Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) underestimates the “devastating” impact conflict in the Taiwan Strait would have on his own power, as well as on China and the world, a former US intelligence director said on Monday, calling on the US to assure China of its support for the “status quo” on Taiwan to prevent conflict.
Former rear admiral Mike Studeman, a former commander of the US Office of Naval Intelligence and former director of the US National Maritime Intelligence Integration Office, made the comments at a Hudson Institute forum titled “A Requiem for Dominance: New US Strategies to Deter Aggression.”
“I think that if [Xi] tries to go after Taiwan, ultimately what will ensue will lead to the downfall of the chairman and the party secretary. And I think he underestimates this,” said Studeman, who retired last month from a career that involved visits to Taiwan in 2020 and last year.
Photo: screen grab from Hudson Institute’s YouTube channel
As simulations show there would be no winner in a Taiwan Strait conflict, the US should focus on prevention, he said.
A prevention strategy includes having the capability to prevail in a conflict, but “at the same time, a lot of our efforts need to go into the shaping elements” to influence the kinds of actions taken, disincentivizing the most extreme moves, he added.
From Beijing’s perspective, it appears as though the US is walking away from its “one China” policy and Taiwan is moving toward de jure independence, but it never sees itself as being the cause of such actions, Studeman said.
“China doesn’t see that they’re at fault. What they just see is all these actions that are designed to contain them ... and they push harder,” he said.
Beijing’s unusual perception and closed authoritarian system then make it difficult to shape its actions, he said.
“Sometimes your best tool is not a big military platform or something made of steel,” he said. “That needs to be complementary to ... not integrated deterrence, but integrated assurance” that the US is not doing anything to change the “status quo” on Taiwan.
“If [China’s leaders] do not believe that we are in a ‘status quo’ environment, then we have a problem,” he said.
The desired outcome is to make Xi certain that action on Taiwan would elicit an international response that would scupper all of his other goals and desired legacy, Studeman added.
Yet communication between Beijing and the US has all but ceased, hampering US “shaping” influence and increasing the potential for misunderstanding.
“In Asia today there’s a lot of dry grass, so the potential for one spark to get spreading sooner is much higher if you don’t have the ability to shower cold water on it,” Studeman said.
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