A War with China Over Taiwan?
America is leading Taiwan down the path to war with China and perhaps itself down the same path, a situation the Biden administration would do well to avoid.
On March 6 of this year, in rare criticism directed at the U.S., Chinese President Xi Jinping laid out in detail what his country is currently experiencing as a result of military expansion against his country by the United States and its allies: “Western countries—led by the U.S.—have implemented all-round containment, encirclement and suppression against us, bringing unprecedentedly severe challenges to our country’s development,” Xi said in a speech.
In truth, Xi’s statement is no over-exaggeration. Certainly, since 2011, the year President Barack Obama described his foreign policy towards Beijing as the “Asia Pivot,” the U.S. has taken to massively building up militarily against China in the Asia Pacific, effectively surrounding mainland China with a multitude of military bases and shifting a vast quantity of the U.S. Navy and Air Force to the region to “counter” Beijing’s influence. As Xi elucidated in his speech from early March, this is a “severe” threat in the eyes of Beijing.
So too, does Beijing see America’s interference and betrayal of longstanding policy regarding Taiwan as a dangerous threat that could very well lead to a hot war between the two powers. Washington has all but totally discarded its decades-long one China policy when dealing with Taiwan, increasingly treating the island as a sovereign country unattached to Beijing and even going so far as to send U.S. troops to Taiwan.
Sending Troops to Taiwan and Committing America to War
In early February, the Wall Street Journal reported that the Biden administration was planning to send anywhere between 100 and 200 troops to Taiwan in the coming months, “quadrupling” American military presence on the island. Just recently, on April 17, Taiwan News reported that “more than 200” troops have been sent to train Taiwan’s military to prepare them for a possible Chinese invasion. “Among the more than 200 instructors, 80% are from the U.S. army. Most of the American instructors are stationed at new training centers and reserve brigades of Taiwan's Army,” the outlet noted.
U.S. troop presence in Taiwan was always a bit of an open secret, but it was acknowledged as factual by Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen in October 2021. Now, the Biden administration is no longer being subtle about the subject, sending in hundreds of troops to prepare the island for a war with China and perhaps, gearing itself up for a war with China as well.
In September 2022, Biden pledged for the fourth time that America would come to the defense of Taiwan if an invasion happened. Asked by CBS’s Scott Pelley if America would get directly involved in such a war, Biden responded by saying, “Yes, if in fact there was an unprecedented attack.”
Despite the fact that White House officials walked back Biden’s dangerous statements, Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines suggested that Biden’s proclamations were, in fact, official U.S. policy toward Taiwan and China. “In this particular case, I think it is clear to the Chinese what our position is based on the president’s comments,” Haines said in early March.
Taiwan and China: A Brief History
The history between China and Taiwan is a long and complicated one that stretches back centuries. The island of Taiwan lies roughly 100 miles off the coast of southeastern China, so obviously, the two lands inevitably came into contact with each other quite frequently throughout their respective histories. For the sake of keeping this summation short and to the point, this article will mainly focus on the past hundred years or so.
In 1895, after roughly 200 years of Chinese rule, Taiwan was ceded to Japan through the Treaty of Shimonoseki after the first Sino-Japanese War, a war Japan won handily. China, though, did not view the treaty as legitimate, essentially arguing it was imposed upon them under coercion. Although Taiwan was under Japanese rule for the next fifty years, the island was never officially admitted into Japan.
During World War Two, Taiwan became an essential component of Imperial Japan’s war effort. The Japanese regarded Taiwan as their “unsinkable aircraft carrier” and a means by which to expand their empire. Many Taiwanese signed up to serve in the Japanese armed forces during the war, with tens of thousands ultimately dying.
After the first Cairo Conference in 1943, Allied leaders, led by the U.S. and Britain, agreed with the opinion of Chinese Nationalist leader Chiang Kai-shek that Taiwan was land stolen by Japan from China and, ultimately, would be returned to Beijing’s rule. (This assessment was set into stone with the Potsdam Conference of 1945.) After Japan officially surrendered to the Allies, Taiwan was handed back over to China by U.S. forces. On October 25, 1945, the island was integrated into the Republic of China (ROC) but was not made into a province.
In the aftermath of the Second World War, a civil war ignited in mainland China between Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalists and Mao Zedong’s Communists. Ultimately, Mao’s forces under the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) prevailed over the Kuomintang (KMT), China’s Nationalist Party, in late 1949, forcing Chiang Kai-shek and roughly 1.5 million of his like-minded supporters to flee across the Taiwan Strait to Taiwan. Chiang subsequently ruled the island in a dictatorship, claimed he was the legitimate ruler of China, and promised multiple times to invade China from Taiwan to regain control. Mao, on the other hand, viewed Taiwan as a part of the newly established People’s Republic of China (PRC).
For a while, the U.S. recognized the government in Taipei as the legitimate government of China and promoted relations with Taiwan militarily and economically. The United States even signed a mutual defense treaty in 1954 with Taiwan that would’ve required America to go to war with China if the island was attacked. But as time went on, relations eroded as Washington sought more to reestablish relations with Beijing than to stoke tensions. In 1971, Taipei was ousted from the UN and was later replaced by Beijing, as the latter was internationally recognized as China’s capital. In the following year, President Richard Nixon made his infamous trip to China to meet with Chairman Mao in an effort to reestablish ties with the communist country. Taiwan, in contrast, was becoming increasingly isolated on the world stage.
In December 1978, President Jimmy Carter announced that the U.S. would be ending formal diplomatic ties with Taiwan and would instead further normalize relations with Beijing, which was construed as another continuation of Taipei’s diplomatic isolation. (Carter’s announcement abrogated the mutual defense treaty America and Taiwan signed in the 1950s.) The next year saw the Taiwan Relations Act pass Congress, which preserved nondiplomatic relations with Washington.
For decades, the vast majority of countries on the world stage, including the U.S., have viewed Taiwan as part of China, notwithstanding the fact that the U.S. has maintained an unofficial relationship with Taipei, selling Taiwan billions in weaponry, and every so often, meeting with high-level Taiwanese government officials.
“You’re Playing with Fire.”
Needless to say, Taiwan is vastly important to China, and they have made it explicitly and abundantly clear that they will not tolerate Western interference and meddling on the island, especially U.S. military tampering. After all, they view the island as their own.
To get a feel for where Beijing currently stands, here is Thomas Friedman of the New York Times explaining what Xi reportedly said to Biden during the Bali summit in November concerning Taiwan:
A senior administration official told me that Xi told President Biden at their summit in Bali in November, in essence: I will not be the president of China who loses Taiwan. If you force my hand, there will be war. You don’t understand how important this is to the Chinese people. You’re playing with fire.
Clearly, these grim warnings are being ignored by the Biden administration and Washington’s elite as they sell Taiwan billions in weapons, hold high-level meetings with Taiwan’s leaders, and send American men and women to the island. In early August 2022, then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi visited Taiwan despite repeated warnings not to do so from Beijing. After her visit, China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA) held extensive military drills for days around Taiwan. Earlier last month, current House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, after more or less the same warnings, met with Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen in California. Similarly, China conducted massive military drills surrounding Taiwan in the aftermath of McCarthy’s meeting. Additionally, on May 1, former national security advisor and rabid warmonger John Bolton met and conversed with Taiwan’s president, who, reportedly, is hoping to “deepen cooperation with the U.S.”
What’s so striking here is that the U.S. government, despite its decades-long policy regarding Taiwan, which has kept the peace thus far, is increasingly treating the island as if it were a sovereign country—moves that could easily trigger a full-blown war, as Xi previously warned Biden about. We now have confirmation that the island is now deepening its intelligence sharing with the Five Eyes, a Western intelligence network that consists of the U.S., Canada, Great Britain, New Zealand, and Australia.
Beijing, for its part, remains defiant on the issue of Taiwan. “The Taiwan problem is at the core of China’s core interests,” Chinese Foreign Minister Qin Gang said on April 21. “We will never back down in the face of any act that undermines China’s sovereignty and security. Those who play with fire on the question of Taiwan will burn themselves.”
What is also deeply troubling about Washington’s shift in its Taiwan policy is its universal belief that sending billions in weaponry and aid will somehow “deter’’ China from invading. Truly, one of the most misguided conceptions in American foreign policy is the idea that pouring billions of dollars worth of weapons mere miles away from the border of a nuclear-armed adversary is somehow “deterrence,” rather than what it really is: an outright provocation that makes military action and war with countries like Russia, China, and Iran much more likely.
We Are Not Obligated to Defend Taiwan nor Should We
As we saw with Carter’s 1978 announcement that America would recognize Beijing, not Taipei, as the real representative government of China, the 1954 mutual-defense treaty with Taiwan was abrogated. In essence, we have no obligation to defend Taiwan in the event of a Chinese attack. But we can prevent it from happening—not by military means, but by diplomatic means.
If Washington reverts back to truly adhering to its longstanding status quo with regard to China and Taiwan and does not obliterate it, as they are now doing, a war is astronomically less likely to occur. Sending troops to Taiwan is an insane move that increases the likelihood of an invasion and makes a direct confrontation between Washington and Beijing all the more likely. The Biden administration would be wise to remove those troops immediately and resort to utilizing the art of diplomacy and dialogue with their counterparts in China to distance themselves from such a deadly outcome.
Truthfully, the last thing China wants to do is invade Taiwan. Beijing would love nothing more than to continue solidifying its role on the global stage as a peacemaker and persist in advancing China’s economic power abroad. For Beijing, peace and business go hand in hand. But if push comes to shove in Taiwan, there will be war.
According to President Biden’s remarks, it seems as if America will actually involve itself in a war with China to defend Taiwan, despite there being no standing mutual defense treaty. As America is quickly shattering from economic turmoil, increasing political division, and its reputation dwindling on the global stage, the idea of a war with China over Taiwan is insane and will end in disaster.
“We Will Be at War with China.”
“The American people need to understand something that no one has bothered to tell them,” retired Army Colonel Douglas Macgregor said to Tucker Carlson about Taiwan after Pelosi’s August visit. “All of the major invasions of China were launched from Taiwan. Beijing will not allow Taiwan to become a garrison state for American armed forces.” “If they [Beijing] think we are going to ally ourselves with Taiwan; if they think we are going to intervene to defend that island in the event of a dispute, then we will be at war with China.”
“We are not prepared for that,” Macgregor warned.
Regardless of these common-sense warnings, the Biden administration carries on unabated in expanding into the Asia Pacific against Beijing, adding four new military installations in the Philippines for potential use in the event of a war with China, opening up a new base in Guam, and committing America to war over Taiwan. In the end, if China really does invade Taiwan, there is a real and distinct possibility that we will be at war. Cooler heads must prevail.