“War on Taiwan would be unthinkable,” said Eric Sayers, a visiting fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. A major challenge facing Washington is that Taiwan is considered by many to be a 2035 planning problem. … The [Chinese army’s] capabilities have now lapsed to such an extent that it is no longer a dilemma we can afford to push out. ”
How to avoid the scenario, however, is a question that has confused previous U.S. administrations, as China appears to be moving one step closer to Taiwan each year. The new Biden team must be prepared to go to the mat to Taiwan and ensure that the island can defend itself, but without further mocking Beijing.
“If we interfere, we are the reagent catalyst that will make this problem hotter,” said one senior defense official, who asked to remain anonymous to discuss sensitive operational planning. “We know militarily that if we do too much, push too hard, China will use the optics and they will do more against Taiwan.”
The warning comes after four years of mixed signals from President Donald Trump and his administration. Trump angered Beijing after taking office with a phone call to Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen, and his government regularly offered big arms sales and high-profile visits.
However, Trump also indicated that America may not come to Taipei’s defense in the event of a Chinese invasion, and reportedly told a Republican senator in 2019: ‘Taiwan is about two feet from China. … We are eight thousand kilometers away. If they invade, we can do nothing about it. ”
The new Biden team knows that the US is in competition with China, and Beijing’s coercion from Taiwan will be an important point of discussion. For now, they are keeping pressure on Beijing applied by Trump through tariffs and sanctions. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin and Secretary of State Antony Blinken are in Japan for the first stop on a joint visit to Asia, where fighting China will be at the top of the agenda. The two travel along South Korea before Austin leaves for India and Blinken leaves for Alaska, where Jake Sullivan, the national security adviser, will join him.
Washington and Taipei have no formal diplomatic relations, and officially recognize America’s “One China” policy as the government of Beijing as the government of Taiwan. But the US and Taiwan maintain unofficial relations – a relationship that the Trump administration wanted to strengthen with controversial arms sales and visits at senior level – as well as robust economic ties.
Biden gave some early indications that he would continue the policy and invite the island’s de facto ambassador to attend the US presidential inauguration and express his concern about Beijing’s pressure on Taipei in a call with his Chinese peer, Xi Jinping.
Adm. Phil Davidson, head of U.S. troops in the Pacific, warned Congress in the testimony last week that China could invade Taiwan by 2027 – a significant acceleration compared to officials’ previous estimates of 2035.
“The preparation for Taiwanese contingencies has been a focus of China’s military modernization for some time, and as their capabilities increase, we naturally pay close attention to the military balance in the Strait of Taiwan,” said David Helvey, the acting assistant. Secretary of Defense for Indo-Pacific Security Affairs, told reporters traveling with Austin to Japan.
Officials came to the conclusion after seeing China increase its military capability over the past few years while taking more risks on the world stage, from the attack on Indian forces on the disputed line of control in the Himalayas to the defeat of protesters in Hong Kong. Xi’s increasingly aggressive movements, both on the military and political front, indicate that an invasion of Taiwan may be imminent, said the senior defense officer.
Despite a global pandemic, China deployed 25 advanced new ships in 2020, including cruisers, destroyers and submarines with ballistic missiles – capabilities designed to keep at a distance America and its allies that could intervene on behalf of Taiwan. , said a second senior defense officer. Meanwhile, Beijing is integrating its new equipment into an increasingly sophisticated force, which was shown last fall during a live fire event in which Chinese forces took out and developed an “enemy” with ballistic missiles a theater command structure like the U.S. military.
“China has built a world fleet for a regional mission,” the second official said. “We’re looking at the capacity they’ve built up and it’s impressive and it’s increasingly to their advantage … we just do not have the same kind of capabilities towards China that we had before because of the numbers.”
At the same time, several milestones can help determine the timing of an invasion. China has accelerated its timeline for modernizing its army from 2035 to 2027 – the group’s 100th anniversary. That year is also the conclusion of the alleged third term of Xi.
“None of that is definitive and says, ‘We think we’re going to get past this,’ but we think the conditions will become more viable in the short term,” the second defense official said. “If we just look at the protracted Chinese messages of 2035 at the fastest, 2049 realistic for a world-class army, we are deceiving ourselves and we run the risk of falling in the wrong direction in Beijing.”
Meanwhile, officials are increasingly concerned that Taipei could force Beijing into action by declaring its independence unilaterally, especially after the president of Taiwan was re-elected in a landslide last year. Voice data consistently show that Taiwanese want a separate identity that is not Chinese second official said.
Shortly after an invasion, military officials were also concerned that China could effectively occupy Taiwan under the pretext of offering humanitarian aid.
“The nightmare scenario is that a typhoon is going through Taiwan,” the first official said. Beijing then pulls in “under good pretext to help and never leaves.”
The Trump administration has exacerbated the problem in Taiwan, the second official said. Trump tried to use Taipei as a scammer against Beijing during the tariff-driven trade war he launched against China, increasing the number of visits at senior level and announcing arms sales and an anti-China military strategy.
“It played into China’s sense that things were changing and that it might be necessary for a physical counter to keep moving in the wrong direction,” the second defense official said.
Trump’s aggressive tactics, from the trade war to the condemnation of China’s persecution of its Uighur Muslim population, also gave Beijing an excuse to adopt increasingly anti-American rhetoric, the first defense official said.
So, what’s the answer? Top US and Japanese officials are expected to send a strong message to their Chinese counterparts during the Alaska summit about Beijing’s coercive measures in the region. The US cannot afford to do anything because China is pushing Taiwan on the military and economic front. Beijing sends daily fighter jets to Taiwan’s air identification zone with the intention of burning out Taipei’s small, American-made F-16 force, and recently conducted military exercises in the Strait of Taiwan.
Sayers urged the new government to increase investment in its Pacific-based forces, strengthen ties with Japan and Australia to deter Beijing, and take steps to strengthen Taiwan’s defenses.
“The United States must quickly ensure that it has a force that will convince Beijing that it cannot succeed if it uses military force to resolve its political dispute with Taipei,” Sayers said. “No one is asking for a strategy to dominate a military conflict, but rather to deter by denying Beijing its military objectives.
But one wrong step could be the cause of Beijing’s action.
“If we were to militarize the engagement all of a sudden, if we would do much more to push China back, than [Taiwan’s] “the government is declaring independence – these are all events that could significantly change the facts or the assumptions about a military crisis,” said the first senior defense official.