Commentary
Over the past several years, the People’s Liberation Army Navy has been saber-rattling in the Taiwan Strait, East China Sea, and South China Sea.
Chinese warships were conducting “intensive combat exercises,” as noted by Newsweek, and, more recently, practicing what long-time China watchers James Fanell and Bradley Thayer referred to in The Washington Times on May 23 as “a Joint Fire Strike [exercise] in August 2022 and [a] Joint Anti-Air Raid [exercise] in April 2023.” They also speculate that the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) will conduct a “joint island landing” exercise this fall that will be a practice run for the full-on invasion of Taiwan. These exercises go far beyond psychological warfare and the intimidation of Taiwan, which Beijing has been escalating under Chinese leader Xi Jinping’s direction since 2020.
Xi’s minions are gradually moving toward the “absorption” of Taiwan into China in much the same manner as the communists have snuffed out the freedoms and liberties of Hongkongers since the national security law was mandated in Hong Kong on June 30, 2020. Capitulation by Taipei would doubtless be the preferred approach, ergo the ratcheting up of PLA Navy operations, including increased sorties by new ships and aircraft in the waters and airspace surrounding Taiwan. However, if Taiwan retains its resolve, Xi may have to resort to the use of force to achieve the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) top political goal since 1949.
Are the United States and the rest of the world doing enough to deter what Xi and the PLA seem to be telegraphing with their military escalation in the vicinity of Taiwan? Let us examine the issue.
Taiwan 2023 Is the Sudetenland 1938
The CCP has been pursuing a “Greater China” policy for years. The goal is to consolidate all overseas Han Chinese around the world, both economically and politically. This includes not only majority Chinese places like Hong Kong and Singapore, but also countries with minority Chinese populations such as Thailand, Malaysia, Brunei, and even New Zealand. And, of course, the big prize for Beijing is Taiwan, which is where Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalists (the Kuomintang) fled after being defeated by Mao Zedong’s People’s Liberation Army in 1949.“History does not repeat itself, but it often rhymes”—a quote frequently attributed to Mark Twain. And indeed, such is the case with the Sudetenland in 1938 and Taiwan in 2023.
In the late 1930s, German Chancellor Adolf Hitler was hard at work consolidating a “Greater Germany”—first through the Anschluss, in which Austria was annexed by Nazi Germany in 1938. Then, he set his sights on the Sudetenland, a region in northwest Czechoslovakia with a majority German population. To avoid war over Hitler’s desire to seize the Sudetenland outright and thereby violate a French alliance with Czechoslovakia, Britain and France met with Germany and Italy in Munich in late September 1938 to conclude the “Munich Agreement”—a complete sellout allowing Hitler’s Germany to annex the Sudetenland peacefully. However, that “peace” lasted precisely 11 months.
Chinese leader Xi Jinping (L) speaks after inspecting the Chinese People's Liberation Army (PLA) Navy fleet in the South China Sea on April 12, 2018. Li Gang/Xinhua via AP
Now, let us look at the “historical rhymes” concerning Taiwan in 2023:
- Xi’s Greater China is analogous to Hitler’s Greater Germany; both have/had megalomaniacal geopolitical goals.
- Hong Kong is analogous to the 1938 Austrian Anschluss, and the CCP continues to tighten the screws under the national security law as it absorbs the former British protectorate into China.
- Taiwan is analogous to the Sudetenland: both are/were flashpoints that could trigger a real shooting war. Will the Franco-British surrender to Hitler in 1938 be mirrored in a capitulation to China by the United States and its allies? Will the appeasement of Xi in 2023 be a harbinger of a major war in the same manner as was appeasement of Hitler in 1938?
Translation: it is in America’s (and the world’s) best interests to let the PLA take Taiwan militarily without any U.S. or allied military intervention.
That’s appeasement. The author (and many others of a similar mind) neglect to mention the other end results of his proposed scenario: Xi’s communist regime will be emboldened, the Taiwanese semiconductor industry that supplies the world will be controlled by China, and the Quad countries will be demoralized and likely seek accommodations with Beijing because the United States will have failed to support Taiwan’s sovereignty (while also wondering what the United States would do on their behalf when the inevitable push comes to shove with Beijing).
Real Deterrence
President Joe Biden was quick to rise to the defense of Asian Americans during the COVID-19 pandemic with his executive order titled “Memorandum Condemning and Combating Racism, Xenophobia, and Intolerance Against Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders in the United States.” All is well and good, but how about an EO with some real teeth in it that extends the U.S. nuclear umbrella over Taiwan to protect 24 million Taiwanese from the delayed wrath of the CCP? That would be “instant deterrence at the stroke of a pen” and a shot heard around the world against the communists.It should be noted that the Taipei Times stated on May 24 that “Taiwan’s national security doctrine explicitly rejects the development of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons of mass destruction,” but that does not preclude the acceptance of a U.S. nuclear shield or even the deployment of future U.S. theater nuclear weapons to Taiwan.
Another concrete action to deter Beijing would be a ramped-up U.S. Seventh Fleet show-of-force presence in and around Taiwan in conjunction with a continuing series of joint exercises with Quad and NATO navies in the area. Such actions would be clear statements that the United States and its allies will not simply stand aside and allow the PLA free rein in a cross-strait invasion.
Lastly, the United States should accelerate the delivery of arms to Taiwan and coordinate rotational deployments of U.S. and allied military forces to Taiwan, for example, F-35 detachments from the United States and Japan and U.S. Army HIMARS and ATACMS support detachments.
Words won’t deter Xi, but concrete military measures will certainly do so. There is no time to lose!
Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.
