A spate of articles, op-eds and comment pieces have appeared in the U.S. press and academic journals in recent months arguing that Taiwan is not important to America and/or isn’t worth fighting China over, that the United States cannot afford to spend more on its military (which it has to in order to protect Taiwan), and that Taiwan should be abandoned.
Some, a lot fewer, have come to Taiwan’s defense and argue otherwise.
There are numerous arguments to be made that Taiwan is an ally that should be kept. It is a democracy. It is sovereign. It is faithful to the United States, etc.
The critical case to be made, however, is—or at least should be—that Taiwan is strategically important to the United States.
I believe there are two good arguments to be made for Taiwan’s strategic importance: One comes from looking at the history of the United States. The other from geopolitics.
In December 1890, the United States Army won a battle against American Indians at Wounded Knee in South Dakota. This battle marked the end of the Indian Wars and meant that the United States could focus on external matters since it had finally consolidated its territory in the west.
Within ten years of Wounded Knee, the United States was on the way to becoming a world power. In 1898, the U.S. Navy won the Spanish American War. It acquired the Philippines and Guam as a result. The same year, the U.S. incorporated Hawaii and signed a tripartite agreement on Samoa.
In 1900, America made Wake Island its territory. Shortly after the United States started building the Panama Canal.
The expansion of the U.S. Navy was vital to all of this happening. And it continued. By the end of WWI, the U.S. Navy was the world’s largest. It built aircraft carriers that were the game-changing weapon in the Pacific during World War II, and in 1945, the U.S. had a fleet of 1,600 ships; no other nation was close to competing with America.
China’s reunification of Taiwan will be its Wounded Knee. It will no longer need to focus on territorial matters and will doubtless look to realize power ambitions further from its shores.
Its navy has already, for twenty years, been the benefactor of large budget increases (bigger than the air force or army), indicating China’s naval power (enhanced by the recent addition of an aircraft carrier) is ready to break out.
This relates to the second argument, the geopolitical one.
Looking at its geography, China is “contained” by a proximate chain of islands extending southward from Japan, through the Ryukyu’s, Taiwan, the Philippines, Malaysia, Indonesia and Australia.
To get into the Pacific Ocean, China’s naval vessels must go through one of various choke points between these islands. Its merchant marine (as well as its navy), in order to sail to the Middle East and Africa where China acquires most of its energy and natural resources, must go south through the Strait of Malacca, which is equally constraining.
Some strategists refer to the island chain in East Asia as the “Great Wall in reverse.” China’s naval officers and strategists see China as “boxed in.” Clearly geography does not favor China in its goal of expanding its influence into the Pacific Ocean.
If Taiwan were to become part of China, this would change. China’s navy would no longer be hemmed in. As a matter of fact, it would be able to extend its reach to the “second island chain”—Guam, the Marianas and some other small islands in the central Pacific—not much of a barrier.
Very important, Taiwan’s east-coast ports would give China’s submarines, which are a mainstay of its navy, a huge benefit. From Taiwan, they would be able to quickly get into deep water where they could not be detected and could proceed to the American west coast to show their wares and threaten the United States.
Both these factors, particularly taken together, suggest that Taiwan is important to the United States. Critically important.
Comments
Pretty sure we all heard enough of "Why we need Vietnam" 50 years ago and ultimately there was no business for U.S in Vietnam and U.S didn't cease to become the world police because Vietnam became a communist nation. If the author of this article really wrote 30 books about China and claim to understand Chinese culture in anyway, he would know that Chinese is not an expansionist race seeking to dominate the globe and enforce their way of life on other people. Otherwise we would be all speaking Chinese long before Columbus made his landing wouldn't we? Sir, your fear of China is intriguing to me. It's almost as if China is coming for you and holding you responsible for all the terrible things that had happened to them in the last century and half. Well, are you? Wounded knee?? This is all you can conjure after writing 30 books about China and Taiwan? Poor attempt in trying to justfy U.S must own the world. China in her 2000 years past as an empire has consolidated interal territories more times then you can count. Yet the cultural and political diversity in East Asia through out history is poweful evidence that China never and does not seek dominance outside her borders unlike the West and U.S. Perfect example was once the Japanese was repelled from Korea after 2 invasions. The Ming dynasty promptly withdrew their forces from Korea. Based on your ideology, shouldn't the Chinese empire permanetly occupy Korea to ensure no future attacks from Japan?? like how the U.S does these days occupying everywhere we go. I understand, there is no point arguing with people like you who fundamentally sees China as your enemy but I must point out the hypocrisy and the fear tactics entrenched in this article used to fool your readers.
Also by comparing with Wounded Knee. Mr. Copper pretty much justified that Taiwan is a Chinese internal affair. At least we can agree on that. Or did you mean that the native Indians were a independent democratic sovereignty, of which should be a independent nation?
It could be China’s “Wounded Knee” moment to gain Taiwan, that is, if they pull it off peacefully. But even gaining Taiwan in this way brings with it the risk for China that it will create for itself a quite different world. During the nineteen thirties, the US looked at the conflict in East Asia (Japan’s imperialist expansion) as largely isolated to that part of the world. That will not be the case if China acquires Taiwan; it will not only signal the start of PLAN’s deep water expansion, but, from the US side, it will be the official start of a new Cold War—that is, if one isn’t already underway. During the last Cold War we all understood where the people running the Soviet Union were coming from. We accepted that a lot of their imperialist motivations were ideological and that containment would likely work to keep it a manageable, although not exactly acceptable, threat (communism did not work well enough to support expansionism). Beijing’s imperialistic motivations are every bit as ambitious as were the Soviets.' Even now it is viewed with so much suspicion by its neighbors that America’s past transgressions in the region, real and imagined, are swept aside and the US is asked to engage more ‘meaningfully’ there. But China’s problem is that its odd mix of political communism and economic capitalism does not predispose others to view it as a normal country. In other words, the engine of its expansionist pretensions is much more capable. And it is this odd combination of political ruthlessness and economic realism, in conjunction with the start of a true deep water expansionist policy, which will lead to consequences that are entirely predictable.
Peace, commerce and honest friendship with all nations; entangling alliances with none. Thomas Jefferson