credibility dilemma is simply for a third party trusted by both sides to intervene and host a meeting.
The security analogue to the trade war is even more dangerous. China perpetually threatens Taiwan, while the US has bound itself, loosely, to Taiwan’s democratic security. However, the strategic ambiguity built into the US’ position leaves ample room for Beijng’s doubt — and much of the world’s — as to whether the US would actually risk world war III to defend a place that Trump has repeatedly accused of security weakness and freeloading, and stealing US technology and prosperity.
Unlike the trade war, a kinetic conflict, once started, will be more difficult to end because of the investment in human lives, tangible infrastructure and equipment, and national pride. Like the trade war, it would have been started by China — a long history of threats and aggressive actions against Taiwan and its other neighbors. An overt Chinese move against Taiwan’s main island or a smaller one, such as Kinmen, or placement of a blockade around key Taiwanese ports, would bring a US response that would involve discreet US military action limited to attacking Chinese air, naval or amphibious forces — an act of collective self-defense authorized under international law.
If China, rather than stopping its aggression, broadens its attack to include targeting the defending US forces, its escalation would open a new front in the conflict, technically declaring war on the US. The US would then be justified in attacking not only the sources in China from which the anti-US aggression emanated, but other military targets as well. The downward spiral to all-out nuclear war would have begun.
Either side can step off the escalation ladder at any point, but there will be the inexorable forces to keep going and hope the other side will blink first — an eventuality that is unpredictable and unknowable. The only certain way to prevent that kind of doomsday scenario is for the process not to begin in the first place — that is, for China to stop its aggressive rhetoric and actions before the escalatory cycle begins, and rely only on peaceful persuasion and the attractiveness of its governing system to encourage Taiwan to choose accession to the People’s Republic of China.
Moreover, the only way for the US side to encourage that peaceful prospect is to convince China that war with the US, with all its dangerous imponderables, is inevitable if it attacks or attempts to blockade Taiwan. Trump has the ability to send that message to his “friend” Xi — but does he have the courage and the political will?
Joseph Bosco served as China country director for the US defense secretary in 2005-2006, and as Asia-Pacific director of humanitarian assistance and disaster relief in 2009-2010.
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