Would We Really Defend Taiwan?

TAIWAN

Washington has played a long diplomatic game— unofficial ties, “strategic ambiguity”—with the Republic of China. If China tries to take Taiwan by force, it’s game over.

By Jacquelyn Schneider

For the past four decades, the United States and China have maintained a delicate compromise regarding Taiwan. The United States describes its relationship with the island as “robustly unofficial” and affirms the Chinese view that “there is but one China and Taiwan is part of China”—and for that reason does not support explicit Taiwan independence. Its unofficial relationship with Taiwan, however, extends to selling the government American weapons, sending a limited number of advisory troops to the island, and maintaining a “cultural” presence (for instance, economic and cultural offices that act as de facto embassies). US presidents since Richard Nixon have played this diplomatic game, opting for strategic ambiguity about US commitments to defend Taiwan.

But in some quarters these days, strategic ambiguity is sounding a lot less ambiguous. Republican members of Congress have introduced

Jacquelyn Schneider is a Hoover Fellow and participates in Hoover’s Task Force on National Security. She is a nonresident fellow at the Naval War College’s Cyber and Innovation Policy Institute and a senior policy adviser to the Cyberspace Solarium Commission.

legislation that increases US military sales to Taiwan and expands military exchanges between the two countries. At least two bipartisan congressional delegations have visited the island recently; there’s a new

Taiwan Assurance Act—requiring the United States to advocate Taiwanese membership in international organizations—and President Biden, in an off-the-cuff statement, surprised observers by seeming to say the

United States was committed to defending Taiwan in the event of an invasion. Further, recent polling suggests that for the first time in many years, a majority of the American public support defending Taiwan, while an even greater percentage support a more formal alliance with the island.

And some influential foreign policy elites share that view: in December, the president of the Council on Foreign Relations, Richard Haass, writing with research fellow David Sacks, asserted that “Strategic ambiguity was a shrewd and effective approach for decades; now, however, it has run its course.”

While there is increasingly bipartisan support for more assertive declarations in support of Taiwanese defense, the discussions tend to remain fairly abstract. When there is public discussion of what a war might look like, it tends toward descriptions of long-range air and naval campaigns in which stealthy submarines, fighter jets, and cruise missiles use American satellites and intelligence resources to defeat an invading Chinese force. This is a narrative of technological overmatch that has dominated the American public narrative about war since Desert Storm.

But Xi Jinping is not Saddam Hussein, nor is the People’s Liberation Army the Iraqi military. Instead, the PLA is the largest army in the world and has, under Xi’s leadership, expanded its nuclear forcTelling the American public that the es, developed hypersonic United States can come to the rescue missiles, and acquired of Taiwan without significant loss of aircraft that approach life is potentially dishonest. It’s also the sophistication of the bad for deterrence. American F-35. Further, the PLA has devoted significant resources to amphibious invasion capabilities, including eight marine brigades, new amphibious vessels, and a large maritime militia. All of these developments, coupled with the logistical difficulty the United States would have defending Taiwan without forces that have been placed in advance on the island, mean that the defense of the island could be the bloodiest conflict the United States has experienced since Vietnam.

WE WILL RESIST: Taiwan’s president, Tsai Ing-wen, speaks in front of a domestically produced fighter jet during a visit to Penghu Air Force Base in September 2020. Recent polls suggest that for the first time in many years, a majority of the American public supports defending Taiwan. What that might

mean, however, is unclear. [Sam Yeh—AFP]

UNKNOWNS

It’s hard to say exactly how bloody it would be. Even while declassified war gaming results, think tank reports, and congressional testimony ring alarm bells about rising Chinese capabilities, very few of these detail the human losses the hypothetical clash would bring. For example, while commentators sometimes discuss the strategic impact of the Chinese DF-21 missile, dubbed an “aircraft carrier killer,” they rarely specify that the sinking of a Nimitzclass carrier could kill as many as 6,000 sailors.

So even a high-tech air and naval fight to defend Taiwan could lead to thousands of lives lost. But if the United States were to commit land forces to defend the island, the Army would face a difficult and potentially contested deployment, arriving to fight alongside a Taiwanese military with whom it has limited to no experience. There is no official estimate for Army casualties in such a scenario, but when the United States defended the Philippines against an invading Japanese force in World War II, it lost 25,000 troops, and almost 100,000 were captured. If the United States had to re-invade

the island after a Chinese invasion, that would lead to even more casualties. The United States lost about 23,000 troops in its re-invasion of the Philippines. Even the most successful re-invasion campaigns—for example, the US landing at Inchon in 1950, during the Korean War—killed more US personnel than died in all but four of the twenty years the United States was in Afghanistan.

Finally, there is the ever-present threat of nuclear escalation as the United States and China struggle to defeat each other in Taiwan without inadvertently crossing each other’s red lines. The costs of such a miscalculation would be incomprehensibly catastrophic.

HARSH LESSONS IN KOREA, VIETNAM

Defending a democracy from an autocratic China may very well be worth even an extremely steep cost. And I would warn Chinese onlookers not to underestimate US capabilities and will when the nation chooses a fight— especially after American lives are lost.

But the United States needs to have a conversation about what defending

Taiwan really entails before a Chinese invasion. Selling a narrative to the

American public that the United States can come to the rescue of Taiwan without significant loss of life is potentially dishonest, bad for deterrence, and disastrous for military effectiveness. Washington runs the risk of falling into traps that confounded the United States in both Korea and Vietnam. In the case of Korea, the United States didn’t fully understand its own commitment to South Korea until after a calamitous North Korean invasion. In the years after World War II, the Truman administration had been debating US interests in the Pacific, withdrawing forces from South Korea, and sending ambiguous signals about the United Even a high-tech air and naval fight States’ willingness to to defend Taiwan could lead to thou- come to the country’s sands of lives lost. defense. When North Korea launched a surprise attack, South Korean troops couldn’t combat the invasion and were pushed to the far southern tip of the peninsula. It took a major US re-mobilization and a gutsy invasion of the peninsula to win back the territory that had been lost.

In Vietnam, more famously, the public felt duped about the cost of an “advisory force” that turned into a large-scale war and conscription.

Some hawks are keen to galvanize public support for firm assurances to defend Taiwan. They’re concerned that a perception of public uninterest in the island’s fate might decrease deterrence and ultimately lead China to invade. Xi Jinping is not Saddam Hussein. But it would be a grave mistake for the United States to promise to defend Taiwan without preparing its public—and its soldiers—for the tough fight they could face.

Reprinted by permission of the Washington Post. © 2022 Washington Post Co. All rights reserved.

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