If China were able to conquer and subjugate Taiwan, America and the world, not just all the people in Taiwan, would lose a lot.
● An anchor for the defense of Japan that “denies China a springboard from which it could threaten U.S. allies in the western Pacific.”
● A country whose form of government inspires “democratic aspirations across the region, including in China itself.”
● The stability of a “a wide network of U.S. allies across the Indo-Pacific, countries that rely on U.S. support for their security,” with the loss of Taiwan perhaps triggering “a race among nations to develop their own nuclear arsenals as U.S. security guarantees lost credibility.”
● Taiwan’s contribution to global prosperity “by virtue of its role as the primary producer of advanced microchips” with a war to grab Taiwan “easily caus[ing] a global depression.”
The argument is developed in “The Taiwan Catastrophe: What America—and the World—Would Lose If China Took the Island,” by Andrew S. Erickson, Gabriel B. Collins, and Matt Pottinger, published February 16, 2024 in Foreign Affairs.
The authors note that although General Douglas MacArthur stressed in 1950 that a Chinese seizure of Taiwan “would be a disaster of utmost importance to the United States,” two elements of the argument for Taiwan’s importance have emerged only in the decades since: the country’s now-democratic character and its now-massive contributions to global prosperity.
Moreover, the threat to Taiwan seems to be intensifying.
In recent years, Chinese leader Xi Jinping has shown an impatient determination to resolve Taiwan’s status in a way his predecessors never did. He has ordered a meteoric military buildup, instructing Chinese forces to give him by 2027 a full range of options for unifying Taiwan….
It is difficult to overstate the significance of Taiwan’s strong democracy, given the political realities just across the Taiwan Strait, where more than 1.4 billion people sharing many linguistic and cultural traditions are subject to totalitarian rule. Numerous Chinese citizens draw inspiration from Taiwan’s political transition from martial law to democracy, which offers a model for what China could become. Fearing precisely such a result, officials in Beijing have long tried to caricature Taiwan as slavishly imitating Western forms of governance. But it is actually the Chinese Communist Party that is doing so by clinging to its Marxist-Leninist system, a discredited political model imported from Europe. A Chinese street protester caught on video in late 2022 highlighted the absurdity of the accusation that he was manipulated by foreign forces. “What ‘foreign forces’ are you referring to?” he asked. “Is it Marx and Engels? Is it Stalin? Is it Lenin?”…
Whether through outright war or intense coercion, Chinese annexation of Taiwan against the will of its 24 million people would disrupt the global order in ways unseen since World War II. For starters, Beijing might not stop after annexing Taiwan…. China is grabbing land in Bhutan and engages in border skirmishes with India. It pursues disputes with all its maritime neighbors. It is actively challenging Japan’s claims over the islands that Tokyo administers and calls the Senkaku (and which China calls the Diaoyu), as well as the territorial claims of five other governments in the South China Sea….
Japan would be in a far weaker position to defend its territory were Taiwan under Beijing’s control…. China made its capabilities clear during extensive PLA exercises in August 2022, when one of several ballistic missiles it fired landed in the water near Japan’s Yonaguni Island, only 68 miles from Taiwan.
The fall of Taiwan would be even worse for the Philippines and other Southeast Asian countries.
According to Erickson, Collins, and Pottinger, then, we should care about the fate of Taiwan whether our focus is on “the future of democracy in Asia” or “the cold math of realpolitik.”
Also see:
StopTheChinazis.org: Paul Jacob video: “Why Should Americans Defend Taiwan?”
StopTheChinazis.org: Paul Jacob video: “Keep Taiwan Free!”
“Who’s the danger?”
StopTheChinazis.org: “Can’t Eat Chips”
“Maybe the CCP could ‘never’ get its hands on those fabs producing all the high-end computer chips, but if somehow it did, are we really supposed to believe it wouldn’t be YUGELY advantageous to China? Say, militarily?”
