“The war for Taiwan would be unthinkable,” said Eric Sayers, a visiting researcher at the American Enterprise Institute. “A major challenge that Washington faces is that Taiwan was seen by many as a planning problem for 2035.… The [Chinese army’s] the capabilities have now matured to such an extent that it is no longer a dilemma that we can face. ”
How to avoid this scenario, however, is an issue that has baffled previous US governments, as each year China seems to take a step closer to moving to Taiwan. Biden’s new team is expected to signal its willingness to hit the carpet across Taiwan and help ensure the island can defend itself, but without scaring Beijing any further.
“If we interpose, we will be the reactive catalyst that will make this problem hotter,” said a senior defense official, who asked to remain anonymous to discuss sensitive operational planning. “Militarily, we know that if we do too much, push too hard, China will use this approach and do more against Taiwan.”
The warning comes after four years of mixed signals from President Donald Trump and his government. Trump angered Beijing shortly after taking office with a phone call to Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen, and his government routinely praised expensive gun sales and high-profile visits.
However, Trump also indicated that America may not come to the defense of Taipei in the event of a Chinese invasion, allegedly telling a Republican senator in 2019 that “Taiwan is about 60 centimeters from China. (…) We are 13 thousand kilometers away. If they invade, there is nothing we can do about it. “
Biden’s new team knows that the United States is competing with China, and Beijing’s coercion over Taiwan will be one of the main points of discussion. For now, they are maintaining the pressure on Beijing applied by Trump through tariffs and sanctions. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and Secretary of State Antony Blinken are in Japan for the first stop on a joint visit to Asia, where fighting China’s rise will be high on the agenda. The two will travel alongside South Korea, before Austin heads to India and Blinken to Alaska, where he will join national security adviser Jake Sullivan.
Washington and Taipei have no formal diplomatic relations and officially the American “One China” policy recognizes the Beijing regime as the government of Taiwan. But the U.S. and Taiwan maintain unofficial relations – a relationship that the Trump administration has sought to strengthen with controversial arms sales and high-profile visits – as well as solid economic ties.
Biden has given some indications that he will continue with this policy, inviting the island’s de facto ambassador to attend the U.S. presidential inauguration for the first time and expressing his concerns about Beijing’s pressure on Taipei in a phone call with his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping.
Admiral Phil Davidson, chief of US forces in the Pacific, warned in testimony to Congress last week that China could invade Taiwan by 2027 – a significant acceleration compared to previous authorities’ estimates for 2035.
“Preparing for Taiwan contingencies has been the focus of China’s military modernization for some time, so as its capabilities are increasing, obviously, we are paying close attention to the military balance in the Taiwan Strait,” David Helvey, assistant secretary defense interim for Indo-Pacific security issues, he told reporters traveling with Austin to Japan.
Authorities came to that conclusion after watching China in recent years increase its military capability while taking more risks on the world stage, from attacking Indian forces on the disputed Himalayan line of control to cracking down on protesters in Hong Kong. Xi’s increasingly aggressive movements, both on the military and political fronts, signal that an invasion of Taiwan may be imminent, said the senior defense officer.
Despite a global pandemic, in 2020 China ordered 25 new advanced ships, including ballistic missile cruisers, destroyers and submarines – capabilities designed to keep the United States and its allies who can intervene on Taiwan’s behalf, a second defense official said. senior. Meanwhile, Beijing is integrating its new equipment into an increasingly sophisticated force, demonstrated at a real fire event widely publicized last fall, in which Chinese forces eliminated an “enemy” with ballistic missiles, a theater command structure very similar to that of the US military.
“China has built a global-sized navy for a regional mission,” said the second official. “We look at the capacity they have built and it is impressive and increasingly advantageous for them … we just don’t have the same kind of capacity against China that we did because of the numbers.”
At the same time, several future milestones can help to identify the moment of an invasion. China accelerated its schedule to modernize its army from 2035 to 2027 – the group’s 100th anniversary. This year is also the conclusion of Xi’s alleged third term.
“None of them are definitive and say, ‘We think we are going to come by’, but we think that the circumstances will become more viable in the short term,” said the second defense official. “If we look only at the long-standing Chinese messages of 2035, at most, 2049 realistically to world-class military personnel, we will be deceiving ourselves and risk falling into a Beijing misdirection.”
Meanwhile, officials are increasingly concerned that Taipei might force Beijing into action by unilaterally declaring its independence, especially after Taiwan’s president was re-elected in a landslide victory last year. The survey data consistently shows that the Taiwanese people want a separate non-Chinese identity, the second officer said.
Without an invasion, military officials are also concerned that China may effectively occupy Taiwan under the guise of offering humanitarian aid.
“The nightmare scenario is for a typhoon to pass through Taiwan,” said the first official. Beijing then enters “under good pretenses to help, and never leaves”.
The Trump administration has exacerbated Taiwan’s problem, the second official said. Trump tried to use Taipei as a club against Beijing during the tariff-based trade war he launched against China, increasing the number of high-profile visits and publicizing arms sales and an anti-China military strategy.
“This touched China’s feeling that things were changing and that it could need another physical counterattack if it continued to tend in the wrong direction,” said the second defense official.
Trump’s aggressive tactics, from trade war to condemning the persecution of the Uighur Muslim population by China, also gave Beijing an excuse to adopt increasingly anti-American rhetoric, said the first defense official.
What’s the answer? Leading American and Japanese officials are expected to send a strong message to their Chinese counterparts about Beijing’s coercive measures in the region during the Alaskan summit. The United States cannot afford to do anything, as China puts pressure on Taiwan on the military and economic fronts. Every day, Beijing sends fighter jets to Taiwan’s aerial identification zone with the intention of burning the small F-16 force in Taipei, and recently conducted military exercises in the Taiwan Strait.
Sayers called on the new government to increase investment in its advanced Pacific forces, strengthen ties with Japan and Australia to detain Beijing and take steps to strengthen Taiwan’s defenses.
“The United States needs to ensure quickly that it has a force that will convince Beijing that it will not succeed if it uses military coercion to resolve its political dispute with Taipei,” said Sayers. “Nobody is asking for a strategy to dominate a military conflict, but instead to dissuade, denying Beijing its military objectives.
But one wrong step could be the trigger for Beijing to act.
“If we suddenly militarized the fight, if we did a lot more to push China back, if [Taiwan’s] the government declares independence – all of these are landmark events that can significantly change the facts or assumptions we have about a military crisis, ”said the first senior defense official.