Defending Taiwan, and why it matters

Naval War College Review, Autumn, 2001 by Chris Rahman

The unresolved political status of Taiwan has over the past decade assumed a renewed urgency, to the extent that conflict across the Taiwan Strait has overtaken that on the Korean Peninsula as the most likely war scenario in East Asia. The Taiwanese democratization process combined with regime weakness and a process of domestic change within China itself to create the conditions for the deterioration of cross-strait relations that led to Beijing's 1995-96 series of military exercises, culminating in the temporary, de facto blockade of Taiwan's two major ports as a result of China's ballistic missile tests in March 1996. Since that time cross-strait tensions have hardly abated, with the election in 2000 of the (at one time) openly pro-independence presidential candidate of the Democratic Progressive Party, Chen Shui-bian. Underlying the pedantry over definitions of "one China" and other impediments to meaningful dialogue between Beijing and Taipei, however, is a more serious problem. The problem, simply stated , is that the future political status of Taiwan itself is growing in significance as a vital national interest for other states in the context of the expansion of China's power and influence throughout maritime East Asia.

The status of Taiwan has also been the primary irritant affecting Sino-U.S. relations, a point placed in stark relief by the 1996 missile crisis, when the United States deployed two carrier battle groups near the island, and by incessant warnings from Beijing over foreign interference in China's "domestic affairs" ever since. More recently, the 1 April 2001 EP-3 surveillance plane incident prompted repeated Chinese demands for the cessation of U.S. surveillance flights near Chinese territory. (1)

The United States has had to balance its relations with China both to avoid actual hostilities on one hand, and to satisfy popular domestic opinion and uphold its obligation to assist Taiwan to defend itself from Chinese aggression, as set out in the Taiwan Relations Act of 1979, on the other. (2) In addition to these immediate concerns are a range of factors that further complicate American policy on Taiwan. These include the positions and security interests of America's key regional allies; the responsibility necessarily shouldered by the world's sole superpower to uphold liberal values in the international system; and the uncomfortable possibility that Taiwan's continued geopolitical separation from the Chinese mainland now represents a vital strategic value for U.S.(and allied) interests in the western Pacific.

Taiwanese democratization and the missile crisis have been well documented. This article will assess instead the potential geopolitical significance of the island of Taiwan in the new East Asian security environment. Initially, this article will address briefly the question of how Taiwan is important, and might become more so, in wider political, economic, and ethical perspectives, before providing a detailed examination of the island's potential strategic significance in the context of the interests of the three major players in East Asian security--China., Japan, and the United States. Finding that there are genuinely irreconcilable interests at play in maritime East Asia, the article will suggest that Taiwan is becoming an increasingly urgent problem for regional security, not due simply to the potential for near-term armed conflict across the Taiwan Strait but also, and perhaps more fundamentally, to the rather more perplexing (for diplomats and strategists alike) consideration that over the longer term T aiwan will hold ever greater geostrategic value in the unfolding competition over political, economic, strategic, and even moral leadership in East Asia between China and a loose American maritime coalition. This article will also address some of the operational considerations involved in deterring China and defending Taiwan, including potential shortcomings of U.S. strategy and military posture in the region.

WHY TAIWAN MAY MATTER

Taiwan's democratization process has produced the world's only Chinese democracy. The legitimacy of Taiwan's bid for international recognition as a sovereign entity was considerably boosted in the eyes of Western popular opinion by its rapid democratization under the presidency of Lee Teng-hui, and democratization has increased the domestic political incentives in many democratic countries (especially in the United States) to protect Taiwan should another crisis erupt across the Taiwan Strait. Although Taiwanese public opinion remains divided over the details of the island's relationship with China--a fact well understood by President Chen--it is unlikely that the Taiwanese would ever accept unification on China's terms. (4) Thus, Taiwan's successful democratization arguably creates an ethical responsibility for the United States (and to a lesser extent other liberal states) to protect that democracy and its vibrant market economy, a responsibility based less on idealistic grounds than on "enlightened self-in terest" in maintaining the U.S.-dominated liberal international political order. (5) The ethical consideration becomes yet more pronounced if one considers the tenuousness of China's sovereignty claim. Taiwan's history is a complex one, in which inhabitants of the island were often ruled by outside powers, yet Taiwan has never been successfully integrated, politically, with mainland China. (6)