A Chinese takeover of Taiwan would be a geopolitical catastrophe for the US and its allies, one that would overshadow almost all others over the next decade, US policy experts said.
Andrew Erickson, a professor of strategy in the US Naval War College’s China Maritime Studies Institute; Gabriel Collins, a fellow at Rice University’s Baker Institute for Public Policy; and former US deputy national security adviser Matthew Pottinger issued the warning in an article published on Friday in Foreign Affairs.
Bejing’s invasion or annexation of Taiwan “would be a disaster of utmost importance to the United States, and I am convinced that time is of the essence,” they quoted US general Douglas MacArthur as writing in a secret memorandum dated June 1950, saying that now, his “words ring truer than ever.”
Photo: Ann Wang, Reuters
Taiwan proper is strategically valuable, as it “anchors Japan’s defense and denies China a springboard from which it could threaten US allies in the western Pacific,” they wrote.
Beyond the unchanging influence of geography, developments since MacArthur’s era have made Taiwan more important to global security and prosperity than ever before, they said.
Taiwan’s transition to a full democracy on China’s doorstep further increases its significance, because its “subjugation to Beijing’s totalitarianism would hinder democratic aspirations across the region, including in China itself,” they said.
Taiwan has become a microchip powerhouse, making it indispensable to the global economy, and a conflict could easily result in a global depression, they said.
Although there is a wide network of US allies across the Indo-Pacific region, the countries are reliant on Washington for their security, they said.
A successful Chinese attack on Taiwan would undermine the credibility of US security guarantees, triggering a race for nuclear weapons in the region, they said.
Whether “one cares about the future of democracy in Asia or prefers to ponder only the cold math of realpolitik, Taiwan’s fate matters,” they said.
If Taiwan’s democratic “system were extinguished, Beijing would have erased the world’s first liberal democracy whose founders include many people of Chinese heritage — and, with it, living proof that there is a workable, appealing alternative to Beijing’s totalitarianism,” they said.
Citing the Economist Intelligence Unit, they said Taiwan is ranked the world’s eighth-most fully democratic polity, ahead of every country in Asia, the UK and the US.
Taiwan is also deemed one of the world’s economically equitable societies, despite being among its richest, having overtaken Japan in per capita GDP last year, they added.
Taiwan’s “strong democracy” forms a sharp contrast to China’s political system, where 1.4 billion people sharing many traditions and cultural traditions are subjugated under Beijing’s totalitarian regime, they said.
“Officials in Beijing have long tried to caricature Taiwan as slavishly imitating Western forms of governance,” they said. “But it is actually the Chinese Communist Party that is doing so by clinging to its Marxist-Leninist system, a discredited political model imported from Europe.”
“The loss of Taiwan as a democratic alternative would end the experiment with popular, multiparty self-governance by a society with significant Chinese heritage, with bad tidings for the possibility of democracy in China and far beyond,” they said.
Citing former US president Dwight Eisenhower, they said the fall of Taiwan would trigger a “dangerous chain reaction” by threatening the security of Japan, the Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam and severely harming vital US interests.
“Taiwan’s annexation in the face of US inaction or ineffective action would present US allies in Asia and Europe with a nightmare they have never faced before: Washington proving unable to protect a polity that is an ally in all but name,” they said.
Chinese President Xi Jinping’s (習近平) pressure on Taiwan is no less significant a test of US resolve than the one posed by Joseph Stalin’s blockade of West Berlin in 1948, they said.
“The stakes are equally stark today with Taiwan — and there is no time left to waste,” they said.
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