Andrew S. Erickson

Jonathan Chin, “U.S. Must Not Lose Taiwan, Experts Warn,” Taipei Times, 18 February 2024, 1.

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Sun, Feb 18, 2024 page 1

US must not lose Taiwan, experts warn

‘A DISASTER’: A successful Chinese attack on Taiwan would undermine the credibility of US security guarantees and could result in a global depression, three experts wrote 

By Jonathan Chin / Staff writer

A Chinese takeover of Taiwan would be a geopolitical catastrophe for the US and its allies, one that would overshadow almost all others over the next decade, US policy experts said.

Andrew Erickson, a professor of strategy in the US Naval War College’s China Maritime Studies Institute; Gabriel Collins, a fellow at Rice University’s Baker Institute for Public Policy; and former US deputy national security adviser Matthew Pottinger issued the warning in an article published on Tuesday in Foreign Affairs.

Bejing’s invasion or annexation of Taiwan “would be a disaster of utmost importance to the United States, and I am convinced that time is of the essence,” they quoted US general Douglas MacArthur as writing in a secret memorandum dated June 1950, saying that now, his “words ring truer than ever.”

Taiwan proper is strategically valuable, as it “anchors Japan’s defense and denies China a springboard from which it could threaten US allies in the western Pacific,” they wrote.

Beyond the unchanging influence of geography, developments since MacArthur’s era have made Taiwan more important to global security and prosperity than ever before, they said.

Taiwan’s transition to a full democracy on China’s doorstep further increases its significance, because its “subjugation to Beijing’s totalitarianism would hinder democratic aspirations across the region, including in China itself,” they said.

Taiwan has become a microchip powerhouse, making it indispensable to the global economy, and a conflict could easily result in a global depression, they said.

Although there is a wide network of US allies across the Indo-Pacific region, the countries are reliant on Washington for their security, they said.

A successful Chinese attack on Taiwan would undermine the credibility of US security guarantees, triggering a race for nuclear weapons in the region, they said.

Whether “one cares about the future of democracy in Asia or prefers to ponder only the cold math of realpolitik, Taiwan’s fate matters,” they said.

If Taiwan’s democratic “system were extinguished, Beijing would have erased the world’s first liberal democracy whose founders include many people of Chinese heritage — and, with it, living proof that there is a workable, appealing alternative to Beijing’s totalitarianism,” they said.

Citing the Economist Intelligence Unit, they said Taiwan is ranked the world’s eighth-most fully democratic polity, ahead of every country in Asia, the UK and the US.

Taiwan is also deemed one of the world’s economically equitable societies, despite being among its richest, having overtaken Japan in per capita GDP last year, they added.

Taiwan’s “strong democracy” forms a sharp contrast to China’s political system, where 1.4 billion people sharing many [linguistic] traditions and cultural traditions are subjugated under Beijing’s totalitarian regime, they said.

“Officials in Beijing have long tried to caricature Taiwan as slavishly imitating Western forms of governance,” they said. “But it is actually the Chinese Communist Party that is doing so by clinging to its Marxist-Leninist system, a discredited political model imported from Europe.”

“The loss of Taiwan as a democratic alternative would end the experiment with popular, multiparty self-governance by a society with significant Chinese heritage, with bad tidings for the possibility of democracy in China and far beyond,” they said.

Citing former US president Dwight Eisenhower, they said the fall of Taiwan would trigger a “dangerous chain reaction” by threatening the security of Japan, the Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam and severely harming vital US interests.

“Taiwan’s annexation in the face of US inaction or ineffective action would present US allies in Asia and Europe with a nightmare they have never faced before: Washington proving unable to protect a polity that is an ally in all but name,” they said.

Chinese President Xi Jinping’s (習近平) pressure on Taiwan is no less significant a test of US resolve than the one posed by Joseph Stalin’s blockade of West Berlin in 1948, they said.

“The stakes are equally stark today with Taiwan — and there is no time left to waste,” they said.

***Please note: The views expressed here are those of the authors alone and do not represent the views of any organization with which any of them are, or have been, affiliated. Accordingly, they do not necessarily represent the views, policies, or positions of the U.S. Department of Defense or its components, to include the Department of the Navy or the U.S. Naval War College.***

ORIGINAL PUBLICATION ON WHICH THIS SUMMARY ARTICLE IS BASED:

Andrew S. Erickson, Gabriel B. Collins, and Matt Pottinger, “The Taiwan Catastrophe: What America—and the World—Would Lose If China Took the Island,” Foreign Affairs, 16 February 2024.

• Most-read article on Foreign Affairs website.
• Weekend reading on RealClearDefense.
• Summarized in Taipei Times as lead article/front page.

Washington and its allies face many potential geopolitical catastrophes over the next decade, but nearly all pale in comparison to what would ensue if China annexed or invaded Taiwan. Such an outcome, one U.S. official put it, “would be a disaster of utmost importance to the United States, and I am convinced that time is of the essence.” That was General Douglas MacArthur in June 1950, then overseeing occupied Japan and worrying in a top-secret memo to Washington about the prospect that the Communists in China might seek to vanquish their Nationalist enemies once and for all. More than 70 years later, MacArthur’s words ring truer than ever.

Then, as now, Taiwan’s geography matters. A self-governing Taiwan anchors Japan’s defense and denies China a springboard from which it could threaten U.S. allies in the western Pacific. But unlike in the 1950s, when Taiwan was under the authoritarian rule of Chiang Kai-Shek, today the island is a full-blown liberal democracy—whose subjugation to Beijing’s totalitarianism would hinder democratic aspirations across the region, including in China itself. And unlike in MacArthur’s time, Taiwan today is economically crucial to the rest of the world, by virtue of its role as the primary producer of advanced microchips. A war over the island could easily cause a global depression. Yet another key difference between MacArthur’s time and today is the flourishing of a wide network of U.S. allies across the Indo-Pacific, countries that rely on U.S. support for their security. A Chinese seizure of Taiwan could trigger a race among nations to develop their own nuclear arsenals as U.S. security guarantees lost credibility.

In recent years, Chinese leader Xi Jinping has shown an impatient determination to resolve Taiwan’s status in a way his predecessors never did. He has ordered a meteoric military buildup, instructing Chinese forces to give him by 2027 a full range of options for unifying Taiwan. These signals are triggering debate in Washington and elsewhere about whether Taiwan is strategically and economically important enough to merit protection through the most challenging of contingencies. But make no mistake: whether one cares about the future of democracy in Asia or prefers to ponder only the cold math of realpolitik, Taiwan’s fate matters. … … …

• ANDREW S. ERICKSON is Professor of Strategy in the Naval War College’s China Maritime Studies Institute and a Visiting Scholar in Harvard University’s Government Department.

• GABRIEL B. COLLINS is a Fellow at Rice University’s Baker Institute for Public Policy, Center for Energy Studies, and heads the center’s Program on Energy & Geopolitics in Eurasia.

• MATT POTTINGER served as U.S. Deputy National Security Adviser from 2019 to 2021 and is editor of the forthcoming book The Boiling Moat: Urgent Steps to Defend Taiwan.

Please note: The views expressed here are those of the authors alone and do not represent the views of any organization with which any of them are, or have been, affiliated. Accordingly, they do not necessarily represent the views, policies, or positions of the U.S. Department of Defense or its components, to include the Department of the Navy or the U.S. Naval War College.