Washington will go to war to make sure China will never be unified. America’s dominance in Asia depends on preventing such an outcome
The “one-China” policy is supposed to be ambiguous, allowing the opposing sides to claim what they want it to mean. But recent statements from senior Chinese and American officials are helping the rest of the world to put two and two together. Rising tensions across the Taiwan Strait, with so much military hardware moving around the neighbourhood, have set off alarms and made people talk more frankly than usual.
In an interview with the US National Public Radio last week, Qin Gang, the Chinese ambassador to Washington, warned the current trajectory could end in war between the United States and China over Taiwan. It is an uncharacteristically stark comment.
In a December testimony before the US Senate committee on foreign relations, Ely Ratner, the assistant secretary of defence for Indo-Pacific security affairs, approached the subject as close to the truth as could be publicly stated for an American official.
Why is Taiwan’s security so important to the US? His straightforward answer: “Taiwan is located at a critical node within the first island chain, anchoring a network of US allies and partners – stretching from the Japanese archipelago down to the Philippines and into the South China Sea – that is critical to the region’s security and critical to the defence of vital US interests in the Indo-Pacific.
“Geographically, Taiwan is also situated alongside major trade lanes that provide sea lines of communication for much of the world’s commerce and energy shipping. It is in part for these strategic reasons that this administration, like those before it, has affirmed our commitment to our one-China policy, as guided by the Taiwan Relations Act, the three Joint US-PRC Communiques, and the Six Assurances.”
Quite simply, the mainland will go to war to prevent Taiwan independence. The US will go to war to make sure China will never be unified. America’s dominance in Asia depends on preventing such an outcome, and Ratner said as much.
For sure Americans are overbearing. But their position over Taiwan is perhaps not so different from China’s over the Korean peninsula. Beijing would not countenance the North-South unification and let a key US ally to move its military all the way to its borders. For all its troubles, North Korea is a key security buffer.
China’s worst nightmare is that Taiwan’s independence and Korean unification would complete the US maritime encirclement and turn it into a sitting duck.
