The continuing discussion of the potential imminent Chinese assault upon Taiwan is the kind of exaggerated concern that affects semi-informed opinion at times of uncertainty.
If the United States and NATO had been unambiguous about accepting the possibility that some Ukrainians (including the Crimeans) might prefer to be Russians but that Ukraine had an absolute right to exist as a sovereign country, and that the West would sponsor serious negotiations but would come to the defense of Ukraine if it were invaded, the Russia-Ukraine war would not have occurred. Hundreds of thousands of casualties, the displacement of more than 10 million people from their homes, and tens of billions of dollars of physical damage would not have occurred.
If the Trump administration’s policy of maintaining heavy sanctions on Iran had not been altered, Hamas and Hezbollah would be in no position to have harassed and provoked Israel as they have, and the Houthis in Yemen would not have had the ability to threaten international commercial traffic through the Red Sea as they have. And there would be no discussion whatever of an imminent Chinese invasion of Taiwan.
Because of the appalling fiasco of the American departure from Afghanistan, there has been considerable question and concern about the stability of the arrangements governing the policy of the United States and that of the People’s Republic of China toward Taiwan.
Chairman Mao Tse-tung advised President Richard Nixon in 1972 that China would not focus seriously on Taiwan for a century. He also said the best course was to stabilize during that period the recognition that in principle there is one China including the People’s Republic and Taiwan and there is acknowledgement by the People’s Republic that it will not attempt to reunify China by force.
What naturally generated speculation that China could be tempted to invade Taiwan were the Afghanistan debacle, the outbreak of war in Ukraine after President Joe Biden waffled over whether he would object to Russia invading the country, and the bumbling chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff of the United States General Mark Milley announcing at the outbreak of that war that Russia would occupy the entire country within a few weeks.
A good deal of uninformed speculation was bandied about on the subject despite limited recognition of what such an enterprise would entail. The Chinese would have to move at least 500,000 men in slow-moving craft across more than three times the stretch of blue water that separated southern England from the Normandy beaches. They would have to do so without an absolute assurance of air and sea superiority that the Western Allies had in 1944.
There are only six beaches on the Formosa Strait coast of Taiwan that could receive such amphibious arrivals. And they have all been fitted with extremely sophisticated in-depth defenses against seaborne invasion, including large flamethrowers that can be mechanically raised up from the seabed to attack landing craft from behind. Any significant intervention from the U.S. Seventh Fleet, which sails from Yokosuka, Japan, and always contains at least one giant Nimitz-class aircraft carrier, would assure that practically none of the Chinese expeditionary force would land successfully and that most of them would be drowned.
Because of the uncertainties that the vacillations of his own administration had incited, Mr. Biden stated explicitly in his visit to Japan in May this year that if there were a Chinese invasion of Taiwan, the United States would intervene militarily to defeat it. The government of China would have noted that statement and noted that the president’s entourage conspicuously declined the opportunity to walk it back.
Unless the Chinese leadership has taken complete and self-destructive leave of its senses—and there is absolutely no evidence of that—they will not seriously contemplate armed aggression against Taiwan. All evidence is that, in fact, after a gratuitous amount of purposeful hypothesizing verging on sabre-rattling, both sides are engaging in commendable rhetorical de-escalation. The chances are increasing that we may now get on with the second half of the century that Mao Tse-tung and Mr. Nixon envisioned of allowing that dog to go back to sleep in peace.
The concerns about Taiwan and the dangers and destruction inherent in the Ukraine and Hamas wars have incited a good deal of understandable but misplaced apprehension about the decline of America. There is no real evidence that it is in decline. Donald Trump saw that a post-Reagan America was deemed by the working and lower middle classes of the country to function chiefly for the benefit of the more highly skilled and educated half of the country, and he mobilized them in a way that had not been thought possible.
However, his election victory in 2016 so alarmed the bipartisan political establishment that the Democrats, under cover of blaming all disorder on Trump, generated chaos in 2020 and admitted to their ranks large numbers from the extremist left. They also exploited the COVID pandemic to engage in a great deal of electoral skulduggery that benefited from the long-established practice of the American judiciary not to overturn the apparent result of a presidential election.
The consequence is that the politics of the country are now sharply divided between those desperately clinging to the battlements of the bipartisan establishment, terribly bedraggled and disheveled after three years of a figurehead president trying to impose a socialist program and misuse the justice apparatus to stop their opponent, and the Trump forces marching electorally on Washington with the force and character of a righteous crusade.
For the first time, the United States has faced a period of over-harsh self-judgment in the last phase of the unique and admirable elevation of previously servile minorities to full equality. Such times of controversy are made especially spectacular in the United States by the prominence of the entertainment industry and the American star system that elevates almost anybody who can get attention, if only briefly. The resulting cacaphony has created the illusion of decline. It is unlikely that the next election will elevate a president unaware of the need to close the southern border, avoid inflation, confirm America’s national interests, and give the Pentagon the leadership, the forces, and the equipment to defend those interests.
While the attention of the world has been focused on the vagaries of American politics, few people have noticed the declining comparative position of China. The economy is stagnant and there’s no longer any talk of China overhauling the United States as the world’s largest economy. Debt is chronic, and China’s abrasiveness has caused Japan, Vietnam, India, and other neighbouring countries to rearm vigorously as India is racking up economic gains reminiscent of China in the early Deng Xiaoping era. Appeasement of the People’s Republic is going out of fashion in the West, and the vaunted Belt and Road program, a departure from China’s historic indifference to those countries distant from the Middle Kingdom, has alienated more people than it has befriended. America is not finished and the Chinese are not Supermen.
The Taiwan invasion discussion reminds this writer of Mr. Churchill’s conclusion in one of his great Demosthenean addresses in October 1940: “We are still awaiting the long-promised invasion. So are the fishes.”
