Fri, Oct 21, 2022 page3

• Symbolic US gestures on Taiwan up risks: experts

  • Staff writer, with CNA
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  US officials should avoid “symbolic political gestures” that seem to support Taiwan, but erode Beijing’s confidence in the US’ “one China policy,” increasing chances of a Taiwan Strait conflict, US experts said.

  Such gestures include calls by top officials under former US president Donald Trump and members of the US Congress for Washington to move from “strategic ambiguity” to “strategic clarity,” an analysis titled “Avoiding War Over Taiwan” that was signed by 14 experts on US-China relations said.

  These calls do not help to present “credible threat” to top officials of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) or the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA), who already “fully expect and plan for US intervention” if China attempted to take Taiwan by force, the analysis said.

  “A formal US policy shift from strategic ambiguity to strategic clarity would undercut deterrence, rather than enhance it,” it said, referring to the issue of whether the US should openly commit to defending Taiwan if China were to attack it.

  An unconditional US pledge to defend Taiwan accompanied by stationing US forces in the nation during peacetime — as former US national security adviser John Bolton has advocated — would be even riskier, it said.

  It would create the illusion of the restoration of the US-Republic of China joint defense treaty, which would be akin to the two sides re-establishing formal diplomatic ties, it said.

  CCP elites could interpret that scenario as the US committing to defend Taiwan’s “permanent separation” from China and handing a blank check for future Taiwanese politicians to pursue de jure independence, which is “anathema” to Beijing.

  A “US policy that appears designed to wrest Taiwan permanently from the Chinese nation” would “be worse than a war” from CCP officials’ perspective and would leave them with little incentive to forgo the use of force against Taiwan or US forces coming to Taiwan’s defense, it said.

  US politicians should also refrain from making “politically advantageous but strategically damaging statements about Taiwan,” it said.

  Among examples of this are former US secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s call for Washington to formally recognize Taiwan as a sovereign state and the original language of the draft Taiwan policy act, which said Taiwan should be designated a “non-NATO ally” of the US.

  If those policies were adopted, it would undercut Washington’s assurances to Beijing that it would accept any outcome that is peacefully agreed on by China and Taiwan, that it does not support Taiwan independence, and that it opposes any unilateral change to the “status quo,” the analysis said.

  Those assurances have served as an important element of deterrence, and undermining them would “greatly increase, rather than decrease, the likelihood of conflict across the Taiwan Strait,” it said.

  To present a credible threat to China, the US should focus on substantive measures that would make Taiwan and its forces in Asia stronger and more resilient, the analysis said.

  The US should continue to pursue an “active denial” strategy by denying China the prospect of having a “quick and cheap military victory” over Taiwan, it said.

  That could be done by increasing US access to additional locations from which to operate in the Asia-Pacific region, bolstering the defense of existing US facilities there and reducing the vulnerability of supplies from the continental US to the front lines.

  It should take action to shift away from a reliance on “vulnerable aircraft carriers and a few large, concentrated air and naval bases,” and instead focus on adopting a “more mobile, dispersed and ultimately resilient military posture in the region that will be much harder for China to attack and destroy,” the analysis said.

  Taiwan must adopt a “porcupine strategy” by creating more robust and mobile coastal and air defenses that would “inflict real pain” in the event of a military invasion by China, it said.

  The analysis was released on Oct. 12 by the Asia Society Center on China-US Relations and UC San Diego School of Global Policy and Strategy.

  Among the 14 academics who signed it were Columbia University professor of political science Andrew Nathan, Georgetown University professor Evan Madeiros, Columbia University international relations professor Thomas Christensen, Massachusetts Institute of Technology political science professor M. Taylor Fravel and Bonnie Glaser, director of the Asia Program at the German Marshall Fund in Washington.
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