US Should Pressure Allies to Help Taiwan

Tourists walk past Taiwanese flags in Taiwan's Kinmen islands on Aug. 11, 2022. Sam Yeh/AFP via Getty Images

Commentary

The Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) international power is, above all, in its status as a gatekeeper to China’s economy and conservator of China’s military strength. This is illustrated by its trade sanctions and development aid to coerce countries into compliance with its will (including bonus bribes for compliant leaders) and avoidance of military conflict in places like Ukraine and Israel.

Beijing’s strategy of military distance combined with trade sanctions is usually below the American public’s radar. But it is particularly dangerous for the United States and democracy generally because it undermines U.S. power and alliance systems.

Case of South Korea

China’s trade sanctions, for example, can be used to obtain compliance with the CCP nearly effortlessly due to the fear of countries like South Korea that are once bitten, twice shy. On Oct. 16, Reuters reported that South Korea cracked down on one of its own submarine manufacturers because it dared to assist Taiwan. The reason? Not trade sanctions from China but the mere fear of trade sanctions.

By achieving South Korea’s compliance relatively effortlessly, Beijing demonstrates to the world how it can direct one of the United States’s closest allies to do the CCP’s will, thereby constraining the power of U.S. alliance systems and undermining international confidence in U.S. leadership.

This deleteriously affects not only the macro of alliances but also the micro of alliances of our allied citizens and companies attempting to do the right thing to support Taiwan. For example, a South Korean arrest warrant was issued for the executive director of the South Korean submarine supplier SI Innotec. The company was fined $10 million by South Korean authorities.

The CCP clearly leveraged Seoul to issue the warrant due to fear of retaliation for not following its wishes. A 2022 affidavit seeking the arrest cited South Korean police who said they “feared a repeat of the sweeping sanctions imposed by Beijing in 2016, after Seoul decided to install THAAD, a U.S. anti-missile system,” according to Reuters.

Such threats against South Korea, which has a legitimate defense need against China’s missile technology (including that obtained by North Korea), and private companies in South Korea that provide for the legitimate defense needs of Taiwan, a partner democracy, are not limited to one country or company.

Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi (L) speaks as South Korea's Foreign Minister Park Jin looks on during the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) Plus Three Foreign Ministers' Meeting in Jakarta on July 13, 2023. Mast Irham/Pool/AFP via Getty Images

In November, two additional South Korean businesses that allegedly provided Taiwan with submarine parts were charged in South Korea with breaking trade laws. The government accused one of the chief executives of industrial espionage. Had the charges truly been to protect South Korean trade secrets, this would have been reasonable. But the self-defeating warrants indicate that they were, in fact, ultimately to protect China’s military from Taiwan at the economic and security expense of South Korea.

Due to the charges, many other South Korean firms with submarine expertise sought to avoid assisting Taiwan because they expected a lack of government approval from a “possible Chinese ban on South Korean exports,” according to Reuters.

Systemic Self-Defeat

China has also used trade sanctions to assert its will against Lithuania, Australia, the Philippines, and Japan—all close U.S. allies. In the case of Japan, Beijing leveraged Russia on Oct. 16 to impose sanctions as well. As communist China becomes more powerful, it will increasingly be able to leverage not only its own economy against the United States and allies but also the economies of others.

The world’s biggest oil exporters—including Russia, Saudi Arabia, and Venezuela—are all drawing closer to Beijing. This mitigates the risk to China of an oil embargo but also gives it leverage that could be used to engineer oil shocks that skyrocket inflation in the United States, trigger interest rate increases, and send our economy into recession.

Unfortunately, the U.S. system of international allies and partners is subject to a power vacuum due to a lack of leadership that the CCP can take advantage of in many ways. Trade sanctions have far-reaching and divisive effects on U.S. partnerships, as illustrated by South Korea’s refusal to provide submarine technology to Taiwan. That technology could deter a war over Taiwan.

South Korea, which could be drawn into such a war through the U.S. bases on its territory, has every reason to want to bolster Taiwan’s deterrence from a national security perspective and every economic reason to do so through its own companies. But as in the case of THAAD, Beijing is trying, and in this case succeeded, in compelling Seoul to act in a manner contrary to its own national and economic security.

Defeating Beijing’s Trade Threats

This self-defeating dynamic could be overcome through more leadership by the United States and its G7 partners. Such leadership could provide the alliance system with two principles. First, when threatened with trade sanctions by an adversary country, always assist others in the alliance system. Not assisting a partner country in its time of need would result in trade sanctions by the G7 countries against the partner that refused to help others.

G7 leaders (L to R) European Council President Charles Michel, Italian Premier Giorgia Meloni, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, French President Emmanuel Macron, Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, U.S. President Joe Biden, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen pose for a group photo at the Itsukushima Shrine during the G7 Summit in Hiroshima, Japan, on May 19, 2023. Stefan Rousseau/Pool/Getty Images

This would “tie the hands” of our allies into doing what is right for them from a national security perspective and neutralize Beijing’s trade threats through “signaling” that such threats would fall on deaf ears.

Knowing that Seoul, for example, could not comply with self-defeating national security measures, Beijing would not try to obtain that compliance in the first place. Tying the hands of South Korea would be for its own benefit, as strange as that sounds, and redound to the benefit of the entire U.S. alliance system.

Any public concern that the disincentives for South Korea could provoke could be ameliorated by offering a G7 incentive. If an adversary nation imposed trade sanctions, the G7 and other partners would make the victim whole, for example, by increasing imports of whatever of the country’s exports were impacted. This policy would amount to an assistance and insurance agreement for G7 countries and our partners that would powerfully counter the CCP’s attempts to leverage its trade to divide us.

The United States, as the largest economy of the G7, would be indispensable in leading the initiative. If, at first, other G7 countries refused to join, the United States and a coalition of the willing could establish the processes on their own. It would still apply to and benefit the entire U.S. alliance system.

Beijing is playing hardball with our allies, and if we leave them entirely to their own devices, they will get knocked out one by one. Leadership is needed to save their sovereignty from the increasingly powerful extraterritorial influence of the CCP.

Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.