By Marc Vandepitte
In late January, a senior US general declared that war could break out in Taiwan within two years. After Ukraine, will we soon find a second focal point in Asia? We asked the China expert Dirk Nimmegeers.
To understand exactly what is happening, it is important to consider Taiwan’s special status. Can you explain this status a bit?
Taiwan has its own government and parliament, but is not essentially a sovereign or independent state as it is part of China. Almost every state in the world, including the United States, recognizes it. Taiwan, for example, has no seat at the UN.
There is only one China with a government in Beijing. The Taiwanese political entity was formed in 1949 by the losing side of the Chinese Civil War after being expelled from the rest of the country by the Chinese Communist Party.
Legally, the island has belonged to China for centuries, just as Flanders belongs to Belgium or Friesland to the Netherlands. Taiwan can be seen as a kind of rogue province.
How does China relate to this “rogue province”?
China’s policy has been unchanged for years: Taiwan must be peacefully reunited with the rest of the country. Beijing wants economic ties between the mainland and the island province to be as strong as they were until recently. It’s also good when there are more social and cultural contacts.
However, Beijing has always warned – and always does when unduly provoked – that any Taiwanese declaration of independence, or any serious movement toward it, would provoke a military response. At its core, the “Taiwan issue” is an internal matter that the Chinese on both sides of the Taiwan Strait will settle with each other.
How is this matter viewed from Taiwan?
There are two main political parties in Taiwan. The Progressive Democratic Party (PPD) is currently in power. This party is pushing for separatism. The position of the DPP and its current leader, Tsai Ing-wen, is that Taiwan is already independent and that China and Taiwan should not be unified.
This is in contrast to Taiwan’s other major political party, the Kwomintang (KMT). This party still follows the “One China” constitution, which means that a Taiwanese government would be able to retake all Chinese territory. Even the KMT, of course, already knows that this is a utopia and the party wrote the “1992 consensus” on this basis. It states that there is only one China, but this is interpreted differently on both sides of the strait. For Beijing and the KMT, this remains a good basis for mutual contacts and negotiations. The PPD separatists have always refused to recognize this consensus.
And what is the position of the United States in this regard?
Traditionally, the United States has held that Taiwan belongs to China and that there is only one China whose capital is Beijing. Biden reiterated this during his last meeting with Xi at the G20 summit in Bali in November 2022. In 1982, the United States pledged to phase out arms sales to Taiwan (1).
The US President also stated at the time that he and his administration continued to support the status quo, i.e. the situation in which Taiwan does not declare itself independent but continues to function autonomously. The United States would intervene militarily if any of the parties involved unilaterally and violently altered this status quo.
So the US is sticking to the status quo?
Events in the months leading up to and following the Bali talks raise serious questions about the sincerity of Biden’s remarks. Rather, Washington appears to support Taiwan’s most ruthless separatist and militarist politicians.
It’s as if the United States wants to fulfill its own prediction that war with China is inevitable. It seems that the leadership in Washington is preparing for this conflict and is recruiting or pressuring its allies to join it.
can you be more specific
First, there is the overall strategy. Washington would never spend large sums of money on guns. Congress will allocate $858 billion annually to the armed forces. This equates to an additional $45,000 million on top of what Biden had asked for and equals spending by the nine countries that follow him combined.
Russia and China in particular are in the crosshairs of this arms race. I’m not saying, Washington is very clear on that. Two US strategic documents support this and Washington explains how it intends to deal with it. In the National Security Strategy (2022) and the Nuclear Posture Review (2022), they even affirm in belligerent language that the United States has the right to use a nuclear bomb to “deter strategic attacks”, well not only! nuclear weapons!
Indian commentator Vijay Prashad notes: “This, coupled with Washington’s refusal to adopt a first-mover strategy, coupled with Washington’s modernization of its nuclear arsenal and Washington’s withdrawal from the Nuclear Missile Treaty Intermediate-Range, has prompted many countries – certainly China and Russia – to fear that the United States will place missiles in their immediate vicinity and arm them with nuclear warheads.”
The points are military bases. The arrows are intended range missiles.
Around China, more precisely in the Indo-Pacific, the United States is expanding its fleet. Pacts like AUKUS, the military agreement between the United States, Britain and Australia, are also increasing military bidding in the region. This also applies to British military cooperation with Japan, a country that, like Germany, is doubling its military spending at the behest of the United States and NATO.
Washington now has agreements with Australia to bring nuclear weapons to Australia using B-52 and B-1 bombers. Spending on the so-called Pacific Deterrence Initiative will increase by $11.5 billion.
Again, it is very clear that Washington does not deny that all of this is primarily aimed at China.
This military strategy goes hand in hand with economic warfare. Biden recently launched an outright chip war against China. What the US is trying to do with far-reaching export restrictions is to block China’s economic, technological and military development.
That’s the general strategy. What role does Taiwan play in this?
One could argue that the United States has given Taiwan the role of some kind of military base. Washington appears determined to use Taiwan against China as it is using Ukraine against Russia, great as the disparities between the war already underway and the one that appears to be preparing.
Photo: Taipei (Mao Mao, Wikimedia Commons / CC BY 2.0)
Once again, US presidents have failed in their promises to reduce Taiwan and end arming. However, the Biden administration is crossing the line. He was able to persuade the island’s current rulers to use the massive arms purchases to boost US arms manufacturers’ profits.
Taiwan will receive an additional $10 billion in military aid as part of the newly planned military budget. Add to that another $6.5 billion under a new law called the Taiwan Policy Act.
The White House wants to invest in war games, large-scale military exercises and a permanent and rotating US military presence. House of Representatives urges US Navy to invite Taiwan Navy to Pacific Rim 2024 military drills
Photo: US Navy Destroyer (US Navy, Flickr / CC BY 2.0)
On Jan. 7, another US Navy destroyer transited the Taiwan Strait, the first such transit reported by the US Navy that year. As always, Washington claims this is a “freedom of navigation” operation, while China apparently does not impede merchant shipping or intend to shoot itself in the foot with it.
New provocative and illegal “official visits” to Taipei (the self-proclaimed “government” of Taiwan) are being prepared in the newly elected US parliament, modeled on Nancy Pelosi.
How is the Taiwanese government reacting?
The Separatist party in power applauds these actions and constantly demands more arms. Taipei is extending military service from four months to one year and is doing everything it can to convince the public that there is a military threat from China.
There are even plans to teach kindergarten children to distinguish the sound of artillery shells.
Taipei also joins the bid on the economic front. Big companies like Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) are being forced to set up factories in the United States to stop the obvious and beneficial cross-strait cooperation.
They are siding with the US in warmongering, but most people here have the opposite impression and assume that China is the aggressor.
I fear so too. Every day, politicians, commentators, academics, and the media do everything they can to convince the people of the United States and its allies that China is becoming increasingly aggressive, threatening its neighbors and peace.
For example, the Center for Strategic and International Studies conducted a study based on a simulation of a possible Chinese People’s Liberation Army “invasion” of Taiwan in 2026 to determine that it would cause heavy casualties for the parties involved: mainland China, the island Taiwan Taiwan and the United States with Japan as an ally.
In early January, the well-known US magazine Foreign Policy published a special issue with twelve articles by former CIA directors, US military commanders, a former NATO Secretary General, a Trump administration minister and representatives of think tanks. They see Ukraine’s victory in the war instigated by Russia within reach and want to learn lessons from it. For some, the lesson is to deter China by further arming Taiwan. Others are undeterred as to how best to wage a war against China “in defense of Taiwan.”
A senior US general recently claimed that war over Taiwan could break out within two years.
Remembering Biden’s words about “undermining the status quo” and his “unilateral and violent change,” it seems clear that the United States is precisely to blame, with contacts and visits that treat Taiwan’s leaders as if they were official representatives of Taiwan an independent state, with large-scale weapons and war propaganda.
Yes, but one certainly cannot ignore the fact that China regularly deploys military forces in the region; This was the case, for example, shortly after the visit of US House Speaker Pelosi to Taiwan.
As I said before, China wants peaceful reunification. But he also wants previous commitments to be respected. Every time the United States and Taiwan go a step too far in their salami tactics to work towards Taiwan’s independence without also declaring that independence with a vociferous declaration, the Chinese government resists provocation with symbolic exercises to show off that they will not give up the military option.
During these exercises, the Chinese Air Force also crosses the border of Taiwan-declared Air Defense Identification Zone (ADIZ). Of course, China does not recognize such an air defense identification zone, since it can only be established by a recognized state. Until recently, the imaginary border gaps didn’t exist because China wanted to show its goodwill.
However, as Washington and Taipei intensify their preparations for war, Beijing will do everything it can to avoid falling into the trap of an arms race. However, China will never give up the claim to reunite Taiwan with the motherland and is doing its best to achieve this non-violently on the way to the “one country, two systems” model.
To this end, Beijing wants to resume the favorable development of economic relations, investment and trade between the mainland and the island, as well as contacts between family members and other people. A peaceful development, interrupted by the electoral victories of the separatist PPD, which with its new aggressive course quickly became an ally of the Trump and Biden administrations.
Finally, do you think this could lead to a war in Taiwan?
I’m not a seer, but we should avoid such a war at all costs. The war in Ukraine, terrible as it is, will be child’s play compared to what might be expected in a war over Taiwan.
We are doing our best to keep a cool head and not be swayed by the war fever currently raging across much of the American and European establishment. The peace movement has a lot to do here.
Note:
(1) Paragraph 5 of the Third Memorandum of Understanding between the United States and China dated August 17, 1982 states: “The United States has no long-term policy of arms sales to Taiwan, and US arms sales will . neither qualitatively nor quantitatively the level of supplies in recent years since the establishment of diplomatic relations between the United States and China, and that it intends to gradually reduce arms sales to Taiwan and find a definitive solution over time”. (Editor’s note)
Source: https://www.dewereldmorgen.be/artikel/2023/02/01/oorlogskoorts-na-oekraine-taiwan/ (Translated from English by Dilara Kabak – Originally published in Rebellion)