The Financial Times has an article by Gideon Rachman entitled:
How to stop a war between America and China
Unfortunately, the article doesn’t tell us how to stop a war between the US and China. It does mention the possibility of setting up the sort of “hot line” that existed between the US and the Soviet Union, but it’s hard to see how that would be decisive. There was no hot line 1962, when the US and Russia pulled back from the brink of nuclear war.
Rachman says that policymakers view the risk of war as being quite high:
Visiting Washington last week, it was striking how commonplace talk of war between the US and China has become. That discussion has been fed by loose-lipped statements from American generals musing about potential dates for the opening of hostilities.
Those comments, while unwise, did not spring from nowhere. They are a reflection of the broader discussion on China taking place in Washington — inside and outside government. Many influential people seem to think that a US-China war is not only possible but probable.
The rhetoric coming out of Beijing is also bellicose. Last month, Qin Gang, China’s foreign minister, said that “if the US side does not put on the brakes and continues down the wrong path . . . confrontation and conflict” between the two nations is inevitable.
I am also worried about the risk of war between the US and China. When thinking about this risk, it might be worth reviewing the situation in Europe, which seems equally dangerous. As far as I can tell, the US policy in Europe is roughly the following:
1. If Russia invades Estonia, we go to war with Russia.
2. If Russia invades Latvia, we go to war with Russia.
3. If Russia invades Lithuania, we go to war with Russia.
4. If Russia invades Ukraine, we supply Ukraine with weapons and intelligence.
A major war between two nuclear armed nations is a massive negative sum outcome. That sort of outcome is most likely to occur due to miscalculation. One way to reduce the risk of war is by making one’s intentions crystal clear, so that our adversaries know how we will respond if they act. Russia knows that we will defend Nato countries if they are attacked, and that’s why it doesn’t attack Nato countries.
It’s somewhat odd that the risk of war with China is currently seen as being higher than the risk of war with Russia, especially given the fact that Russia has a more powerful nuclear force than China and is led by a more reckless and militaristic leader. One possible factor is that our foreign policy in Asia is far more ambiguous than in Europe. Ambiguity can lead to miscalculation, which can have very negative effects.
In my view, clarity along the following lines would make war between the US and China much less likely than it is today, and much less likely than war between the US and Russia:
1. If China invades Japan, we go to war with China.
2. If China invades South Korea, we go to war with China.
3. If Russia China invades the Philippines (their main islands), we go to war with China.
4. If Russia China invades Taiwan, we supply Taiwan with weapons and intelligence.
[Yikes, there were typos in the original.]
In other words, replicate our successful European policy approach to avoiding a US war with Russia, as a way of avoiding war with China.
Of course there are other possible options, such as extending our defense umbrella to Taiwan. But whatever we decide to do, our policy must be crystal clear. The worst of all possible outcomes would be if the US intends to go to war with China over Taiwan, while China doesn’t believe the US intends to go to war over Taiwan. Remember the Gulf War of 1991?
Alternatively, suppose China believes that we’d go to war over Taiwan, but we have no intention of actually doing so. China might accompany an attack on Taiwan with a Pearl Harbor-type strike against US bases in Japan and Guam, triggering WWIII. All due to a misunderstanding. Not a likely outcome, but possible.
I don’t expect the US to follow my advice, and hence I see a non-trivial risk that miscalculation could lead to a nuclear war between the US and China during the late 2020s, which would be in no one’s interest. I hope I’m wrong.
READER COMMENTS
Airman Spry Shark
May 29 2023 at 2:37pm
3. If Russia invades the Philippines (their main islands), we go to war with China.
4. If Russia invades Taiwan, we supply Taiwan with weapons and intelligence.
s/Russia/China
Daniel Carroll
May 29 2023 at 3:10pm
Ukraine was a miscalculation by pretty much everyone. The policy was: Russia invades Ukraine, they take it in days, we fly the Ukrainian president to safety. The supplies and munitions came only after we realized they might win.
David Henderson
May 29 2023 at 4:16pm
Scott,
Would you also say that if the U.S. government invades Iraq, some other country’s government should go to war with us?
Scott Sumner
May 29 2023 at 5:11pm
I guess it depends on whether they have a defense treaty with Iraq, and also the reason why Iraq was invaded. Was it in retaliation for Iraq’s invasions of numerous other countries?
Brandon
May 29 2023 at 8:28pm
Great rebuttal!
American isolationists — oops, I mean “non-interventionists” – have a lot to learn. Libertarian foreign policy, for example, isn’t the same thing as American foreign policy.
It’s crazy to me that smart people like Henderson still get tripped up by this simple-but-dangerous fallacy.
David Henderson
May 30 2023 at 10:50am
It’s hard to see how that’s a rebuttal. I simply asked a question. It wasn’t a rhetorical question. I’m wondering whether Scott makes exceptions for U.S. foreign policy. To his credit, he doesn’t.
I think it follows that Scott would be fine with another country going to war with the United States if the U.S. government had not invaded numerous other countries. So, for example, what I’m taking from Scott’s reply is that Panama’s government would have been justified in invading the United States after George H.W. Bush invaded Panama. The practicality of such an invasion is, of course, another issue: the Panamanians would have been crushed.
Scott Sumner
May 30 2023 at 2:06pm
Any country is justified in fighting back against an unjust invasion. Whether a given invasion is unjust is another (much more complicated) question. Thus I don’t view the 2001 US attack on Afghanistan as being unjust, as they hit us first.
David Henderson
May 30 2023 at 3:14pm
Actually, the Afghan government didn’t hit us first. A few people, largely non-Afghanis, did the 9/11 attack.
Brandon
May 31 2023 at 5:16am
If this is true, then why did the United States invade and occupy Afghanistan after 9/11?
Scott Sumner
May 31 2023 at 12:27pm
I disagree. The Taliban and Al Qaeda were close allies, and the Taliban provided sanctuary for Al Qaeda. That made them complicit in the attack. If the Taliban had allowed us to go after Al Qaeda then I would not have favored a full invasion, just a hunt for Al Qaeda.
When a country is attacked, it’s sensible to want to punish the attackers. Unfortunately, that required an invasion of Afghanistan. The Taliban were foolish.
Warren Platts
May 30 2023 at 2:28pm
That’s pretty much my understanding: the Iraq War was simply unfinished business left over from the Gulf War, WMDs notwithstanding. The seeds were sown on March 1, 1991. I had duty that evening onboard the USS Acadia in Jebel Ali. All my friends were down on the pier getting their pictures taken with the afternoon extra, red letter edition of the Khaleej Times with the headline “WAR IS OVER.” The ceasefire reminded me of my father’s war, Korea. And I remember just shaking my head at all the celebration thinking, “We’re going to be back here in 10 or 12 years.” That’s one prediction I wish I had got wrong.
Scott Sumner
May 31 2023 at 12:28pm
One of our many mistakes was not removing Saddam in 1991.
Michael Sandifer
May 31 2023 at 3:10pm
My perspective has been the opposite. Having Saddam in charge, boxed in by the no fly zones and with an ambiguous situation regarding WMD kept both Iraq and the middle east more stable, consistent with American interests.
Warren Platts
May 30 2023 at 11:05am
The Mullahs in Iran did. And it’s no coincidence that most of the arms used by insurgents in Iraq & Afghanistan were manufactured in China.
Brandon
May 31 2023 at 5:18am
You have a source for the “Chinese weapons” claim?
Warren Platts
May 31 2023 at 3:12pm
https://web.archive.org/web/20110527230916/http://www.wikileaks.org/cable/2007/11/07STATE159388.html
Brandon
May 31 2023 at 5:55pm
Ah yes, wikileaks, thanks.
Beijing sold weapons to Tehran. The Persians then armed their cells in neighboring countries, countries that have had tense relations with Iran and that were then being occupied by a third country that had tense relations with Iran.
Beijing’s hands are clean. That was a smart move. Are you suggesting that this smart move means China is now a competitor with the US in regards to international order?
Ahmed Fares
May 29 2023 at 4:16pm
Read that as China. Having said that, it’s expected that China’s strategy as regards Taiwan would be a naval blockade. The operational range of the Harpoon anti-ship missile is 139 km. China’s naval blockade would be a little further out than that.
Scott Sumner
May 29 2023 at 5:12pm
Everyone, Sorry about the typos mixing up Russia and China.
David S
May 29 2023 at 5:36pm
When I was a child in the 1980’s I was terrified by the idea of a nuclear war between the U.S. and the Soviet Union. Now, with Putin as the inheritor of the nuclear arsenal of the USSR, I’m terrified again. I try to take some solace in the notion that his instincts for self-preservation overwhelm his megalomania. I also try to take solace in the notion that the people who would have to follow his commands for a launch have strong instincts for self-preservation.
With China, my feelings are considerably more complicated and less fixed. I have absolutely no fear of China starting a nuclear exchange. The juvenile brinksmanship between the U.S. and China seems less important the massive co-dependency between our nations. I’m typing this idiotic comment on a computer assembled from parts sourced across at least a half dozen Asian countries–and I think that’s a good thing. I’m frustrated that populistic rhetoric from political leaders is so aligned against the obvious benefits of trade and communication. So it goes.
Scott Sumner
May 30 2023 at 2:08pm
I agree that China is less of a nuclear threat than Russia, other things equal. But other things are not equal. We seem reluctant to go to war with Russia, but that reluctance doesn’t seem to exist for China. I’m not certain why.
Warren Platts
May 30 2023 at 3:34pm
Unfortunately, that’s rapidly changing. The Pentagon estimates China will have at least 1,000 nukes by 2030, but the reality is we really have no idea how many they have. China isn’t party to any nuclear arms control treaties, and there’s no system of verification.
Here’s a pretty good article from the Chinese perspective.
Note the author links China’s economic growth to increased military capability:
Warren Platts
May 30 2023 at 11:04pm
You missed the quotation that I cited above from a CCP apologist who said, “[D]ecades of fast economic development are giving Chinese leadership the ability to make vast investments in the country’s nuclear forces.”
Scott Sumner
May 31 2023 at 12:31pm
It’s bizarre to oppose the lifting out of poverty of 1.4 billion people because in the future that country might become more militarily powerful and also become an enemy.
There is no way of predicting how economic development will impact a country’s politics, but on average richer countries are more peaceful.
Warren Platts
Jun 1 2023 at 1:03pm
The word “might” is doing an awful lot of lifting there, Scott. The “Thucydides Trap” is something of a cliche these days, but the very idea that the building up China would likely lead to a militarily powerful enemy is a straightforward prediction of realist international relations theory (cf. Mearsheimer et al.). Nixon himself worried that opening up China would create a “Frankenstein monster.” This story isn’t over yet, but if a nuclear World War III ensues, history will judge that the lifting out of poverty of 1.4 billion people was the worst strategic mistake in world history.
That said, the idea that trade & travel would liberalize China actually worked up until the day it stopped working on June 4, 1989 when the PLA killed 100,000 pro-democracy demonstrators. After Tiananmen Square, however, there should have been no illusions that the CCP would willingly reliquish power. The subsequent 34 years have done nothing that would cause us to think that fact will change. When are we going to stop doubling down on the “engagement” theory?
Michael Rulle
May 30 2023 at 8:27am
It is highly unlikely there would be any such wars. I admit to being naive enough to believe man is ultimately rational. There needs to be a convincing belief that a lack of war would be more dangerous than the war itself.
Even the crazy man Hitler (and other German parties) believed that they were potentially in severe danger as a function of the Great Wars’s terrible treaty. Hitler did not cause the war——-he merely had an insane view toward how it should be handled. Anything is possible, as history tells us——-but I do not think the examples supplied above are persuasive examples of the likelihood of of war.
seer of things
May 31 2023 at 11:52pm
Supplying arms and intelligence to Taiwan might not be sufficient deterrent. Taiwan should announce they have nukes (and actually have them) at the earliest signs the U.S. is unwilling to go to war to defend Taiwan. This might mean they should have announced it already at some point in the past. In the past, however, China was less militarily capable so U.S. reassurances at the time probably seemed sufficient. It’s good that U.S. stepped up reassuring rhetoric but it needs to be backed by public opinion and I don’t know where that stands and how much polling has been done. Bing AI inside Skype has read everything that exists up to March 2023 and yet it says… “However, the survey did not ask specifically about the willingness to go to war to defend Taiwan from invasion by China.”
Taiwan should just get it over with. U.S. nukes have been parked in foreign countries. They should be secretly parked in Taiwan and Taiwan should simply tell everybody America cannot have them back.
Michael Sandifer
May 30 2023 at 9:35am
Though it will perhaps seem insane to most, and merely attempting to do so could start a war with China, arming Taiwan with nuclear weapons that could destroy Beijing could provide the sort of protection necessary to avoid a larger war. I have no idea how plausible it is that this could be done before the Chinese are able to detect and try to prevent it, or how secure such weapons would be from Chinese attacks on the island. It seems very unlikely we’d attempt to do this at this point, but if we’re ever going to do it, sooner is better than later, assuming China will continue to rise in relative power.
Short of this, we can begin to help arm Japan, South Korea, and perhaps even other countries in the region, with nuclear weapons to try to contain any possibility of major warfare. By a similar logic, we might welcome the nuclearization of the Middle East, as a good argument can be made that MAD helps maintain peace in ways other approaches cannot.
This is obviously a policy that would have to be conducted with great delicacy, as it would threaten people like Xi, as he and his government begin to realize that they are being boxed in with the MAD doctrine. It would certainly highlight his foreign policy failures, due to overreach and general clumsiness.
Jon Murphy
May 30 2023 at 10:32am
As the Cuban Missile Crisis indicates, the proliferation of nukes right to the border of China (especially to a group that China sees as separatists within their own borders!) is not prudent. That would be more likely to start a war than prevent one.
Mark Z
May 30 2023 at 12:03pm
Exactly. And it’s not just that we don’t want China (or Russia, in league with China) supplying Cuba or other of their allies/quasi-allies in our back yard with nukes; it’s also that the countries they would most likely arm to get back at us tend to be a bit on the insane side. China might encourage or aid North Korea’s or Iran’s nuclear programs to counter American arming of Taiwan, which makes nuclear war much more likely even if China doesn’t want it just by empowering deranged dictators.
Michael Sandifer
May 30 2023 at 1:06pm
The difference between nuclearizing Taiwan, and the Soviet effort to nuclearize Cuba, is that we have vast naval superiority over China, as we did over the Soviet Union. On the other hand, Taiwan is probably an even more politically sensitive situation for China, since China considers it to be part of its territory.
If we can get the nukes in there, before China has a chance to try and stop it, then I don’t see what they can reasonably do about it. Of course, maybe they won’t be reasonable.
That said, the mere credible threat to soon arm Taiwan with nuclear weapons, along with our other allies in the region, could bring them to the table to negotiate a deal to freeze the status quo for, say, 50 years, and revisit the question in the future.
Jon Murphy
May 30 2023 at 1:42pm
Not when it comes to Taiwan. Supply chains matter.
Oh, I can think of about a 100 things they could do, all of which would be reasonable.
But thinking China would just sit and take it is contrary to all evidence and represents a factually incorrect way of thinking about China. How many people in 2018 said China would just sit and take our tariffs? Some people were saying China wouldn’t dare retaliate even as they were raising their own tariffs!
In a more historical situation, “they wouldn’t dare” is usually uttered just before some political leader blunders into a massive mistake. For example, World War I was started because Austria thought Russia wouldn’t dare oppose their intervention in Serbia.
Michael Sandifer
May 31 2023 at 7:55am
If China discovered that Taiwan was a nuclear state, having been armed by the US, what could they do about it at that point? If Taiwan has a gun to Beijing’s head?
Jon Murphy
May 31 2023 at 10:21am
The same thing we were prepared to do to Cuba.
Michael Sandifer
May 31 2023 at 10:41am
China doesn’t have the naval or air forces superiority over us that we had over the Soviet Union.
Tom Chambers
May 31 2023 at 12:22pm
Michael Sandifer wrote that “…we have vast naval superiority over China…” IMO this superiority is illusory.
I have followed the news section of the US Naval Institute website (news.usni.org) for years. It is true the USN has far more tonnage of warships than the PLAN. But three quarters of those ships are on the other side of the world; half of those are in some stage of upkeep and are unavailable in the short term; and despite this there is a huge maintenance backlog. (The carrier George Washington just returned to service after a mid-life nuclear refueling/overhaul that took 6 years to complete, as long as it took to build the ship in the first place.) The USN may be projecting a 340-ship fleet by 2035, but they already have a manpower deficit, they expect to retire ships faster than they can replace them, and budget constraints are inevitably going to get worse. The PLAN already has more ships although smaller; they don’t have a worldwide oceanic capability but they don’t need it. The survivability of our carriers in a shooting war in the western Pacific, or our subs in the Taiwan Straits, is open to question; meanwhile the PLAN will be operating right off its home ports with land-based air cover.
In short, I don’t think our vaunted naval superiority provides a capability to defend Taiwan in a conventional war.
Michael Sandifer
May 31 2023 at 4:44pm
My understanding, very incomplete as a layperson, is that China’s navy is not particularly built for offensive capability and is vastly out-classed ship-for-ship versus the US navy. Also, their command structure is likely less efficient, given that they’re an authoritarian state. They see the example of how Russia is faring against NATO weapons in Ukraine. A rational China would seem to have to accept a nuclearized Taiwan.
That said, Xi and the rest of the CCP leadership may not act rationally.
Warren Platts
May 30 2023 at 1:25pm
There are already hot lines in place, but when American generals call, lately, the Chinese refuse to pick up. As for making intentions perfectly clear, 100% certainty is impossible because humans like to bluff. If Putin were to say he will use nukes against Ukraine unless they surrender, should we take that at face value? Probably not.
The whole situation is too bad because it didn’t have to be this way. All China had to do was be content to get rich. But no, they had to insist on being a military superpower despite zero threat from anybody. (If the USA had designs to invade China, we would have done it in 1950.)
The situation is doubly ironic because for the past 45 years, the USA has bent over backwards to help out China by sacrificing our working class & industrial base while offering unfettered access to the biggest consumer market on the planet, technology transfers, and education at our best universities in order to lift a billion of their people out of abject poverty. Most other nations would be grateful — but not China.
With 20-20 hindsight, no can deny now that the best option would have been to continue giving China the Cuba treatment from Day 1 until the day the CCP is overthrown. Then we wouldn’t be having this conversation.
But that’s all water under the bridge. Now we’re in another Cold War even more dangerous than the last one by many measures. The only solution is sheer kinetic deterrence. That entails increased military spending and continued building of alliances. The idea being floated about Japan, South Korea, Philippines, and Australia joining a NATO-Plus alliance with full Article V protections is a step in the right direction.
A corollary to this strategy — and you economists will not like this part — is that we’ve got to stop going out of our way to help the Chinese economy grow, especially when that growth comes at our expense. The first step should be revocation of PNTR. Let’s force Congress to debate every year whether we should be granting MFN trading status to an empire that’s got a million men in concentration camps for wearing beards. Insist on strict reciprocity on everything. They ban Twitter, then we ban TikTok. Ban all real estate sales as DeSantis has already done in Florida. Strict immigration and student visa restrictions. Etc.
When you’re feeding a tiger and it bites your hand off, if you decide not to kill it, then at least make it fend for itself and stop feeding it.
Scott Sumner
May 30 2023 at 2:18pm
“With 20-20 hindsight, no can deny now that the best option would have been to continue giving China the Cuba treatment from Day 1 until the day the CCP is overthrown.”
Because that worked so well with Cuba?
Warren Platts
May 30 2023 at 2:51pm
In the sense that Cuba’s economic development has been held back as a result, thus reducing its capacity to cause mischief, then, yes, the policy has worked splendidly.
Jon Murphy
May 30 2023 at 4:15pm
Socialism had more to do with that than the embargo (indeed, if the protectionist theory of trade is correct, the embargo made Cuba better off than it would have been otherwise!).
But let us not forget that the embargo’s goal was to weaken (and eventually topple) the Castro regime. Rather, the opposite happened. Not to mention that it drove Cuba into the arms of the USSR, up to the point they were going to put nuclear missiles in Cuba. So, Scott’s point remains.
Warren Platts
May 30 2023 at 7:00pm
You can say that Castro’s regime was strengthened in a sense, but certainly not in an economic sense nor in a military sense. Meantime, it’s equally clear that free trade has immensely strengthened socialist China both economically and militarily.
Numerous war games conducted by the U.S. military & assorted think tanks have shown that a successful defense of Taiwan in the event of an invasion, even with direct U.S. military intervention, is chancy at best. I think that in the RAND corporation’s wargames, China prevailed 9 times out of 10.
So given that China would probably win a battle over Taiwan, we gotta ask why they’re not doing it? To me, the answer seems to be that the victory wouldn’t be worth the future costs in terms of loss of trade caused as a result of being a worse pariah nation than they already are.
Jon Murphy
May 30 2023 at 7:19pm
You really ought to learn more about Soviet military aid to Cuba during the Cold War. The embargo failed.
Freer trade has helped China economically (contrary to protectionist claims) but militarily? Probably not. That seems to have come from alternative sources.
Warren Platts
May 30 2023 at 11:06pm
You missed the quotation that I cited above from a CCP apologist who said, “[D]ecades of fast economic development are giving Chinese leadership the ability to make vast investments in the country’s nuclear forces.”
Jon Murphy
May 31 2023 at 10:22am
I didn’t miss it. I dismissed it.
David Henderson
May 30 2023 at 7:02pm
Good rhetorical point, Scott. Of course, it worked horribly with Cuba.
And, all other things equal, we’re more likely to avoid war by having more trade, not less trade.
Warren Platts
May 30 2023 at 11:13pm
The paradigmatic model of a free trade economy is that which exists within the United States borders. A vast continental sized economy. Yet all that free trade did not prevent the worst war the U.S. of A. was ever fought, by far. Such examples can be multiplied…
Warren Platts
May 30 2023 at 11:27pm
And this is very unclear. Horribly for Cuba’s citizens? Well, yes, tragically. For the United States? Only in the sense that Cuban refugees have been reliable Republican voters.
Meantime, has Cuba been sending soldiers to Angola, Grenada, and elsewhere? Not anymore. They have more than enough problems at the home island to worry about nowadays.
Bottom line: We would not be on the brink of nuclear war with China if they were still backwards 3rd worlders, the way Cuba still is..
Jon Murphy
May 31 2023 at 10:25am
Why do you assume that? We were on the brink of nuclear war with Cuba (hours away from it, in fact) in the 60s and Cuba was a third worlder. Not to mention brink of nuclear war with China in the 50s.
Warren Platts
May 31 2023 at 2:42pm
Now you’re just playing word games..
Jim Glass
Jun 5 2023 at 2:10am
Jon Murphy wrote:
We were on the brink of nuclear war with Cuba (hours away from it, in fact) in the 60s and Cuba was a third worlder.
Huh? What? Cuba had nukes?? Nah. A US war with Cuba it would have been on a scale between our invasions of Grenada and Panama.
We were on the brink of nuclear war with the Soviet Union, culminating a course that ran U2 shoot-down, Berlin Crisis, Kennedy-Khrushchev summit (a disaster for Kennedy), Bay of Pigs fiasco (a worse disaster for Kennedy) etc. It all just came to a head in Cuba. The Soviets didn’t give a rat’s tail about Cuba per se, as they made clear. The didn’t even consult with Castro during the crisis, which peeved him off plenty.
Not to mention brink of nuclear war with China in the 50s.
Well, that would have been one-sided! China didn’t get a bomb until 1964.
Lizard Man
May 30 2023 at 2:19pm
The problem with number 4 is that if China thinks that the US will aid Taiwan, they have good reasons to attempt Pearl Harbor type attacks on US bases in Japan, South Korea and the Philippines to prevent the US from being able to quickly resupply Taiwan. Why would China view the US supplying arms and intelligence to Taiwan during a war with China as tolerable? Russian doesn’t have the power to block weapons shipments to Ukraine, and also has massive borders which it is ill equipped to defend. Taiwan is an island, which might tempt the Chinese to believe that they could blockade it, and China’s borders are much more easily defended than Russia’s.
Warren Platts
May 30 2023 at 3:01pm
Because China expects the U.S. to tolerate their supplying of arms and intelligence to our adversaries in every war we’ve fought since 1950?
Jon Murphy
May 30 2023 at 4:16pm
It’s a good point about the difference between supplying Ukraine and Taiwan, although there may be ways around it (eg the Berlin Airlift)
Scott Sumner
May 31 2023 at 12:34pm
Yes, the fact that Taiwan is an island is important. Realistically, we need to supply arms to Taiwan before the invasion begins. Once it’s begun, it’s too late.
Philippe Bélanger
May 30 2023 at 3:49pm
“4. If China invades Taiwan, we supply Taiwan with weapons and intelligence.”
The problem with this approach is that US weapons and intelligence would probably not prevent China from invading Taiwan. China’s military has grown so much in recent years that we don’t even know if a US military intervention would be successful. That’s why the risk of war is high: each side correctly believes it has a chance to prevail in Taiwan.
Scott Sumner
May 31 2023 at 12:36pm
Yes, and the primary goal should be preventing a war between the US and China. Preventing a China-Taiwan war is also quite desirable, but several orders of magnitude less important.
Philippe Bélanger
May 31 2023 at 5:02pm
If the primary goal of the US is to avoid a war with China, then the US should just declare that it will not intervene militarily if China attacks Taiwan. Of course, this would significantly increase the probability that China will conquer Taiwan. Not only would sending weapons not make much of a difference, it probably wouldn’t even be an option, because there is a good chance China would impose a blockade on Taiwan.
But it’s not obvious to me that the US should avoid war with China at all costs. Letting China invade Taiwan means that Taiwan would go from being a democracy to being ruled by an authoritarian state, the US would lose credibility with other Asian allies and China would gain a strategically important piece of land.
Tracy Lee
Jun 4 2023 at 1:01pm
The root of the problem is with the leaders, not the countries.
Putin and Xi (and other bad leaders) are the reason our planet may face destruction.
These leaders have incorrect beliefs tied to their egos that are driving us to war.
The actual people don’t want war. It is the leaders and their lust that will bring it.
Replace the leaders and the problem can go away.
LC
Jun 4 2023 at 2:05pm
Thanks for posting this. I believe the position of US has been clear and has been amplified thousand fold. My issue is not whether US has been able to make its position clear, but rather has US been able to listen to the other side? Can anyone articulate the Chinese position on the US side? Just the fact that in Scott’s column, when he mentions better well being for 1.4 billion people in China as positive, he gets called a “China apologist”, or even in some cases a tool of CCP, says a lot more troubling things about US and the ability for US to listen to the other side, than anything the Chinese have done. (BTW, this phenomenon happens to anyone in US that dares to speak up. Just look at comments to Ray Dalio’s posts.) I firmly believe wars and conflicts happen not because both sides didn’t make their own positions clear, but rather because both sides have refused to listen to the other. I see the troubling trend in US discourse extending to Chinese side, where now the Chinese are starting to tune out US positions. This is how we sleep walk into catastrophe, with hubris and willful ignorance.
Jim Glass
Jun 5 2023 at 1:37am
One way to reduce the risk of war is by making one’s intentions crystal clear, so that our adversaries know how we will respond if they act.
Or not. Many historians and international strategists will tell you that often this is not at all true. Your opponents knowing how you will respond to them can make their lives much easier by enabling them to plan around it. Perhaps you’ve heard the saying “the threat is stronger than the execution.” (When you play poker, do you start by telling your opponents what what cards you have and how you will play them?) Once you see your opponent start planning for what you’ve said you’ll do, you may have to say, “Well, then, maybe I’ll do something different…”
Russia knows that we will defend Nato countries if they are attacked, and that’s why it doesn’t attack Nato countries.Or not. Putin and his siloviki have been saying out loud for years that their goal is to break US dominance of Europe and push NATO back to its 1991 borders — that is, break NATO — without a war that would destroy them. How?
Many who know them and watch them best (not cable tv and op-ed jabberers) believe Putin’s plan was to absorb Ukraine quickly (easy, as Europe had signaled no will to defend it via the energy deals that were ramped up even after the Russia attack of 2014). Then, after a little while, roll the Russian army up next to, or over, the border of, say, Latvia. Would the people and politicians of the USA and Europe start a real shooting war, with *real* nuclear risk, over just tiny Latvia? If offered a “reasonable” peace deal alternative? That’s not clear to anyone. If not, NATO is broken. Putin and Xi win.
This risk is still very real, if a bit postponed, *especially* if the West gets tired of supporting Ukraine and gives in to Russian nuclear blackmail to impose a “compromise “peace the Ukrainians don’t want. Then Putin and Xi get the clear message: to defend the liberal democratic order, the west won’t even keep sending 20+ year old used equipment to let the Ukrainians fight for themselves. But it will fight with its own troops and risk nuclear war for Latvia? Ha! Next stop, the Baltics.
Yet doesn’t Article 5 let the Russians *know* NATO will fight to protect Latvia? Sure. Just as everyone knew the allies would fight to protect the Czechs in 1938. As DeGaulle said…
It’s somewhat odd that the risk of war with China is currently seen as being higher than the risk of war with Russia … One possible factor is that our foreign policy in Asia is far more ambiguous than in Europe. Stephen Kotkin, who knows as much (if not more) than anybody about the behavior of Leninist regimes (his books are taught at the CCP leadership college – he complains that he doesn’t get a royalty!) is of the opinion that strategic ambiguity is essential to maintain peace with China. I refer you to his analysis.
But whatever we decide to do, our policy must be crystal clear. The worst of all possible outcomes would be if the US intends to go to war with China over Taiwan, while China doesn’t believe the US intends to…
Or, if the US makes it crystal clear that it …
[] … won’t got to war over Taiwan, so China decides to take it, and why stop there? If the US won’t protect its friends, why not gobble bits of Australia’s interests, etc., too. Taiwan is a *big* thing, if the US won’t defend that, will it go to war over lots of little things? How many Latvias are there around the South China Sea?
[] … will go to war over Taiwan. Then China reasons, we have the local military advantage today, but if the USA builds up its forces over the next few years we’ll never get Taiwan. So we must strike now!!! The “closing window” is a frequent motivator for war. See Germany-Russia 1914, Germany-Europe 1939, Japan-USA 1941…
It’s easy to say we need crystal clear policy. But what’s the crystal clear policy that won’t make things worse?
Miscalculations are possible whether policy is clear or ambiguous. The big, fundamental miscalculation that starts wars is that your opponent is a lot weaker or less willing to fight than it is. See Putin vs Ukraine & West (plus countless other examples). Alas, there is ample evidence that this is the creed in Xi’s CCP regime about the West as well, and that it is strengthening there. The West negligently acted to reinforce this belief in Putin, to great cost. Let’s not repeat that mistake with Xi.
Look, I’m not pretending to have any simple answers here. It is a complex game.
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