New SuperPower Rising – China Calls America’s Bluff!

Taiwan turns warming friendship between China (Pres. Hu Jintao) and America (Pres. Bush) very cold indeed!

Yesterday, China’s National People’s Congress enacted a new law to provide legal justification for the use of military force if Taiwan dares to declare formal independence from China. The Bill (which passed 2,896 to 0) is only the latest manifestation of China’s escalating feud with this tiny island nation that it regards as nothing more than an unruly province of China.

What is most significant about this development, however, are the political and military implications it poses for the United States. President Bush issued very public warnings to the Chinese to refrain from enacting this law because it would be regarded as a defiant and unnecessary provocation. But the Chinese called Bush’s bluff.

Indeed, the Chinese government’s blatant disregard for Bush’s wishes demonstrates, in rather humiliating fashion, America’s diminished capacity to intimidate or influence China politically. Nevertheless, Bush’s warnings were motivated more by military than political concerns. Because America is obligated by Treaty to defend Taiwan against the very thing China’s new law proposes to do. And, there’s the rub…that begs certain questions:

Will America now move heaven and earth to dissuade Taiwan from ever declaring national independence?

Do the Taiwanese remain so determined to gain their independence that they will check China’s move with an equally defiant act – as they have always done in their 55 year feud with the Chinese?

Given his clarion call for Lebanon’s independence from Syria, can Bush now countenance any attempt to deny the people of Taiwan their independence?

Will China seek a political pretext for military incursions into Taiwan even absent a triggering declaration of independence?

Have China’s military advisers assured their political leaders that China’s massive military could take Taiwan with more ease and in less time than it took the American military to defeat the Taliban in Afghanistan?

Indeed, notwithstanding America’s Treaty with Taiwan, has China already discounted any retaliation by the United States if it invades Taiwan because of America’s perceived military fatigue (and vulnerability) from its involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan, and its preoccupation with the amorphous war on terror?

And, is establishing unquestioned authority over Taiwan so important to China that it is willing to risk war with America, derail its booming economy, forfeit the highly coveted prestige of hosting the 2008 Olympics and start a bloody civil war to do so?

In addition to these troubling questions, it is worth noting that China’s new law was not enacted in a vacuum. The Americans are currently relying on China’s military and political influence to keep North Korea’s nuclear posturing in check. China has effectively check-mated America’s influence in many areas of the world including Africa, the Caribbean and Latin America. (The wonder is that developing countries are not playing the United States off against China for unconditional foreign aid, the way they played the United State off against the Soviet Union during the first Cold War. See in Archives China Buying Political Dominion over the Caribbean) And, in recent years, China has built up a sophisticated and diverse military that more than doubles American forces in man power and is fast approaching parity in conventional armaments.

(Indeed, to add insult to the injury, the Europeans have ignored America’s strenuous objections to their plans to break the arms embargo against China and have vowed to begin selling the very latest in military technology to China this year. It seems that America’s European allies do not care that their arms could be used by China to kill Americans in a war over Taiwan.)

Step aside America! This is not your fight. Besides, we have you way outnumbered…

China also has the world’s fastest growing economy. And, it has co-opted markets for its goods throughout Asia, Europe and the developing world that give it considerably more economic leverage with the United States than was the case just a few years ago. Moreover, China has developed bilateral relationships with countries like Russia and Venezuela that secure supplies for its unparalleled and unprecedented energy demands for the long term. In fact, in many ways, China is supplanting Russia as a worthy counterweight to the US – in a superpower form reminiscent of America’s cold war nemesis, the Soviet Union.

Given all of the above, the geopolitics of this situation clearly favors China’s dominion over Taiwan. Moreover, China seems to be acting pursuant to a very rational reading of American strategic interests. Because that fact is, notwithstanding Treaty obligations, America has no strategic interest in trying to prevent China from “reclaiming its territorial sovereignty over Taiwan”. And, it will not risk tens of thousands of American lives fighting for Taiwan’s independence.

(Perhaps a conference with Poland on the reliability of security guarantees might help Taiwan better assess its current political dilemma before it becomes a military problem.)

Of course, these very same factors also militate against China invading Taiwan. Why would any rational thinking Chinese leader risk so much for what would be at best a pyrrhic victory?

At any rate, America will not defend Taiwan against China. Besides, though no one would say so publicly, the sheer size of China’s military might prove too daunting for the Americans to even consider fighting by conventional means. And, notwithstanding Bush’s abandonment of America’s longstanding policy of “no first use” of nuclear weapons, no one expects America to use nuclear weapons against China over Taiwan.

One has to wonder, therefore, what message the Americans are sending to Taiwan’s leaders who seem hell bent on pursing national independence (even though the majority of Taiwanese favor the status quo of being a semi-autonomous territory of China). Because, all indications are that risking war with China seems a death wish.

Ok China. You win. If it means that much to you, Taiwan’s yours for the taking!

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