In the Dragon’s Den

Chinese soldiers perform airborne landings from helicopters into the mountainous outskirts of Taipei, and thousands charge the beaches, overwhelming Taiwanese defenders. Chinese missiles rain down on Taipei, leveling skyscrapers and civilian housing indiscriminately. No one is spared. Chinese blood stains the beaches; the bodies of both Taiwanese civilians and soldiers lay piled in the streets of the capital. With the island in ruins, Taiwanese morale is broken and Xi Jinping has finally ”liberated” the Republic of China, fulfilling the Chinese folk legend of finally destroying the last of the nationalist cause and reunifying China. With this monumental achievements Xi ensures that his name will live in both Chinese and world history. This is one of many hypothetical scenarios that could occur if the United States does not back Taiwan.

Despite the west's lack of physical action on Taiwan, it appears that China’s poker face is faltering, and their bluff is showing, as some of the invasion and war rhetoric is being backed off by Beijing. Of all the Chinese planes defying Taiwanese airspace, not one has tried to go even as far to fly over American vessels. This is the true strength of the United States in action. The simple presence of the American navy demonstrates that in its ability to deter China, the rising force of the century, the defender of liberty still has the potential to live up to her name. This is why it is important that the United States must not pull out by any means possible. The doomsday scenario of a China, without any restraint from American military power, would mean a catastrophe for the whole of Asia. Despite showing a soft spot to the American military, the Chinese military is the biggest in the world, comprising over two million active military personnel, with 253.317 billion dollars of funding every year. They also have the capability to use long distance helicopters in order to land thousands of Chinese troops into the rocky terrain of Taiwan, and possess more than enough firepower to level Taiwan from the air, sea, and land. Such a conflict would mean the deaths of millions of Taiwanese civilians and military personnel, and the destruction of Taiwan’s modern populated cities, assuming that morale does not collapse before then. In fact, a survey of the Taiwanese population concluded that a majority of Taiwanese people would go to great lengths to prevent a war of such destruction from occurring, which may even include surrendering their liberties. All of this only furthers the importance of the United States’ presence in the region and shows how vital it is for the United States to make China’s bluff stay bluff.

The United States’ support of Taiwan began with its promise of protection in 1949, when president Truman continued to recognize Chiang Kai-Shek’s government as the one China. Under the United States’ promise, Taiwan remained untouched by mainland China. The seeds of tensions between the US and Peoples’ Republic of China (PRC) were planted in 1972, when President Nixon traveled to China, initiating normalization of relations with PRC. The US government broke ties with Taiwan to recognize the mainland in order to conduct trade with the much larger partner. Subsequently, Chinese manufacturing and trade have dominated global economics, making the world dependent on Chinese products and China dependent on overseas markets. Facing a Taiwan that no longer has the full-fledged support of the United States, ultimately emboldened China. To-date, no major crises have occurred between the two powers, largely because the two previous premiers of China were less focused on Taiwan and more concerned with moving China’s politics away from Maoism. China’s newest president, Xi Jinping, is of a different ilk. Xi has used his power to clamp down on individual freedoms and implement a vast network of mass surveillance to enforce civil obedience. In addition, Xi has also restricted economic freedoms in the private sector by planting party officials in private corporations. Xi has clamped down on companies he deems bourgeois and nationalized their assets (“We Have No Choice but to Follow the Party”). It seems clear that the autocratic Xi, like his Russian counterpart, is driven by delusions of grandeur and wants to be remembered as a leader who restored his fatherland to its imperial greatness. Xi’s megalomaniacal desires are evident in his foreign policy which has as its aim replacing the current global order dominated by western liberal democracies with something better suited to his authoritarian agenda (“The Alternative World Order”). If Xi successfully steers the helm of global order in his direction, he will certainly achieve his dream of becoming one of the most influential men in Chinese history, if not world history (“Deng Xiaoping: Xi's Political Role Model”). One piece missing from Xi’s grand vision is the “liberation” of Taiwan: a festering lesion of western-style democracy standing between China and Xi’s elusive new world order. This powerful beacon of freedom and human rights has been framed as a rogue state defying the might of a power that wishes to have influence over the entire world. Before Taiwan, there was another symbol of democracy bordering China: Hong Kong, the former British colony returned to China with the guarantee of the city's freedom for fifty years. Carefully reading the lack of western resolve, Xi eliminated this symbol of democracy with his national security bill only twenty years into the fifty year agreement. The west barely flinched. Although Britain, Canada, and Australia accepted more Hong Kongers as immigrants, it was clear that no one, even the United States, the sacred defender of democracy, was willing to meet Xi’s action with an equal response (“Crossing the Red Line”). With Taiwan, Xi has wagered that the west will respond similarly, and allow another temple of democracy to fall. Xi’s strategy is comparable to a poker game. He appears to be bluffing with gray-zone warfare: putting on a show of military force to weaken morale and to see if Taiwan and the west will fall for, or call, his bluff. Since China’s 2021 military exercises in the Taiwan Strait and in Taiwan airspace, the United States has raised its voice in support of Taiwan and appeared to call Xi’s bluff. The United States military is training the Taiwanese army, and it is now a custom for the United States navy to keep an aircraft carrier near China. In 2020, the US sent 1.4 billion dollars in American fighter jets to Taiwan. Another deal in 2022 approved 100 million dollars in equipment and services to Taiwan in order to maintain their Patriot Missiles. Two pieces of pending legislation: Taiwan Deterrence Act and Arm Taiwan Act of 2022 will provide more military assistance to Taiwan (“Reestablish the U.S. Military Assistance Advisory Group-Taiwan”). The United States routinely sends military vessels through the Taiwan Strait, moves that greatly anger Xi. Although Taiwan has few official allies, the unequivocal support of America and her NATO allies continues to voice support for Taiwan. Japan has made its support of Taiwan clear, including it in trade agreements like the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership. Additionally, the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (QSD), a military and economic alliance similar to NATO, has garnered the support of India and Australia. The QSD has even gone as far as to hold military drills in the South China Sea as a show of force. Even European countries thousands of miles away, continue to voice support for Taiwan. The common theme being the determination to maintain the current world order and stand up to Chinese threats (“The Most Dangerous Place on Earth”). Then in November 2021, the Russian autocrat, Vladimir Putin, began amassing over 100,000 Russian troops along the border of Ukraine, promising repeatedly that he had no intention of invasion. True to the autocrats’ playbook, on February 24th of 2022, Putin sent his forces into Ukraine to fulfill his megalomaniacal dream of resurrecting the Soviet empire. To Putin’s surprise, the world galvanized in response to the plight of the Ukrainian people. NATO, thought to have been a weakened shell of its former authority, regrouped and responded in unison, imposing the heaviest economic sanctions on Putin and his oligarchs in history and supplying the Ukrainians with billions of dollars in aid. Additionally, numerous non-NATO countries joined in support of Ukraine, and Finland, Moldova, and Sweden, neutral for centuries, are considering joining NATO, thereby expanding its influence and further strengthening the current world order led by liberal western democracies. In short, the overwhelming global response against Putin’s unprovoked invasion of Ukraine has left him an international pariah. This recent turn of events has most assuredly caught the attention of Xi and has certainly forced him to reconsider any designs he may have had about using China’s military for the “reunification” of China. As recently as March 18th, 2022, President Biden made it clear to Xi that if China supplies Russia with any assistance in the Ukrainian invasion, the US and its allies will impose severe economic sanctions on China similar to those that Putin and his cronies now endure (“A Visual Guide to the Russian Invasion of Ukraine”). To be sure, China is clearly a global superpower, unlike Russia, which has been described as the gas station of Europe, depending upon oil and natural gas sales for the majority of its international trade revenue. Still, the concerted international response to Putin’s invasion stands as irrefutable proof that NATO is robust and, along with its allies, resolute in enforcing international law and upholding human rights. Xi is no doubt watching every development carefully and, in light of Biden’s warnings to Xi, he must certainly be rethinking his plans to “liberate” Taiwan. The current world order hangs in the balance as does the outcome of Putin’s invasion of Ukraine and Xi’s goal of annexing Taiwan. The careful observer may tentatively conclude that the remarkable manner in which the world has come to the aid of Ukraine and the economic pain many world countries are willing to endure to impose punishing sanctions on Putin’s rouge regime would similarly be meted out to Xi’s China were he to carry out his diabolical design to “reunify” China.

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