Thursday, April 10, 2008
The best reason for guaranteeing Taiwan's security?
Being something of a dove on China (insofar as I do not believe its demographics support the risk of significant casualties, and that its population remains quiescent because it is getting rich), I have argued from time to time that our guarantee of Taiwan's security is in practice too blank a check. It encourages Taiwanese politicians to talk and act recklessly in pursuit of votes, which actually increases the risk that the United States and China will be brought into conflict.
That said, an aside in a Stratfor letter this morning articulated a reason for the guarantee that I had not thought of:
It is long-standing American policy to limit Chinese military options in the Far East by supporting — albeit only rarely officially — a fiercely independent Taiwan, perpetuating China’s military preoccupation with the Formosa Strait and preventing it from throwing its full weight behind a more globally oriented naval expansion. As it stands, an enormous part of Chinese naval strategy rests on the country’s ability to deny access to the U.S. Navy and delay it from approaching Taiwan long enough for Beijing to pound it to dust. Because a cornerstone of U.S. grand strategy is sustaining hegemonic dominance of the world’s oceans, Taiwan is an extremely useful tool for constraining Chinese military policy. Ergo, the United States has supported, is supporting and will continue to support Taiwan.
While the explanation makes sense to me, I do not believe I have read it before (perhaps, I admit, because it is so obvious that everybody other than me understands it). Any naval strategists out there who can validate this explanation?
[Scheduled]
9 Comments:
By 
, at
Thu Apr 10, 11:38:00 AM:
Sure, everybody understands it... now that the strategy has been so competently explicated.
By , at
Thu Apr 10, 11:38:00 AM:
While I am not a naval strategist, I remain unconvinced of the threat posed by China. Their GDP (PPP) per capita ranks them roughly 100the world. While their total GDP (PPP) is third, that's essentially a meaningless number for military purposes.
To put it in micro-economic terms, China has far less disposable income to spend on it's military then its raw GDP would suggest.
So using Taiwan to tie up Chinese resources seems, to me, like a poor choice. We increase our chances of war but decrease our potential opponent's ability to fight it effectively. But they couldn't fight us effectively to begin with.
I concede the merit of preventive measures and also of securing democracy close to China but I feel Taiwan is sufficiently removed from American interests that this is a poor choice.
And now back to criminal procedure.
By , at
Thu Apr 10, 03:21:00 PM:
It makes sense. It is similar to our grand-strategic interest in West Berlin during the Cold War; as a tripwire to sop up enemy divisions that made the cost of launching and offensive war more expensive, while also making it easier to detect in advance.
Didn't work so well in the Philippines during WWII, though, did it?
By 
D.E. Cloutier, at
Thu Apr 10, 03:35:00 PM:
Too blank a check? I agree.
This is simply more propaganda from the heirs of the manipulative warlord Chiang Kai-shek. They already have Pelosi's ear.
I can tell you one thing. Over the years, America's enemies such as Iran often have used middlemen in Taiwan as front men during attempts to buy military aviation spare parts and other resticted items from the U.S.
By , at
Thu Apr 10, 04:03:00 PM:
So... our support of Taiwanese independence => our possible naval intervention. Our possible naval intervention => the Chinese require a stronger Navy. If the Chinese require a stronger Navy to achieve their goals, they will build one as they can afford it.
But a weak Chinese navy is good for us; a strong Chinese navy is bad. Therefore, any strategy which encourages the strengthening of the Chinese fleet would seem not to be predicated on the desire to maintain a weak Chinese navy, would it?
I concur that in raw power politics, supporting Taiwan makes sense in order to deny Chinese hegemony in eastern Asia, just as it would make sense to be better friends with Korea, Vietnam, India, and Japan than those nations are with the Chinese. Other powers use the same strategy to justify inroads in the Americas. But I don't think it has anything to do with an overarching grand naval strategy.
By , at
Thu Apr 10, 04:22:00 PM:
Actually if such a strategy exists, it sounds too clever by half as some comments have noted. Indeed, Stratfor is off the mark as well, since the best way for China to neutralize Taiwan is to actually build a blue-water Navy. That doing so is so much more expensive and difficult than anyone who does not have a blue-water Navy can imagine, is a strategic-economic-technological lesson that the Chinese are discovering - just as the Soviets, Imperial Germany and others also discovered in their day.
By Escort81, at
Thu Apr 10, 07:23:00 PM:
What Squid said (how can you disagree with a name like that on naval matters?).
Stratfor touches on the difference between a littoral navy and a blue water navy. Iran, for example, has decent financial resources with spot oil around $100/bbl, but does not have the technology or manpower or experience to project much force beyond its shoreline (if that). China certainly has elements of a blue water navy, and is growing it fast, but has a force structure that is primarily focused on coastal defense and patrol of the sea lanes in Asia/Pacific (termed “Offshore Defense”.) If pirates off the coast of Somalia seized a PRC flagged freighter, Beijing could respond eventually, but probably not as fast or efficiently as the U.S. Navy.
Beijing very much wants Taiwan back in the fold, and the PRC Navy remains partly focused on Taiwan. There have been periods of thaw between Beijing and Taiwan since the turnover of Hong Kong, with Beijing basically saying, "see, the HK Chinese are happy to be back, it could work out for you, too," but now is not one of those periods, particularly in light of recent events in Tibet. As the PRC grows stronger economically, the incentive for Taiwan to engage in some kind of peaceful reincorporation ought to grow, one would think, but old grudges die hard (and in this case it is not primarily a religious or racial thing.)
The U.S. Navy essentially ensures the free flow of commerce throughout the oceans, and therefore the U.S. taxpayer in some ways can be seen as underwriting international free trade. It can project significant force pretty much anywhere in the world -- the byproduct of having multiple carrier groups and a good number of subs. It is both a blue water navy (likely the most dominant in the history of the last millennium, with apologies to England) and a littoral Navy (particularly if the Marines are included). Any straight-up engagement with the U.S. Navy (setting aside a terrorist attack such as the one on the U.S.S. Cole) is likely to be swift and decisive.
By , at
Fri Apr 11, 05:09:00 PM:
Personally, I agree that the US guarantee of the Republic of China's security is too vaguely defined, but necessary.
I believe that I have good reason to believe that security/military circumstances will improve with the transition of power to Ma Ying Jeou. He plans to take pragmatic steps in integrating cooperation in the traditional KMT agenda. The last 8 years have been dominated by a president intent on exploiting the longstanding ethnic/origin resentment, causing problems that could have been avoided. With a different approach, there should be less of a threat friction between China and the US.
By TourPro, at
Sun Apr 13, 07:40:00 AM:
This issue is extremely complicated and dates back to before WWII. All of that history aside, politics and life is an ongoing psyop.
As our relation with the PRC evolves, Taiwan's significance as a propaganda tool has waxed and waned. So has its military strategic value.
Bottom line - In the end, military/strategic value trumps all. Just whip our a map and you'll see. Oil on one end, China and East Asia on the other. If yo pull it up on Google Earth, you can see all the tankers going back and forth.
For the same reason we have Diego Garcia, places like the Strait of Malacca and Taiwan hold the key to life or death for many countries. China included.
The economic reality is that neither China or Taiwan have a desire to engage in a mutually fatal battle. They are doing too much business together. However, for both governments, there is a huge benefit for their own legitimacy to continue the charade which has gone on for almost a whole century. (a century is arguable, but you can trace the roots of the ideas behind these two groups easily that far back)
