The Importance of Taiwan

Bill at By Dawn’s Early Light has put together a nice post that considers China’s expanding power and constructs what might be a reasonable approach to containing that power, especially when it is directed against Taiwan. The post is worth reading for its discussion of Chinese capabilities and intentions, as well as for its links to a number of other posts, including this by Joe Katzman and this article by Kenneth Sherman discussing cross-strait capabilities.

I have a couple of quibbles, both associated with Bill’s assessment of the US need to defend Taiwan. I think we have to nail down, in concrete terms, why exactly the United States should defend Taiwan and what price the United States should pay for Taiwanese autonomy. While some offical ambiguity regarding Taiwan is useful, this can’t stop us from having the necessary debates.

First, we have to decide why we want to defend Taiwan. Frankly, the security justification doesn’t turn me on. I don’t think that China will be able to use Taiwan as a stepping stone to some other conquest, and I think that the nations of East Asia will be more inclined to balance against China than to bandwagon with in the case of an invasion. While we may understand an invasion of Taiwan as Chinese aggression, the Chinese don’t; they consider it re-unification. Thus, their behavior against Taiwan will be different than their behavior toward Vietnam, Korea, or any other East Asian state. Moreover, I think we can safely dispose of the notion that a failure to defend Taiwan will fatally wound our reputation for defending our allies; the Europeans were never overly impressed by our action in Vietnam, and reputations don’t form in the way that this argument expects them to in any case.

The democracy and humanitarian justifications are compelling to me, but in a different way than they are compelling to Bill Rice. For both of us, Taiwanese democracy is a good in and of itself, and is worth defending. I would be very unhappy to see the Chinese devour Taiwan and replace the democratic state with an authoritarian one, and I’d be willing to commit US forces to prevent that from happening. Bill makes a different argument, one that take the democratic rhetoric of the Bush administration much more seriously than I do:

If the US fails to defend a democratic Taiwan from China, then it destroys any credibility won in the War on Terror with other nations. If we fail Taiwan, what is our response to Iraq, Afghanistan, Israel, Ukraine, Japan, Australia, our European allies, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and many other nations that depend on American security?

Additionally, allowing China to take Taiwan by force would automatically make the 21st century a Chinese century, as the ability for the US to promote and defend global security would crumble. Any century that has a non-free government at the apex of the international order will not be a century of peace, economic development and the expansion of liberty.

Bill thinks that the US has won much more credibility than I think the US has won. I would point to Robert Jervis’ Perception and Misperception, and remind Bill that the way that we explain our own actions differs considerably from the way that others explain our actions. Thus, I’m not convinced we have any credibility to lose by not defending Taiwan. A failure to defend Taiwan might be fatal to the Bush administration because some Americans actually buy the rhetoric, but I doubt it will present any other problem for US credibility.

Bill’s second argument is a rehash of the reputation argument I discuss above. Frankly, all of those states need us more than we need them. If Japan or Israel want to begin paying for their own defense, more power to them. I doubt very much that any of them will be dissuaded from alliance with the US because of what happens to Taiwan. Of the examples, Bill cites, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Iraq already understand that they represent far more critical US interests than Taiwan does. In the Cold War, the threat that our European allies might turn to the Soviet Union or to benevolent neutrality if we were wishy-washy was at least plausible, but what exactly is the downside of that now? The suggestion that a lack of credibility might somehow incline the Israelis to seek other security arrangements is somewhere far, far beyond the absurd.

As for the “free century vs. authoritarian century”, I think Bill is lending this situation far more global significance than it actually has. If this were the Soviet Union vs. the United States in a era of ideological conflict, I might be inclined to take the argument more seriously as a conflict between authoritarianism and democracy. The current Chinese regime, however, is simply not evangelical. In many ways, it’s not even ideological. I don’t see any ideological ripples emerging from a Chinese conquest of Taiwan, and I’m inclined to think that unification might actually result in a more open Chinese system. As for making the 21st century Chinese or American, I think Bill is talking nonsense. The 21st century will be American, Chinese, Japanese, and whatever else, and the conquest of Taiwan won’t make a bit of difference in any direction. What will matter more is China’s increasing economic strength in East Asia and the world.

The second argument, that of the costs of defending Taiwan, must be considered in light of these questions. If the security of Taiwan is to be considered valuable on its own merits, as I have contended, rather than on these greater considerations, which Bill has argued, then the cost we would be willing to pay is necessarily lower. I’m not certain what costs Bill Rice, or George Bush, or John Bolton, or anyone else advocating a commitment to Taiwan would be willing to pay. I would guess that the price would not extend to the destruction of an American city by Chinese nuclear weapons. To say that this would be an unlikely outcome is to elude the question rather than answer it.

What cost would I be willing to pay? Long term commitment of US ground forces to Taiwan, long term commitment to defend Taiwanese airspace and sea lanes, and a fair amount of loss of air, naval, and ground assets in an actual shooting war. That’s what Taiwanese democracy is worth to me. If the Chinese are willing to pay more, if they’re willing to trade cities, then they win. Defending Taiwan from the PRC is not worth nearly as much as defending Germany from the Soviet Union. The most similar situation would probably be that of South Korea, where a relatively modest commitment has given the Koreans space to construct a democratic regime and a functioning, robust economy.