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Melos or Pylos?
Naval War College Review, Summer, 2005 by James R. Holmes, Toshi Yoshihara
The past foue years have witnessed an unexpected warming of relations between the United States and China. The rancor generated by the EP-3 spy-plane controversy and the debate over American arms sales to Taiwan dissipated in the wake of the 11 September 2001 terrorist attacks on New York and Washington. Beijing supported the U.S.-led campaign in Afghanistan. It has co-operated with the United States in the war on terror, sharing intelligence and coordinating law-enforcement efforts. (1) Perhaps most strikingly, Chinese officials have worked quietly but assiduously to break the nuclear impasse on the Korean Peninsula.
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Understandably, many observers in the West have hailed the seeming shift in Chinese foreign policy in a more pro-American direction, interpreting it as evidence that Sino-American relations will remain on the upswing. Other moves by Beijing, however, cast doubt on this optimistic view. Wary of Taiwan's seeming drift toward independence, China has stationed some five hundred ballistic missiles across the Taiwan Strait from the island and is deploying additional missiles each year. (2) These missiles have no plausible purpose other than to coerce Taipei into opening talks on reunification with the mainland--or, failing that, to batter the island into submission.
Chinese leaders have talked, loudly and often, about doing just that if the Taiwanese persevere in President Chen Shui-bian's plans to enact a new constitution by 2008. (3) Beijing interprets Chen's advocacy of a new constitution as a precursor to de jure independence from the mainland. In the meantime China has pursued an aggressive program of military modernization, purchasing or building the armaments it would need to make good its threats against the island. (4) Of particular note are purchases of aircraft, warships, and missiles overtly intended to give the People's Liberation Army (PLA) the ability to fend off U.S. reinforcements if indeed Beijing chooses war. (5)
On the other side of the Strait, the deeply divided Taiwanese electorate and legislature have been unable to agree to arm themselves. (6) Plans to purchase diesel submarines from the United States, for example, have effectively been shelved; (7) that decision leaves the Taiwanese navy with only four boats--two of World War II vintage--to fight off China's large, increasingly potent undersea force. (8) The outlook for Taiwan's surface fleet is equally bleak. Four retired American guided-missile destroyers are scheduled for delivery starting this year, but Washington, fearful of antagonizing Beijing, has yet to approve the sale of Aegis destroyers that Taiwan really needs if it is to shoot down the barrage of ballistic missiles likely to be lofted its way in wartime. (9) Even if the Bush administration relents on an Aegis sale, it remains doubtful that Taiwanese lawmakers will be able to set aside their factional bickering long enough to approve the billions needed for such a purchase.
In short, the cross-Strait military balance is tipping rapidly in favor of the mainland at a time when pressure is mounting on Beijing to act. The likelihood of a war in the Strait in the near term has risen sharply. If the military imbalance continues to grow and Taipei persists with Chen's plans for a new constitution, thus edging toward one of Beijing's red lines for military action, Taiwan could suffer the fate that befell another island nation that dared, two and a half millennia ago, to defy a powerful neighbor that coveted its territory. Taiwan needs to consider that fate and how it can be avoided. China too could learn from island wars of antiquity. Beijing ought to take a clear-eyed look at the hazards of protracted maritime war before it reaches for the gun. Finally, the United States could find in this historical case grist for some of the hard thinking it has to do about the cross-Strait impasse.
MELOS AND TAIWAN
The classics can help Taiwanese, Chinese, and American leaders sort out the situation in the Taiwan Strait. In 416 BC the leadership of the Greek city-state of Melos opted to fight the mighty Athenian empire rather than accept vassal status. Athens had been at war against Sparta, to the south in the Peloponnesus, more or less continuously since 431 BC (see map). Athens had been unable to make much headway on land against the vaunted Spartan infantry, while Sparta was no match for Athens at sea. Frustrations were mounting on both sides. A fragile peace was in place, but it was in the process of unraveling. (10)
Athens chose this moment to target Melos. Why? Thucydides, the premier historian of the Peloponnesian War and an eyewitness to many of the war's events, sheds light on Athenian motives in his account of the Melian Dialogue, the famous exchange between top Melian leaders and an Athenian delegation dispatched to wring surrender from them in advance. After pleading unsuccessfully with the Athenian ambassadors to allow the island to maintain its neutrality, the Melian Council opted for defiance. Melos fell after a brief siege. The Athenian assembly voted to kill its adult male population and enslave the women and children.
