Dying for Taipei?
I must admit that talk of getting into a major war with China to defend Taiwan scares the hell out of me.
First of all, absolutely no sane person should take the idea of a war with China lightly. I see no scenario in which that war would not be devastating, even if we were to prevail, which is by no means a sure thing. Never mind the fighting; the economic consequences could be devastating.
But we have to talk about the fighting: China would benefit from its ability to concentrate its means in that one theater, whereas the America could never do that to nearly the same extent. Bear that in mind when you read any numbers-based comparisons of the two sides’ militaries. The really stupid commentators make statements to the effect that we should not worry because China has not fought a war since the Sino-Vietnamese War of 1979, which China lost. Betting against the Chinese’ ability to learn and apply what they’ve learned is, frankly, crazy, if not racist. Besides, America has not fought a war of that scale and nature since Korea, and no major naval battles since World War Two. The last time the United States went toe-to-toe with anyone in an even fight in which we enjoyed neither “air dominance” nor command of the sea was Guadalcanal (1942-1943). Guadalcanal was, by the way, the last big battle we fought against the Japanese that we could have lost; the result of every battle after was a forgone conclusion, and all that remained in doubt was how many people we would lose in the process. If anyone says, “yeah, but what about Desert Shield or the 2003 Iraq war?” you have my permission to laugh at them. If anything, those “victories” are liabilities, for they confirmed us in our high opinion of our warfighting prowess rather than caused us to think hard about what went wrong.
How to respond to people who believe are confident of an American victory over China
But ok, Taiwan is a democracy worth defending, and China’s a totalitarian bully. So, should we not stand by Taipei?
I am ambivalent. Taiwan is not a treaty ally (like the Philippines, whom we absolutely should back in its fight with China over the Philippine claims in the South China Sea), which means we frankly are under no real obligation to do anything.
Here are some things to consider:
1. China, not unreasonably, sees Taiwan as part of China.
2. China sees Taiwan as a last missing piece in its decades-long quest to re-assemble its imperial domains and throw off what it sees as foreign imperialist enclaves; it’s a last step in a nationalist project that is of great importance to the Chinese. (Taiwan was a Japanese colony from 1895-1945; before that it was part of the Qing Dynasty.)
3. Getting into a major war with China is a terrible idea.
The significance of points 1 and 2 is that Taiwan is not negotiable from China’s point of view. The significance of point 3 is that we must be extremely careful.
About point 3, I once participated in a major study at RAND that involved looking into patterns in global conflict to determine whether global conflict was cyclical. It was not RAND’s idea, but rather that of an American general who must have read something or other about trends in global conflict and wanted RAND to check it out. Being a RAND study, the work mostly was done by data scientists who had all sorts of sophisticated ways to crunch data sets related to global conflict in search of patterns and correlations. (The data was garbage—I’m looking at you, Correlates of War—but that’s another story.) I was brought into the project as the token “qualitative” guy, an actual historian. I was tasked to see if the quantitative findings made any sense from a qualitative point of view. Kudos to the project lead of thinking of doing that. Anyway, I ended up focusing on Asian conflicts because I was (rightfully) suspicious of the data regarding the scale of China’s wars. The data Correlates used was mostly fiction. But what chilled me was reading about China’s wars in the 19th centuries, including the wars associated with Zuo Zongtang, aka General Tso of chicken fame.
Zuo Zongtang, aka General Tso of chicken fame. Not a man to mess with.
Basically, the scale of the bloodshed in China’s wars makes Europe’s wars look like picnics. The worst of them, the Taiping Rebellion (1850-1864) resulted in 20-30 million deaths, and perhaps as high as 100 million. Nobody really knows. Zuo Zongtang also led the Qing effort to crush the Dungan Rebellion (1862-1877). That little conflict killed a mere 21 million people, including an estimated (no one knows) 75% of the population of Gansu Province. Yes, General Tso was a first-class genocidaire. The bottom line for our study, and perhaps one of the only valid insights it provided, was to “never fight a land war in Asia.”
Does this mean we must abandon Taiwan? No. We should do everything imaginable to strengthen it and enhance its ability to determine its own destiny. But stay clear of war.
The Philippines is another matter.