The geostrategic criticality of Taiwan
The geostrategic criticality of
Taiwan
WRITTEN BY GERALD C BROWN
5 February 2021
The Taiwan Strait is perhaps the most dangerous flashpoint between the United States and the People’s Republic of China (PRC). Taiwan, an island nation of 24 million people less than 100 miles off the coast of the mainland, has become a modern case study in the success of liberal democracy in northeast Asia. Citizens of Taiwan regularly participate in a flourishing democracy, with strong protections for civil liberties and a vibrant economy.
Unfortunately, not all actors are enthused about this. Despite its de-facto independence from the mainland in 1949, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) maintains that the island of Taiwan is its rightful territory and has been transparent about its willingness to use force to bring the island under its domain. China codified this intention into law with the 2005 Anti-Secession Law, proclaiming that if Taiwan would not willingly submit to Beijing, it would use military force to capture the island. The capture of Taiwan remains a primary objective of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA), and approximately one-third of the PRC's defence budget is dedicated to the mission.
PLA threats to the island have grown increasingly dire under Xi Jinping as it’s become increasingly apparent that the government in Taipei won’t willingly surrender its sovereignty, particularly in light of the recent events in Hong Kong. The CCP recently dropped the phrase “peaceful” when discussing unifying Taiwan under its territory. It has increased the pace of military exercises simulating an invasion of Taiwan and in recent days has regularly probed Taiwanese air defences by sending People's Liberation Army Air Force (PLAAF) aircraft into Taiwan’s Air Defense Identification Zone (ADIZ).
With Taiwan neutralised, Beijing would control critical access points to the South China Sea, giving it the potential to restrict access to both the Taiwan and the Luzon Straits. Such a move would essentially grant China control over who uses shipping and transit routes through most of the South China Sea.
Contrary to popular opinion, the United States has no legal obligation to defend Taiwan since the abrogation of the Sino-American Mutual Defense Treaty in 1979. However, support for the island has never ceased, and the United States signed the Taiwan Relations Act shortly thereafter. This requires Washington to sell Taiwan “arms of a defensive character” and “to maintain the capacity to resist any resort to force or other forms of coercion that would jeopardise the security...of the people on Taiwan”. The US has since pursued a strategy of strategic ambiguity to preserve the status quo of Taiwan’s de-facto independence. In the event of a conflict, Beijing does not know if the US will defend Taiwan, likewise, Taipei remains uncertain as to whether the US will support it in the event of a formal declaration of independence.
As China becomes increasingly aggressive in the Taiwan Strait, many have called into question whether the United States should support and defend Taiwan in the event of a major attack by the mainland. Whatever the case for nonintervention, abandoning the island would be an enormous strategic error. The United States must unambiguously stand with democratic partners like Taiwan, especially when faced with an unprovoked attack. Defending Taiwan is both a moral and strategic imperative in the face of an increasingly truculent China. The consequences of failing to do so are dire.
Why Taiwan matters
One needs to simply look at a map to begin to understand the role Taiwan plays in the Western Pacific’s geopolitics. Taiwan is one of several links that makes up the First Island Chain, the collection of islands off the coast of China that create natural choke points constraining Chinese naval forces. In times of conflict, these archipelagos allow for fielding defensive military assets to greatly raise the cost of Chinese naval projection. Partnerships with states such as Japan, Taiwan, and the Philippines help preserve this critical geostrategic advantage.
The counterfactual presents a grim reality. If Beijing managed to invade and occupy Taiwan, it would guarantee it the capability to control vital maritime corridors, giving the PLA an unsinkable aircraft carrier to project power into the Western Pacific. Smaller actors in the region would become vastly more susceptible to coercion and the threat of force. The majority of China’s Short Range Ballistic Missile (SRBM) arsenal is positioned directly across the Taiwan Strait, in the People's Liberation Army Rocket Force's (PLARF) Base 61, positioned to be utilised during a conflict with Taiwan. Some of these assets along with naval and air forces would likely be repositioned onto the newly controlled island.
Such a move would make it far easier to solidify China’s aspirations in the South China Sea while simultaneously putting US allies like Japan and the Philippines at far greater risk. With Taiwan neutralised, Beijing would control critical access points to the South China Sea, giving it the potential to restrict access to both the Taiwan and the Luzon Straits. Such a move would essentially grant China control over who uses shipping and transit routes through most of the South China Sea.
Outside of the South China Sea, Taiwan’s occupation would put China right at the doorstep of Japan's Ryukyu Islands, the string of small islands stretching from Taiwan to the Japanese mainland, including US military bases in Okinawa. Many of the islands would become far closer to China than Japan and would be well in range of Chinese Anti-Access/Area-Denial (A2/AD) capabilities. With a PRC-occupied Taiwan, holding on to these positions may be near impossible, and several could be easily isolated and controlled. China’s claims to the Senkaku Islands in the East China Sea would escalate into a far more volatile situation as Japan's capacity to defend them withered, increasing the potential for conflict between China and Japan.
Taiwan’s occupation would give China the ability to apply devastating economic pressure to Japan by blockading some of their most active trade and supply routes. Ian Easton, citing PLA sources, claims that 80 per cent of Japan’s container ships travel through the Taiwan Strait, along with 90 per cent of its oil imports. Such traffic could be re-routed, but not without crippling costs and significant hardship. The reverse is also true: currently, a significant portion of Chinese shipping passes through these maritime routes, which can’t be effectively secured by China while Taiwan remains a free and independent nation.
Similarly, mainland control of Taiwan would give the PLAN (People’s Liberation Army Navy) unrestricted access to the Pacific. This open corridor would allow China to project naval forces without resistance through the second island chain and beyond, enhancing their capacity to apply military pressure against the United States and its allies. PLAN submarines are particularly constrained today, with shallow waters inside the first island chain leaving them exposed. This weakness would no longer be the case with an occupied Taiwan, and Chinese submarines would find themselves with easy access to the deeper waters of the Pacific. Chinese control of Taiwan would send shockwaves throughout the region, allowing China to split and divide Pacific nations, gain unrestricted access to the Pacific, direct control over vital maritime transit routes, cement illegitimate territorial claims in the South China Sea, and apply coercive military pressure against democratic allies.
USS Barry (DDG 52) conducts routine underway operations in the Taiwan Strait. Image credit: Flickr/U.S Pacific Fleet
Lessons from recent history
Perhaps the most widely cited concerns with supporting Taiwan are fears of entanglement — that Taiwan is doomed and defending it would only drag the US into conflict with China. However, history demonstrates that the opposite is likely true. There has perhaps been no greater force towards preserving peace and enhancing the security of the United States and like-minded countries than the post-1945 alliance system. Prior to the Second World War, alliances were largely born out of strategic necessity to combine strengths and win specific conflicts. Following those fateful years, alliances began to be formed to prevent conflict from occurring in the first place. By consistently and clearly demonstrating a unified front and reinforcing the idea that an attack against one was an attack against all, alliances like NATO successfully raised the calculous of risk facing the Soviet Union. As a result, not a single NATO ally faced an unprovoked attack during the Cold War.
Previous fears of states dragging their allies into conflict were demonstrably overblown, as alliances raised the costs of conflict and effectively deterred adversaries from starting conflicts in the first place. Conversely, instances, where conflict did erupt, were sometimes caused by the lack of clear defence commitments. The Korean War occurred after the United States left South Korea outside the line of what it formally committed to defending, causing adversaries to gamble that they could seize it without US intervention. It is hard not to draw parallels between the Korean Peninsula in 1950 and Taiwan today as the PLA’s capabilities rapidly increase.
Nor is there much compelling evidence that appeasing China and abandoning Taiwan would ease tensions in the region and prevent conflict. Tensions in the relationship between China and the US go far deeper than Taiwan, and China has territorial disputes with the majority of its neighbours. As discussed, capturing Taiwan would put China in an advantageous position to secure its territorial claims in the South and East China Seas. This newfound geostrategic advantage coupled with a visible retreat by the United States would quite likely embolden China, pushing them to capitalise on that momentum by driving the United States from the region and fracturing its alliances. The same risk of getting dragged into conflict would exist as China continued seizing territories like the Senkaku Islands, which the US is legally obligated to defend. A fact reaffirmed by the Obama and Biden Administrations. Getting dragged into conflict with China is a much more dangerous proposition once it controls Taiwan and is no less likely to occur.
The case for defending Taiwan
It should be highlighted that the geopolitical and strategic rationale for banding together with allies and supporting Taiwan is only one part of the equation. Taiwan is a clear-cut example of the success of liberal democracy, a nation that shares common values and interests with the United States. If Washington truly believes in these values — individual liberties, human rights, and democratic governance amongst others — then ensuring their preservation and defending them is a clear national interest. There is an important difference between defending existing democracies and attempting to forcibly instil democracy where it does not exist.
Notwithstanding the national security benefits of the spread of democracy: democratic states seldom engage in conflict with each other, make more reliable allies, and provide more stable and prosperous trading partners. Failing to defend Taiwan invites catastrophe and the retreat of democracy. The fall of Taiwan would be the first domino, giving an authoritarian state engaged in genocide a platform to cripple US allies and dominate the region. As goes Taiwan, so goes the Western Pacific.
Fortunately, defending Taiwan isn’t an insurmountable task, as mounting an assault against the island is no simple matter. Weather patterns in the Taiwan Strait make it so the only suitable times an amphibious invasion could occur are around April or October, the few beaches suitable to such an invasion are identified and well-defended, and positioning for an amphibious invasion of this nature would likely be noticed months before the invasion occurred. Geography and modern weaponry favour the defender in Taiwan’s case, and arrays of missiles, sea mines, and other asymmetric weapons give Taiwan an edge.
However, the immense discrepancy in military forces between the two nations is significant, and the situation is growing increasingly dangerous. While China can be deterred from invading, the case is less optimistic if Taiwan is isolated from the United States and other allies, and PLA war planning appears to hinge on whether the US will get involved. Japan has already highlighted that a Chinese invasion of Taiwan is a red line; the United States would be wise to make a similar statement and solidify its support for the nation. During the Cold War, the US was able to deter attacks against West Berlin by providing a clear and consistent front with allies such as the United Kingdom and France — even though it was in the middle of Soviet-controlled East Germany. Such a position was far less defensible, and less strategically vital than Taiwan is today.
Taiwan's only crime is existing; there is a significant difference between seeking out conflict and defending against aggression. The United States should be willing to commit to Taiwan's defence in the case of unprovoked aggression. Both states should greatly expand their capabilities to counter such an attack, and training opportunities focused on joint warfighting should be expanded between the two nations.
Taiwan is of great strategic importance to China, and Beijing has made its intentions clear. If the United States and Taiwan seek to prevent a war with China from occurring, it must ensure that the costs of conflict would be too high and that the risk does not outweigh the reward.
DISCLAIMER: All views expressed are those of the writer and do not necessarily represent that of the 9DASHLINE.com platform.
Author biography
Gerald C. Brown is an analyst with Valiant Integrated Services, where he supports the US Department of Defense. His research focuses on nuclear deterrence and East Asian security. All views expressed here are his own. Image Credit: Flickr/Office of the President, Republic of China (Taiwan).