The near-simultaneous publication of US and Japanese reports analyzing Chinese military power has riveted Taiwan's attention on strategic conditions in the Strait. Both reports documented China's swift military buildup. While the Pentagon hedged about Chinese intentions, however, the Japan Defense Agency strongly implied that Beijing was shifting to an offensive stance.
The common wisdom among Taiwanese strategists holds that the military balance in the Strait will tip in favor of China as early as next year. Improvements to Chinese air, naval and missile forces will ultimately negate the advantage in quality the Taiwanese forces have long relied on to deter Chinese military action.
Burgeoning military power may tempt Beijing to settle the cross-strait impasse by force. But "island warfare" endangers not only islanders but land powers that venture seaward.
Taiwan must preserve the military balance if it wants to choose its own destiny. For its part, China should not assume that military superiority guarantees it victory in a trial of arms.
Wars of antiquity bear out the perils of island warfare. Thucydides, the historian of the Peloponnesian War, recounts an event relevant to Taiwan. During its decades-long struggle with rival Sparta, Athens dispatched an embassy to Melos, an island city-state strategically located off the Greek coast, with an ultimatum: submit to the Athenian empire or be destroyed.
Melian leaders balked, but their city lacked military means adequate to fend off an Athenian assault. The Athenian ambassadors sneered at the Melians' appeals to justice, proclaiming that the strong do as they will in world affairs, while "the weak suffer what they must" when their interests clash with those of the strong.
True to their word, the Athenians crushed the island's feeble resistance, put its male population to death, and enslaved the women and children.
For Thucydides, the butchery illustrated what too often happens when one power defies another without the armed strength to protect itself.
"Questions of justice," he warned, "arise only between equals."
Now as then, effective diplomacy rests on a rough parity of hard power as much as on law or abstract ideals. In other words, Taiwan must arm itself if it expects equitable treatment from China.
Still, Thucydides offers China a cautionary tale of its own. A few years before the bloodletting at Melos, an Athenian expeditionary force landed at Pylos, some fifty miles from Sparta, and erected a fort to harass the Spartans in their own backyard. Grasping the danger, Spartan leaders dispatched forces by land and sea to wrest the Athenian outpost from its defenders.
After an initial skirmish, Spartan hoplite warriors invested Pylos by land. Another force landed on Sphacteria, a long, narrow island athwart the harbor mouth, to cut the fort off by sea.
Spartan fortunes soured when fifty Athenian warships appeared unexpectedly, putting the Spartan flotilla to flight "at once," disabling or capturing "a good many vessels," ramming others, and towing away beached vessels abandoned by their crews. Proud Spartan infantrymen were reduced to wading into the surf in a futile effort to recover their vessels.
"The stunning effect and importance" of the Athenian naval attack, notes Yale University professor Donald Kagan, "cannot be exaggerated."
Their expeditionary force blockaded, Spartan leaders sent an embassy to Athens to sue for peace, only to have their overtures rebuffed by an Athenian assembly that was in no mood for compromise. Reinforcements sailed for the island.
Athenian troops overwhelmed and captured the Spartan defenders, who were brought to Athens as hostages.
Pylos humbled Sparta's vaunted land power, underlining the dangers of island campaigning for a land power facing a dominant sea power in its element.
Judging from the Spartan example, time may not be on China's side in a cross-strait war, as the Pentagon report suggests.
Should the US Navy force the Strait after a Chinese amphibious landing, Chinese forces could find themselves isolated and under siege, much like the Spartan hoplites.
The repercussions of defeat could be as frightful for China's international standing -- even its domestic stability -- as they were for Sparta's.
Both Taipei and Beijing, then, should heed Thucydides' wisdom. To discourage Chinese adventurism, Taiwanese lawmakers should set aside the prolonged bickering that has stalled a proposed special arms package in legislature.
They should either approve this package or negotiate another one that better meets Taiwan's military needs.
And China should ponder the lessons of Pylos before resorting to arms.
James Holmes is a senior research associate at the Center for International Trade and Security, University of Georgia.
World leaders are preparing themselves for a second Donald Trump presidency. Some leaders know more or less where he stands: Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy knows that a difficult negotiation process is about to be forced on his country, and the leaders of NATO countries would be well aware of being complacent about US military support with Trump in power. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu would likely be feeling relief as the constraints placed on him by the US President Joe Biden administration would finally be released. However, for President William Lai (賴清德) the calculation is not simple. Trump has surrounded himself
US president-elect Donald Trump on Tuesday named US Representative Mike Waltz, a vocal supporter of arms sales to Taiwan who has called China an “existential threat,” as his national security advisor, and on Thursday named US Senator Marco Rubio, founding member of the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China — a global, cross-party alliance to address the challenges that China poses to the rules-based order — as his secretary of state. Trump’s appointments, including US Representative Elise Stefanik as US ambassador to the UN, who has been a strong supporter of Taiwan in the US Congress, and Robert Lighthizer as US trade
Following the BRICS summit held in Kazan, Russia, last month, media outlets circulated familiar narratives about Russia and China’s plans to dethrone the US dollar and build a BRICS-led global order. Each summit brings renewed buzz about a BRICS cross-border payment system designed to replace the SWIFT payment system, allowing members to trade without using US dollars. Articles often highlight the appeal of this concept to BRICS members — bypassing sanctions, reducing US dollar dependence and escaping US influence. They say that, if widely adopted, the US dollar could lose its global currency status. However, none of these articles provide
A nation has several pillars of national defense, among them are military strength, energy and food security, and national unity. Military strength is very much on the forefront of the debate, while several recent editorials have dealt with energy security. National unity and a sense of shared purpose — especially while a powerful, hostile state is becoming increasingly menacing — are problematic, and would continue to be until the nation’s schizophrenia is properly managed. The controversy over the past few days over former navy lieutenant commander Lu Li-shih’s (呂禮詩) usage of the term “our China” during an interview about his attendance