Taiwan, China, and the Threat of War

Gabrielle SIERRA: Does the U.S. consider Taiwan a country?

 

David SACKS: No. 

 

SIERRA: Okay. But it's possible that we may go to war with our most powerful adversary to defend its independence. 

 

SACKS: To defend the status quo and its de facto independence. Yes. 

 

https://youtu.be/sxf_1Qr7-gE?t=50 

CBN News: Let’s begin this half hour in Asia where Taiwan is getting ready for war with China.

 

https://youtu.be/v8gJGaSEQXE?t=92 

CBN News: A popular saying among people here is Ukraine today, Taiwan tomorrow.

 

https://youtu.be/UxgCjpSLTz4?t=26 

ABC News: President Biden, last fall, saying for the first time that if China invades Taiwan the U.S. would send troops to defend it.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZnsShzpmcsU&t=5s 

Xi Jinping: [Speaking in Mandarin]

 

Tensions between China and Taiwan are one of the world’s major fault lines. And in recent years, those tensions have been ratcheting up. 

 

China feels that Taiwan is part of its territory, and has vowed to one day reclaim it, and the history underneath that claim is complex and tense. To make matters more confusing, the U.S. stance on Taiwan has been kept purposefully vague for decades - a policy that has come to be known as strategic ambiguity. 

 

Mixed up in all of this are the Taiwanese people themselves, who of course have their own nuanced perspectives on the situation. 

 

My name is Gabrielle Sierra and this is Why It Matters. Today a crash course on Taiwan, and a glimpse into what a Chinese invasion could mean for the world.

 

SACKS: A Chinese invasion of Taiwan would likely be the most complex modern military operation, something that makes D-Day look small by comparison. 

 

This is David Sacks - you actually heard him at the top of the episode. He’s a fellow here at the Council focusing on Taiwan and China. He’s the director of the Council’s new Independent Task Force report on Taiwan, which formed the basis for this episode. You should totally go check it out in the show notes page. 

 

SACKS: We're talking about tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of Chinese soldiers transiting the Taiwan Strait, Taiwan responding by using force of its own. And we're likely talking about large-scale casualties on both sides. If the United States were to intervene on Taiwan's behalf, I think there should be no doubt that we're talking about casualties on the U.S. side that make Iraq and Afghanistan look small by comparison. And there's of course, the large unknown, which is what happens when two nuclear armed powers face off directly against one another. Something that hasn't occurred yet in history. China's military has advanced capabilities from anti-ship ballistic missiles to hypersonics and advanced fighter jets, all of which would make U.S. defense of Taiwan incredibly difficult. When people think about this conflict, people often say that there's the potential that you would see U.S. aircraft carriers at the bottom of the ocean with thousands of casualties as a result just of that alone. Of course, it's hard to know for sure whether China could put its capabilities to use and make that happen, but we know for a fact that China is attempting to do just that - hold major U.S. assets, including aircraft carriers at risk.

 

War between the United States and China. It’s not inevitable, but it is possible. And even without military conflict between the U.S. and China, an invasion of Taiwan has the power to stop the global economy in its tracks. 

 

SACKS: A Chinese blockade or invasion, the moment it starts, the world's busiest shipping lanes grind to a halt. We would be talking about a global economic depression that would not only shave trillions of dollars off global GDP in the first year, but I would argue it would be incredibly difficult to recover and reverse the economic impact. The other thing that I would say is the impact that this would have on international order. We've seen one authoritarian country attack a democratic neighbor and attempt to grab territory. If China did the same to Taiwan, this would set a pattern of authoritarian countries doing so. We look at Taiwan as a vibrant democracy in a region of the world where there aren't many democracies. By some measures, Taiwan is the freest society in Asia, and a Chinese assault on Taiwan and annexation of Taiwan would extinguish a democracy of twenty-three million. And I think that would have pretty chilling effects for other young democracies around the world. Of course, there would be massive human costs for the twenty-three million people of Taiwan as well that we should keep in mind. And so I think some might say, "Well, this is not my problem," but I think that this is all of our problems. You should have no doubt that this would have profound implications for your life. 

 

SIERRA: I think that a lot of Americans have, of course, heard of Taiwan but don't necessarily know much beyond the headlines. So I was wondering if you could humor me with some basics.

 

James LIN: Sure. So Taiwan is an island off the southeastern coast of China, about a hundred miles away. It's not a small island. It's not a large island. I believe it's around the size of the state of Maryland.

 

This is James Lin. He’s an assistant professor of international studies and history at the University of Washington where he teaches and researches Taiwan.

 

LIN: So Taiwan is in a multi-party democracy. Many of the kinds of democratic indexes like V-Dem, which is one that many political scientists rely on, rates Taiwan as a highly free, highly democratic society. 

 

SIERRA: Is Taiwan its own country, or is it part of China?

 

SACKS: Well, that depends on who you ask. Only around a dozen countries in the world recognize Taiwan as a sovereign independent country and the United States is not one of those countries. The United States does not recognize it as a sovereign independent country. But if you walk down the streets of Taipei or anywhere in Taiwan, it looks and acts like a country. It has its own military, its own currency and elected government. And of course, to the Taiwanese people who live on the island, Taiwan is very much its own country. To the People's Republic of China, Taiwan is essentially a renegade province, something that must be restored to the PRC by force if necessary. So for the United States, our position is a little difficult to understand, but it is that Taiwan's status is undetermined. So we haven't reached the endpoint yet at which point you could determine whether Taiwan is a part of China, an independent entity, or something else. 

 

The stakes are high, and China’s sensitivity to the issue is so strong, that diplomats the world over walk on eggshells when discussing Taiwan. 

 

In fact, we don’t usually do this but check out this moment from a recent CFR event in which Secretary of State Antony Blinken tactfully reinforces the United States’ ambiguous stance to our president emeritus Richard Haass: 

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OuaF_Gw5l5w 

Richard HAASS: So four times your boss, the President of the United States, has said that the U.S. would help defend Taiwan if it were attacked by China. And four times the White House staff has walked him back. So what is our policy? And Why aren’t we basically telling China, within the context of a One China policy, you’ve done things to increase the threat, we’re going to do things to increase your understanding that you cannot move against Taiwan with impunity?

 

Antony BLINKEN: Richard...

 

HAASS: Yes, sir?

 

BLINKEN: We continue to be guided by the One China policy based on the Three Communiques, the Taiwan Relations Act, and the Six Assurances. That hasn’t changed and that won’t change.

 

SACKS: The Biden administration has been quite consistent that it still maintains the U.S. One China policy. But at the same time, there have been questions about whether strategic ambiguity remains U.S. policy, which is different than the One China policy. President Biden on four occasions has seemed to endorse what we would call strategic clarity, saying that if China attacked Taiwan, he would respond and defend Taiwan. Even though the administration walked it back on each occasion, to me, it's important that we take note of that. So my own view is that we shouldn't view President Biden's statements as gaffes. I think that he fully understands the implications of what he says. This is a man who has an experienced foreign policy track record, was on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. In fact, when George W. Bush said a similar thing as president, then Senator Joe Biden wrote an op-ed in the Washington Post criticizing him for his lack of discipline on this question. So in my view, President Biden has been very clear and has said on four times that if he were faced with this monumental decision as commander-in-chief of whether to come to Taiwan's defense, he would do so. And I think that it's important that we take him at his word, and I think that the Chinese also take him at his word, and they believe that he was serious with what he said.

 

SIERRA: How have other countries treated this situation? 

 

LIN: So today, most countries deal with Taiwan on an unofficial basis. There are a small number of nations - a little bit over a dozen - who still continue to maintain diplomatic relations with Taiwan only. Usually, these are small South Pacific or Latin American nations. And Beijing has sometimes tried to convince them to switch recognition in different ways. So very recently, there's been some changes around that. But for the most part, Taiwan is not recognized as a country, and so has to conduct relations in this kind of informal fashion.

 

Okay, so it’s not just the U.S. Most of the world is in the same touchy dilemma. They can’t afford to acknowledge Taiwan as a country openly - the cost would be far too high in terms of China’s reaction. And yet, at the same time, many countries engage in warm, if careful, relations with Taiwan. 

 

To understand this strange balance, and the potential for war if it fails, we have to turn to history. How did we get here? 

 

First thing’s first, indigenous people have resided in Taiwan for thousands of years. And they are still an important part of the island’s culture. But, through the centuries, Taiwan was repeatedly colonized, by the Chinese, the Dutch, and most recently by Japan in 1895. But the trends that explain the current situation really begin after World War II, when China was consumed by a bloody civil war that ultimately led to the ascension of the Chinese Communist Party that governs the country today.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bq66pBjvuNw 

Real Time History: The Qing Dynasty had ruled China for nearly four hundred years, but the old ways were coming to an end. Republicanism, war-lordism, nationalism, and communism struggled for supremacy through revolution and a twenty-two year civil war between an ambitious generalissimo and a guerilla revolutionary.

 

SACKS: After World War II, the Chinese Civil War really takes shape, pitting Mao's Communists against Chiang Kai-shek and the Nationalists. The United States sides with Chiang Kai-shek and the Nationalists because they were allies during World War II. But for a number of reasons, the Nationalists lose out to the Communists in the Civil War, and Chiang Kai-shek and the KMT and his followers retreat to Taiwan in 1949, as Mao declares the establishment of the People's Republic of China that same year.

 

https://youtu.be/YaRV_AiWxao

Mao Zedong: [Speaking in Mandarin]

 

SACKS: Now, at that point, the United States was frustrated with Chiang Kai-shek, a sense that he didn't take our advice, that we had given enough aid and support, but essentially, he lost the civil war, and we wanted to cut our losses there. So the Truman administration essentially resigns itself to Mao at some point, taking over Taiwan and absorbing that into the PRC. But then the next major event that happens that changes the course of history really is the Korean War, which erupts in the summer of 1950.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9X6GlzDZe_k

British Movietone: The peoples of the free world, acting under the United Nations, have given their answer, and the United States, in a swift, bold decision has already gone into action. Air power first and sea power with the Seventh Fleet ordered to protect Formosa together with reinforcements for the Philippines and more aid to French Indo-China.

 

SACKS: President Truman sends the U.S. Navy into the Taiwan Strait to prevent Mao from using this as an opportunity to take over Taiwan. As the Cold War had solidified, the United States didn't want to see the communist North Korea attacking South Korea and Mao's communist forces attacking Taiwan and wanted to lock in the separation, at least for the time being. And the Truman Administration changes the U.S. position on Taiwan, that Taiwan's status remained undetermined and had to await the restoration of peace in the Asia-Pacific. 

 

https://youtu.be/SvjCu_YBOI0?t=23 

Harry S. Truman: When Japan returns to its place in the family of nations and with the people of Korea secure, free, and united, it should be possible to find ways to settle other problems in the Pacific which now threaten the peace.

 

LIN: Over time, people began to realize that Beijing's government, the People's Republic of China, was going to stay, and many countries began to switch recognition. I would say the turning point was in 1971, when the United Nations General Assembly voted to replace the representative of China with the People’s Republic of China, the government based in Beijing. And that was a turning point where many people or many countries thought to themselves, "The United Nations has replaced the official representation. We should probably switch recognition as well." Under the Nixon administration, Henry Kissinger, who was the national security advisor secretly went to Beijing to negotiate with Zhou Enlai, who was the foreign minister at the time, to negotiate a rapprochement basically. So this was during the Cold War, when the United States was in this kind of high level conflict with the Soviet Union. And Nixon and Kissinger came up with a strategy to isolate the Soviet Union by picking off one of their allies. And so in exchange for the United States kind of re-engaging the PRC, Zhou Enlai asked Kissinger to take a position on Taiwan. And so this eventually came out to be what's called the One China policy.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Ps34mVys8o 

Richard Nixon: I want to put our policy in the clearest possible context. Our action in seeking a new relationship with the People’s Republic of China will not be at the expense of our old friends. I have taken this action because of my profound conviction that all nations will gain from a reduction of tensions and a better relationship between the United States and the People’s Republic of China.

 

SACKS: So, what that means is essentially the United States recognizes the People's Republic of China as the sole legal government of China, and it acknowledges the Chinese position that Taiwan is a part of China. But importantly, it does not endorse or recognize China's view that Taiwan is a part of China. So the One China policy has a lot of ambiguity built into it, and the U.S. relationship with Taiwan has evolved over time. But the core tenets of the One China policy, which is really about diplomatic relations with Taiwan, remain in place.

 

https://youtu.be/37azeXBjYJc?t=126

Jimmy Carter: The government of the United States of America acknowledges the Chinese position that there is but one China.

 

https://youtu.be/zqQRcXc4MyE?t=7 

Bill Clinton: I believe that both China and Taiwan want to stay on the path to prosperity and dialogue.

 

https://youtu.be/WoTRN6xYlPE 

George W. Bush: The issue that really is the issue of the future, in many ways, is China.

 

https://youtu.be/k0UXNUMVlj8?t=75 

Barack Obama: There’s probably no bilateral relationship that carries more significance.

 

https://youtu.be/eegPOKE6jVQ?t=19 

Donald Trump: I don’t know why we have to be bound by a One China policy.

 

https://youtu.be/YaRnlsyhD7M?t=20 

Joe Biden: We agree with a One China policy, but the idea that it can be taken by force is just not appropriate.

 

The One China policy has remained in place, and helped keep the peace, under every president since Richard Nixon.

 

However the executive branch was not the only part of government that was interested in the China-Taiwan relationship. In 1979, Congress passed the Taiwan Relations Act, or TRA, which created the American Institute in Taiwan, a nonprofit organization that oversees America's unofficial relationship with Taiwan. Many see it as a kind of unofficial embassy.

 

The TRA holds that the United States would view "any effort to determine the future of Taiwan by other than peaceful means...a threat to the peace and security of the Western Pacific area and of grave concern." It also pledges that the United States will provide Taiwan with defensive arms. While the TRA does not obligate the United States to defend Taiwan, it does state that the United States will maintain the capacity to do so. 

 

The right to defend Taiwan, but not the obligation. A nonprofit organization but not an embassy. It’s a careful dance, and as a result, visits between American and Taiwanese leaders are rare. When they do happen, they tend to make headlines. You may recall that last year former Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, took a trip to Taiwan - the first time a high level U.S. official had traveled there in over 30 years.

 

China wasn’t too happy about it.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=40p-81ZndbM 

PBS NewsHour: As soon as Pelosi arrived, China announced the beginning of air and sea military exercises around the island.

 

https://youtu.be/40p-81ZndbM?t=85 

PBS NewsHour: Ahead of the visit, China put its military on high-alert, and flew fighter jets close to Taiwan.

 

SIERRA: I want to work through this situation and look at it from every side. And I think it’s only fair that we start with Taiwan itself, the little guy caught between giants. So, what do Taiwanese people want? 

 

LIN: So the National Chengchi University, which is one of the top universities in Taiwan, has an election study center that, since 1992, has conducted biannual polls. One is a poll about what should Taiwan do about its cross-strait policy, about its relationship with Beijing? And it asks questions, should we just maintain the status quo indefinitely, or should we maintain the status quo and then decide at a later date to maybe change it? Should we seek to unify with China, or should we seek independence? And independence in this context means something more like changing the constitution, so that we're no longer officially the Republic of China, and maybe changing the name in something like the Republic of Taiwan, which Beijing has said is a red line. The polls show overwhelmingly that Taiwanese prefer the status quo. So if you add together all the status quo answers it's around like 88 percent of Taiwanese people want to maintain the status quo. And so I would say that Taiwanese people recognize that there is a significant threat to their existence, and you see it play out in the polls. And there have been other polls too that have asked kind of hypothetical questions like, if Beijing didn't threaten us, what would be your preferred kind of outcome? And you can see that it changes dramatically where many Taiwanese people actually prefer some sort of independence or some sort of greater assertion of its sovereignty. And so this kind of tells us that there's an understanding about - pragmatism about that threat. The other poll is a question about Taiwanese identity. So in 1992, when the polls first began, there was a large number of people who identified as Chinese and only as Chinese, I think around 30 percent, and the majority of people identified as both Chinese and Taiwanese. Today, in 2023, 60 percent of people in Taiwan identify as Taiwanese and only as Taiwanese, whereas only about 3 percent identify as Chinese and only as Chinese. And so this is a dramatic shift in the past thirty years, where Chinese identity has really dropped off, and Taiwanese identity - solely being Taiwanese - has become the majority.

 

Given the danger and tensions of the moment, it’s perhaps no surprise that a majority of Taiwanese would prefer the status quo to gambling their freedom in a conflict. But it’s also telling that when asked what they would choose if there was no danger, most say they would prefer some form of independence. 

 

Watching all of this is the United States. Yes, Beijing will decide whether or not to invade Taiwan. But the U.S. must decide whether or not to defend Taiwan if it happens. 

 

SIERRA: So, let's talk about the United States. Over the last year, there's been more and more news suggesting that the U.S. is perhaps on a path to war over Taiwan. So I just want to get this straight. The U.S. doesn't recognize Taiwan as a country. Taiwan is very far from the U.S. mainland. So why on Earth would the U.S. risk a war over Taiwan with its most powerful adversary, China?

 

SACKS: Yeah, it's a very important question, and I think it's something that we should discuss and have a robust debate about in the United States. So I'll just outline what I see as some of the U.S. interests at stake in the Taiwan Strait. Number one, pull out a map. Look at where Taiwan is located. It is located at a critical point in the first island chain, which stretches from Japan down through Taiwan and into the Philippines. Japan and the Philippines, of course, two very important U.S. allies. And with the integrity of the first island chain the way it is right now, it is very difficult for China to project military power far beyond its shores to threaten U.S. allies or even the United States itself. But if it annexes Taiwan and stations its military on the island, then that all changes. China would be less than one hundred miles away from Japan. It would be far closer to the Philippines. It would make a U.S. defense of those allies incredibly difficult.

 

For years now, China has been expanding its military presence in the Pacific, building installations in disputed areas, and generally bullying smaller neighbors over territory in the South China Sea. This has led some strategists to fear that the U.S. could eventually lose its ability to project power into the Pacific, something the country has been able to do since World War II. 

 

SACKS: You have to reckon, I think, with what happens in the strategic thinking and the calculus of U.S. allies the day after a Chinese takeover of Taiwan. In my view, Japanese leaders view this as a critical interest for Japanese security, and if China takes over Taiwan, Japan has grave doubts as to whether the United States can or would come to its defense. And a more powerful country like Japan, it either seeks to accommodate China's interests and moves closer to China, but it could also pursue some form of strategic autonomy, which would likely involve developing nuclear weapons of its own and a major increase in defense capabilities and spending. Relatively weaker countries like the Philippines, to me, I just think that they essentially decide to accommodate China's interests and live with the fact that China is the new dominant power in the Indo-Pacific, and the era of U.S. influence is kind of over. And so I think this has major implications for U.S. allies and partnerships in the region, which is our most important asymmetrical advantage over China when we're thinking of how we compete with China in the long-term competition. I think you look at it economically - what is our interest in deterring a conflict in the Taiwan Strait? Over 90 percent of the world's most advanced semiconductors are made in Taiwan. Around 70 percent of all semiconductors in the world are manufactured in Taiwan. So regardless of whether the United States chooses to intervene on Taiwan's behalf, if deterrence fails and China uses force, we're going to see a global economic depression with trillions of dollars shaved off global GDP that will be incredibly difficult to recover from, given the nature of the semiconductor industry, how difficult it is to build those facilities elsewhere and get up to speed. So that really emphasizes the importance of deterrence, in my view.

 

We actually did a whole episode on semiconductors and how important they are to the U.S. In it, we take a really deep dive into how the whole world relies on Taiwan every day to keep the tech economy running. You should check it out.

 

Bottom line, all of these factors together make it a very real possibility that the U.S. could choose to intervene if China invades.

 

SIERRA: So a bit of a logistics question. Let's say that the U.S. commits to defending Taiwan from an invasion. How would we even do that? Because China is what, a hundred miles from Taiwan, whereas we are thousands of miles away.

 

SACKS: Yeah. So geography I think does cut in China's favor, but we shouldn't oversimplify this and say, "Well, this would just be a walk in the park for the People's Liberation Army." We're still talking about a need to cross ninety miles of treacherous waters, where they would be targeted by Taiwanese missiles and ships and potentially U.S. submarines, again, missiles and ships as well. And so it would be incredibly difficult for China to pull that off, and China has to also anticipate that even if it lands on Taiwan and successfully builds a beachhead that it would face urban warfare and significant resistance from the Taiwanese people. So I don't think that the Chinese leadership underestimates the difficulty of pulling this off. Now, from the U.S. perspective, I think that a critical thing that we have to think about is Japan's role in a conflict. Yes, we're far away, but the United States does have over fifty thousand troops in Japan, as well as advanced capabilities that would be relevant for a conflict over Taiwan. And so this is a big question mark, though. To what extent is Japan involved in a Taiwan contingency? To what extent does it support U.S. operations, assist in U.S. operations? But if there is full Japanese support and if we do more to build our ability to work with our Japanese allies and to really operate together, then we still have enduring strengths over the PLA that we can bring to bear in the Taiwan Strait. And we should also note that, yes, China has overseen a remarkable modernization of the People's Liberation Army, and on paper, the PLA is very strong, but these officers, most of them have never seen combat. The last time China fought a war was in 1979 with Vietnam, and the last time that it fought a really large-scale war was the Korean War in 1950. So the United States, yes, we have big gaps, and we need to address those. The war in Ukraine has shown that our defense industrial base is not where it needs to be, for instance, and we need to take steps to address those shortfalls. But I don't think that we should assess this - the ‘if China decides to go for it, it can achieve a fait accompli,’ and basically, we should just throw up our hands and say, "You've succeeded."

 

SIERRA: What would a conflict over Taiwan do to the world?

 

LIN: It depends on the kind of conflict. Kind of a worst case scenario is a full on amphibious invasion and occupation of Taiwan by the PLA, the Chinese military. And that would be, in my opinion, would be completely disastrous. I think it would draw in other powers into a conflict. I think the United States, even if it doesn't really respond by deploying the military to defend Taiwan, I think that it would involve lots of punitive measures, economic punitive measures that we're seeing towards Russia currently. But it would be much more drastic because Russia is an important energy supplier, but its economy is not as integrated into the global economy, whereas China is the so-called ‘factory of the world.’ And any kind of military action would take offline, not just Taiwan's manufacturing, but also I think would have an effect on China's inclusion in the global economy. And that would just grind things to a total halt. 

 

SIERRA: What is the risk of escalation here? What about the possibility of nuclear escalation?

 

SACKS: So I think that's a really important question, and I think frankly, that's one that we haven't really contended with enough, because it's so difficult to wrap our heads around it. What we do know, though, is that China is making remarkable advances in its nuclear arsenal, that it is now in the midst of a huge buildup in its nuclear arsenal. And, in my view, it has direct relevance to Taiwan. So I don't have a good answer. Nobody knows whether a conflict over Taiwan could be kept to conventional weaponry, but I also think nobody knows for sure that a conflict over Taiwan would immediately go nuclear. Again, we can make well-educated guesses about how a conflict would play out, but I think anybody who tells you that they know for certain one way or the other is not being truthful.

 

SIERRA: So it seems pretty clear that this is something every person on Earth really has an interest in preventing. So what can be done to avoid the conflict?

 

SACKS: At a fundamental level, I think, that the political foundation or framework should remain in place, which is that the United States maintains its One China policy, does not recognize Taiwan as an independent country. Taiwan acts responsibly and doesn't seek to declare independence for itself. And within that context, though, I think we need to do a lot more to bolster deterrence in the Taiwan Strait. That's things like for the United States to prioritize things like stealth bombers, submarines, long range missiles that would all be incredibly important in a conflict over Taiwan, to assist Taiwan in also overhauling its military, doing a lot more to help train Taiwan's military to prepare for a conflict, and also thinking through things with Taiwan in terms of civil resilience and its ability to hold out during a conflict. Taiwan imports nearly all of its energy. It is a net importer of food and medical supplies. So, how can we help Taiwan shore up those vulnerabilities to ensure that it can hold out long enough to enable the United States to assist Taiwan in the face of Chinese aggression? I do think that we want to do what we can to minimize the urgency that the PRC feels with respect to Taiwan. So I don't think we want to feed fears that this is slipping away and that time is not on its side. My own view is that there's only so much we can do in that regard, but we shouldn't play into those fears. And I think that with Taiwan, there's a whole bucket of what we do with Taiwan, and we need to do a lot more to ensure its economic competitiveness as well. I think we should negotiate a bilateral trade agreement with Taiwan. We should work with Taiwan on global supply chain issues. We should help ensure that the PRC is not able to economically marginalize Taiwan. But there's a whole bucket, also, of things that we don't do with Taiwan that, in this scenario, are just as important. So in my view, we should do less that is heavy on the symbolism side, which does play into this Chinese fear and is likely to provoke a PRC response without actually meaningfully improving Taiwan's defensive capabilities or its resilience, but we should do a lot more on the substantive side.

 

SIERRA: You know, in certain circles, it can feel like people think conflict between the United States and China is inevitable, and that this could be sort of a self-fulfilling prophecy, the logic that sooner or later China will move to take Taiwan back, the U.S. will be compelled to intervene, and obviously we all, the Taiwanese people especially, have an interest in preventing this. So how do you sort of avoid that mindset? How do we remain open to off-ramps?

 

LIN: Yeah, I think that's really important because I think there are elements of, especially at the U.S. foreign policy circles, that there are some who think that conflict is inevitable. And I don't think that's the case. I think that we have to keep in mind that war would be tremendously costly for all parties involved, and we have to assume that there's still some rationality involved in foreign policy making for Beijing, that they're not going to act as recklessly as some might assume, that even though there is maybe a window of military advantage, that doesn't necessarily mean that they will make a political decision to use the military for a political action. And I would just make sure that everybody is reminded of that part. There are lots of risks involved and there are lots of costs, and I think that there are ways that we should keep off-ramps open, as you've said, don't make any reckless unilateral actions, and then hope that all parties involved also see that the best way to pursue a future is to maintain the status quo and not rock the boat. 

 

SACKS: Our aim shouldn't be to solve the Taiwan issue, but instead to continue to finesse this in such a way where China doesn't feel compelled to attack Taiwan, and Taiwan can feel confident in its ability to maintain its democratic institutions and its economic vitality. The overriding goal of U.S. policy, in my view, is to ensure that this remains difficult enough for Chinese leadership that when Xi Jinping wakes up in the morning and he looks across the Taiwan Strait, he says, today is not the day, that he has real doubts in his mind as to whether the Chinese military can accomplish the objective he sets out.

 

Hey everyone! So this is actually the last episode of our seventh season. Time truly does fly. We will be working behind the scenes on a whole new batch of episodes, so if you have any topics you would like to hear more about write us and let us know at [email protected]! We will be back in the fall with fresh content.

 

For resources used in this episode and more information, visit CFR.org/whyitmatters and take a look at the show notes. If you ever have any questions or suggestions or just want to chat with us, email [email protected] or hit us up on Twitter at @CFR_org.

 

Why It Matters is a production of the Council on Foreign Relations. The opinions expressed on the show are solely that of the guests, not of CFR, which takes no institutional positions on matters of policy.

 

The show is produced by Asher Ross and me, Gabrielle Sierra. Our sound designer is Markus Zakaria. Our associate podcast producer is Molly McAnany. Our interns this summer are Bella Quercia and Jiwon Lim.

 

Robert McMahon is our Managing Editor, and Doug Halsey is our Chief Digital Officer. Extra help for this episode was provided by Noah Berman, Ester Fang, and Mariel Ferragamo. Our theme music is composed by Ceiri Torjussen. 

 

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For Why It Matters, this is Gabrielle Sierra signing off. See you in the fall!