Defending Taiwan

At Bloomberg Hal Brands considers the prospect of the U. S.’s defending Taiwan against a Chinese invasion:

There’s no question that the Chinese military threat to Taiwan is greater than it’s been in decades. From probing Taiwanese air and naval defenses, to posturing forces that could be used in an invasion, to dropping the word “peaceful” from its calls for reunification, Xi Jinping’s government is advertising its determination to bring Taiwan back under its control — perhaps not today or tomorrow, but at some point in the coming years. And whereas China long had more ambition than capability, the military balance has now moved sharply in its favor.

The stakes are high:

First, Taiwan is key to the military balance in the entire Western Pacific. Taiwan anchors the first island chain, which runs from Japan down to the Philippines. In friendly hands, it constitutes a natural barrier to the projection of Chinese air and sea power into the open ocean. In Beijing’s hands, Taiwan would be a stepping stone to regional hegemony.

Control of Taiwan would allow Beijing to extend the reach of its anti-ship missiles, air defenses, fighter and bomber aircraft, and other weapons hundreds of additional miles from its shores. It would let Beijing menace Japan’s energy supplies, sea lines of communication, and even its control of the southern Ryukyu Islands. By complicating American operations in support of remaining regional allies — especially Japan and the Philippines — the loss of Taiwan might well make these countries wonder if opposing Chinese hegemony is even possible.

Second, the loss of Taiwan would shatter U.S. credibility. Credibility is a controversial concept, but America’s alliances in the Pacific rest on the belief that Washington is able and willing to protect them from harm. Once it is revealed that America cannot or will not defend Taiwan, it would be foolish for Tokyo, Manila or Seoul not to wonder whether alignment with the U.S. is still worth incurring China’s wrath. As Taiwan goes, so may go the region.

Finally, Taiwan is a small country with outsized ideological significance. The Chinese Communist Party has long argued that democracy and Chinese culture are incompatible. That’s nonsense, of course, as the mere existence of Taiwan demonstrates. In difficult circumstances, Taipei has done almost everything the world could have asked of it: It has built a strong market economy and made the transition from dictatorship to democracy. Taiwan is a living reminder that the Chinese regime has brought its citizens prosperity but not freedom.

and it would be extremely risky:

According to press reports, Pentagon-sponsored war games consistently show that the U.S. military would struggle to act quickly and decisively enough to prevent the People’s Liberation Army from overrunning Taiwan. A former deputy director of the Central Intelligence Agency, Michael Morell, and a former vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, James Winnefeld, recently argued that a Chinese assault would present Washington with the agonizing choice of either intervening — and suffering catastrophic losses, possibly in a losing cause — or standing aside and seeing the island subdued.

I hold the unthinkable view that the only conflict that the U. S. should be willing to engage with China in involves unleashing a considerable proportion of our nuclear arsenal on China at the outset of hostilities and being prepared to kill hundreds of millions of Chinese as well as possibly putting millions of Americans at risk. The notion that there is such a thing as a proportional response in dealing with China is absurd on its face. Since I don’t believe that any present American political leader would do that, I think that at least privately we should be telling the Taiwanese they need to be prepared to defend themselves or be Hong Kongified.