It would be very easy to overstate the significance of the Chinese government’s suggestion last week, following President Hu Jintao’s (胡錦濤) speech from the throne, that it could remove some of the 1,300 missiles it aims at Taiwan once military confidence measures have been implemented.
While this might appear to be a gesture of goodwill — Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Lin Yu-fang (林郁方) could not refrain from using these words — the “removal” of missiles is little more than cosmetic, as history shows us.
Two treaties during the Cold War were hailed at the time as significantly reducing the risk of nuclear war between the US and the Soviet Union. Known as the Strategic Arms Limitation Treaties (SALT), the agreements limited the growth of US and Soviet missile arsenals. SALT II, signed in 1979, sought to cap strategic missile forces to 2,250 on each side and is believed to have helped discourage Moscow from developing new types of missiles.
Still, even after this landmark agreement, the nemeses still had enough nuclear weapons to annihilate each other many times over and, in squeezed balloon fashion, often compensated for cuts in one area by bolstering forces in another. Ultimately, if a nuclear exchange did not happen, it wasn’t cuts in the respective arsenals — which, we must note, could rapidly have been rearmed or redeployed — that limited the danger, but rather that nuclear war was inconceivable to decision makers on both sides. In other words, capabilities were more than sufficient; it was the intent that was lacking.
While, thankfully, the missiles China aims at Taiwan are not nuclear tipped, a reduction would also be more cosmetic than real. For the same reasons that the SALT treaties did not really make the world safer, or the risk of war any less real, a missile reduction program on the Chinese side will be meaningless as long as missiles can be rearmed and redeployed — quite easily done as the missile launchers for China’s DF-11s and DF-15s are road-mobile. China could also compensate for cutbacks by other means, such as increased air strike capabilities, more precise munitions or submarine-launch capabilities.
Perhaps even more important is the fact that, unlike its Cold War predecessors, Beijing has the intent to use its weapons against its opponent across the Strait — even more so as the missiles are conventional, meaning that Beijing wouldn’t need to cross the nuclear-psychological barrier to launch an attack.
We must not fool ourselves: The possibility of a missile reduction is a carrot China is waving at Taipei and, conceivably, the world. Should Beijing’s long, carefully planned hypnotism of the KMT fail at some point, or if a pro-independence government were to reclaim office in Taiwan, it would just as soon redeploy — and possibly augment — its missile arsenal.
Another departure from the Cold War analogy is the fact that while on paper the US and Soviet Union stood to gain from arms reduction in terms of security, a similar reduction in the Taiwan Strait would be one-sided. In other words, China’s security would not be affected regardless of whether reduction occurs or not, because Taiwan does not threaten it militarily, and, as we have seen, any reduction on the Chinese side could easily be reversed.
Only when a reduction that really matters occurs — a reduction in the will to use violence against Taiwan to achieve political ends — could we read Beijing’s offer as “goodwill.” Anything less, anything that smacks of deception, should be handled with utmost skepticism.
Concerns that the US might abandon Taiwan are often overstated. While US President Donald Trump’s handling of Ukraine raised unease in Taiwan, it is crucial to recognize that Taiwan is not Ukraine. Under Trump, the US views Ukraine largely as a European problem, whereas the Indo-Pacific region remains its primary geopolitical focus. Taipei holds immense strategic value for Washington and is unlikely to be treated as a bargaining chip in US-China relations. Trump’s vision of “making America great again” would be directly undermined by any move to abandon Taiwan. Despite the rhetoric of “America First,” the Trump administration understands the necessity of
In an article published on this page on Tuesday, Kaohsiung-based journalist Julien Oeuillet wrote that “legions of people worldwide would care if a disaster occurred in South Korea or Japan, but the same people would not bat an eyelid if Taiwan disappeared.” That is quite a statement. We are constantly reading about the importance of Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC), hailed in Taiwan as the nation’s “silicon shield” protecting it from hostile foreign forces such as the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), and so crucial to the global supply chain for semiconductors that its loss would cost the global economy US$1
US President Donald Trump’s challenge to domestic American economic-political priorities, and abroad to the global balance of power, are not a threat to the security of Taiwan. Trump’s success can go far to contain the real threat — the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) surge to hegemony — while offering expanded defensive opportunities for Taiwan. In a stunning affirmation of the CCP policy of “forceful reunification,” an obscene euphemism for the invasion of Taiwan and the destruction of its democracy, on March 13, 2024, the People’s Liberation Army’s (PLA) used Chinese social media platforms to show the first-time linkage of three new
Sasha B. Chhabra’s column (“Michelle Yeoh should no longer be welcome,” March 26, page 8) lamented an Instagram post by renowned actress Michelle Yeoh (楊紫瓊) about her recent visit to “Taipei, China.” It is Chhabra’s opinion that, in response to parroting Beijing’s propaganda about the status of Taiwan, Yeoh should be banned from entering this nation and her films cut off from funding by government-backed agencies, as well as disqualified from competing in the Golden Horse Awards. She and other celebrities, he wrote, must be made to understand “that there are consequences for their actions if they become political pawns of