A new academic study warns that with China’s growing military power, US policies toward Taiwan may no longer be “sensible.”
China’s military power, and specifically its ability to blunt US power projection in the western Pacific, is growing and growing substantially, the study says.
“Throwing up our hands seems imprudent and possibly foolhardy,” the principal analyst at research and analysis organization CNA, Elbridge Colby, says in the study.
CNA — not an acronym — is the parent organization of the Institute for Public Research and the Center for Naval Analyses.
Colby says he does not advocate for a “maximalist position” on Taiwan and that the US should not write Taiwan a “blank check.” However, he insists the US should strongly support Taiwan’s right to determine its own future and treat the question of Taiwan “with the utmost delicacy.”
He says that it would be “dangerous and rash” to abandon Taiwan, and that the US must continue to walk a fine line “supporting Taiwan’s reasonable rights, while avoiding needlessly angering China.”
Colby, a grandson of former CIA director William Colby, says the US must preserve its position in the western Pacific.
“While we must be prepared to use force in the region, if at all possible we do not want to get in a war with China over Taiwan or anything else,” he says.
“Ultimately, there is no silver bullet on the Taiwan question. Instead, the issues surrounding Taiwan’s future are certain to remain immensely fraught, exceedingly delicate and continually changing. Wise government policy must adapt to these realities even as it charts a course that shapes the environment in ways favorable to our interests,” he adds.
The study was printed this week in the US foreign affairs magazine the National Interest.
“Whatever happens, we will certainly be better off if we are strong. If we are strong, we will have more and better options, more leverage, more maneuvering room, more credibility and more time to chart a course through these waters, relatively placid on the surface, but exceedingly treacherous beneath, of deciding how best to deal with the problems of Taiwan and China,” Colby says.
He adds that the US must focus defense spending “carefully and pointedly” on military capabilities of value in the western Pacific.
“We need the ability to match China’s improvements in its military capabilities, especially its anti-access/area-denial capabilities with correlative and ideally superior improvements of our own,” Colby says.
This means, he says, keeping a lead over China in the areas of high-end military capacities that will enable the US to prevail in a battle for supremacy in the Western Pacific.
“Most obviously this means the kind of naval and aerial capabilities that can deal effectively with an opponent like China, but it also means the cyber, space and associated elements that will mean the difference between a winning and losing combatant in such a conflict,” Colby says.
He advises “focused and intelligent” investment in potentially disruptive technologies, like directed-energy weapons and 3D printing.
“Finally, it means maintaining a sufficiently large, flexible and discriminate nuclear force capable of deterring the most dramatic forms of escalation and as an ultimate backstop for our defense posture,” he adds.
The US will be better off, he says, if it has the military capability to dissuade Beijing from seeing a military option as an attractive solution to its problems.
“But if we are going to do this, we need more strategic discipline, clearer focus, greater efficiency and the willingness to break grooved ways of doing business,” Colby says.
“If not, we might one day in the not too distant future find ourselves in the distinctly unfamiliar position of not only lacking the military capabilities to dictate terms, but in the even more unfamiliar, and decidedly uncomfortable, position of finding that our opponent has the capabilities to dictate terms to us,” he adds.
A magnitude 7.0 earthquake struck off Yilan at 11:05pm yesterday, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. The epicenter was located at sea, about 32.3km east of Yilan County Hall, at a depth of 72.8km, CWA data showed There were no immediate reports of damage. The intensity of the quake, which gauges the actual effect of a seismic event, measured 4 in Yilan County area on Taiwan’s seven-tier intensity scale, the data showed. It measured 4 in other parts of eastern, northern and central Taiwan as well as Tainan, and 3 in Kaohsiung and Pingtung County, and 2 in Lienchiang and Penghu counties and 1
FOREIGN INTERFERENCE: Beijing would likely intensify public opinion warfare in next year’s local elections to prevent Lai from getting re-elected, the ‘Yomiuri Shimbun’ said Internal documents from a Chinese artificial intelligence (AI) company indicated that China has been using the technology to intervene in foreign elections, including propaganda targeting Taiwan’s local elections next year and presidential elections in 2028, a Japanese newspaper reported yesterday. The Institute of National Security of Vanderbilt University obtained nearly 400 pages of documents from GoLaxy, a company with ties to the Chinese government, and found evidence that it had apparently deployed sophisticated, AI-driven propaganda campaigns in Hong Kong and Taiwan to shape public opinion, the Yomiuri Shimbun reported. GoLaxy provides insights, situation analysis and public opinion-shaping technology by conducting network surveillance
‘POLITICAL GAME’: DPP lawmakers said the motion would not meet the legislative threshold needed, and accused the KMT and the TPP of trivializing the Constitution The Legislative Yuan yesterday approved a motion to initiate impeachment proceedings against President William Lai (賴清德), saying he had undermined Taiwan’s constitutional order and democracy. The motion was approved 61-50 by lawmakers from the main opposition Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and the smaller Taiwan People’s Party (TPP), who together hold a legislative majority. Under the motion, a roll call vote for impeachment would be held on May 19 next year, after various hearings are held and Lai is given the chance to defend himself. The move came after Lai on Monday last week did not promulgate an amendment passed by the legislature that
AFTERMATH: The Taipei City Government said it received 39 minor incident reports including gas leaks, water leaks and outages, and a damaged traffic signal A magnitude 7.0 earthquake struck off Taiwan’s northeastern coast late on Saturday, producing only two major aftershocks as of yesterday noon, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. The limited aftershocks contrast with last year’s major earthquake in Hualien County, as Saturday’s earthquake occurred at a greater depth in a subduction zone. Saturday’s earthquake struck at 11:05pm, with its hypocenter about 32.3km east of Yilan County Hall, at a depth of 72.8km. Shaking was felt in 17 administrative regions north of Tainan and in eastern Taiwan, reaching intensity level 4 on Taiwan’s seven-tier seismic scale, the CWA said. In Hualien, the
RSS