Rumors Of War: Taiwan

CAN THE UNITED STATES PREVENT A WAR OVER TAIWAN?

ROBERT D. BLACKWILL AND PHILIP ZELIKOW

Taiwan is becoming the most dangerous flashpoint in the world. Events in and involving the small democracy could spark a war that draws in the United States, China, Japan, and possibly others. 

What even many watchers of world politics could neglect, distracted by so many other global problems and noisemakers, is how much the situation surrounding Taiwan has changed in the last few years. China’s decision to crush local governance and effective rule of law in Hong Kong has had large effects. It changed politics in Taiwan in favor of a president whom China regards as a separatist. Chinese leaders doubled down on xenophobic nationalism and repression, escalating pressure on Taiwan both rhetorically and militarily. Taiwan has begun a significant program of rearmament with a seriousness not seen in a generation, supported by the United States, yet there is a significant window of time before this program can bear sufficient fruit.

We think the current war danger is half understood, but downplayed due to the invariable human tendency to assume that whatever the commotion, tomorrow will be pretty much like yesterday. This is an old problem. Most international wars come as a surprise, except to those planning them.

In 1962, most experts (though not the CIA director) dismissed the possibility that the Soviets would deploy nuclear missiles to Cuba. In 1973, most experts, including in Israel, dismissed the possibility that Egypt and Syria would launch a war. In 1979, most experts dismissed the possibility that the Soviet Union would invade Afghanistan. In 1990, most experts dismissed the possibility that Iraq would invade Kuwait. In 2014, most experts dismissed the possibility that Russia would invade Ukraine. Notably, in the Iraq case, the lone voice predicting an invasion of Kuwait was the CIA’s national intelligence officer for warning, Charlie Allen. Regional experts, and even regional leaders, discounted the warning. Allen afterward admitted to one of us that he had no particular knowledge of the region, but he and his people were watching the Iraqi military prepare.

To us, this recent history is humbling. We are not arguing a war is imminent or even more likely than not to happen. But what little we can know has led us to the conclusion that the risk of a Chinese war against Taiwan is much higher than it has been in decades.

China is doing what a country would do if it were moving into a prewar mode. Politically, it is preparing and conditioning its population for the possibility of an armed conflict. Militarily, it is engaging now in a tempo of exercises and military preparations that are both sharpening and widening the readiness of its armed forces across a range of different contingencies on sea, air, land, cyber, and in space. As was true of the Israeli reading of Egypt’s intentions in the period before the outbreak of the 1973 war, this level of operational activity also complicates the work of foreign intelligence agencies and makes it harder for them to distinguish ominous signals from the background noise.

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