Analysis: The Only Thing Keeping U.S. And China From War Is Running Dangerously Thin

The only thing keeping US and China from war is running dangerously thin

RT

The US relations with China in regards to Taiwan have been dictated by years of ambiguous statements and commitments. Now this rhetoric is breaking down and armed conflict seems closer than ever – but is Washington ready to fight over Taiwan, or capable of winning?

The Biden administration, in policy guidance issuedsoon after the president was sworn in, undertook to deter Chinese aggression and counter threats to the “collective security, prosperity and democratic way of life” of the US and its allies, while publicly committing to a Taiwan policy which would be “in line with long-standing American commitments,” including the Taiwan Relations Act of 1979, which limited US military support for Taiwan to weapons of a defensive character.

This, it turned out, was a lie. In his October 2021 confirmation hearing before the US Senate, the current US Ambassador to China Nicholas Burns declared that, from the perspective of the Biden administration, the policy of “strategic ambiguity” provided the US with “enormous latitude” under the Taiwan Relations Act to deepen US security assistance to Taiwan. “Our responsibility,” Burns said, “is to make Taiwan a tough nut to crack.” This was a stark departure from past practice, and served as the justification for Biden himself, on two occasions, to articulate as policy an American commitment to come to the defense of Taiwan if China were to attack.

This radical departure from stated US policy by the Biden administration helped launch a Congressional trifecta of hubris-laced ignorance, which saw the dispatch of three consecutive delegations that threaten to propel China down the path toward a war with Taiwan it doesn’t want to wage, and which the world (including the US) is not prepared to suffer the consequences of. The first delegation, in May, was led by Tammy Duckworth (D-Illinois). Prior to her departure from the US, Duckworth helped push through the “Strengthen Taiwan’s Security Act” which, among other things, sought to improve US-Taiwan intelligence sharing, develop plans to continue the provision of military aid in the case of a Chinese attack, and explore the possibility of deploying pre-positioned stocks of weapons for US troops that would be dispatched to Taiwan in the event of a war with China.

Let that last point sink in for a moment —Duckworth was proposing to implement measures that would guarantee US troops would confront Chinese troops in the case of a Chinese invasion of Taiwan.

Part two of the Congressional trifecta of policy ignorance was the visit by Nancy Pelosi to Taiwan, of which much has already be written. The final act in this tragicomedy is the visit of Senator Ed Markey (D-Massachusetts), which took place earlier this week. According to a press release issued by Markey’s office prior to his visit, his delegation would “meet with elected leaders and members of the private sector to discuss shared interests including reducing tensions in the Taiwan Strait and expanding economic cooperation, including investments in semiconductors.”

Left unspoken is the environment in which all three of these visits took place. Even before Duckworth’s initial visit, Chinese authorities had taken the unprecedented step of issuing a stark warning regarding Taiwan. On May 18, China’s senior diplomat Yang Jiechi warned Biden’s National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan that “if the US continues to play the Taiwan card and head further on the wrong path, this will certainly lead to dangerous situations.”

Today China, the US, Taiwan, and the rest of the world are left to face such a “dangerous situation.”

There is no doubt that any undertaking by Taiwan to formally declare its independence from China will result in a Chinese invasion of that island. 

As things currently stand, the US is not prepared to fight and win a war with China over Taiwan. If China were to invade Taiwan today, there is little the US military could do to put teeth to the verbal commitments made by Newt Gingrich and Joe Biden about coming to the defense of Taipei. China has, through large-scale military maneuvers undertaken following Pelosi’s precipitous visit, demonstrated its ability to invade Taiwan at any moment. Such an invasion, if it occurs, would be overwhelming in scope and destructive on a scale like that being experienced by Ukraine today in the face of Russia’s ongoing military operations.

And yet China continues to hold back. Some armchair generals assess the reluctance to go to war on China’s part as a sign of weakness, proof that Beijing is all bark and no bite. Nothing, however, could be further from the truth. Unlike the United States, China seeks to strictly adhere to its stated policy, which is to exhaust every peaceful option possible in securing the unification of China and Taiwan. Despite the clear evidence of a marked departure from past policy regarding Taiwan and weapons sales, China continues to believe that there is a non-violent solution to the one China problem.