The National Interest
Fall 2001

The Stability of Deterrence in the Taiwan Strait

by Robert S. Ross

 

. . . When President Bush took office, he telephoned every major world leader but Chinese President Jiang Zemin. The Bush Administration then reportedly set about revising the siop (Strategic Integrated Operating Plan) to target more U.S. nuclear missiles against China. It has given serious consideration to prioritizing preparation for conventional war in East Asia against China and has promoted enhanced strategic cooperation with India and Japan. It has encouraged Japan to loosen its restraints on a more active regional military presence and it has proposed development with U.S. allies South Korea, Japan and Australia of a "regional" dialogue. It has also stressed cooperation with Russia on missile defense seemingly at the expense of China. It has defined the "no foreign-made products" stricture for the U.S. military to mean essentially no Chinese-made products and curtailed Pentagon contacts with the Chinese military. It has reversed a twenty-year U.S. policy by agreeing to sell submarines to Taiwan. It has also allowed high-profile visits to the United States by Taiwanese President Chen Shui-bian and the Dalai Lama. Withal, the administration has not appointed a specialist on China to any senior position in the government.

Such a confrontational posture toward China cannot be explained as a response to the downing of a U.S. EP-3 surveillance plane and the detention of its crew for eleven days. The trend predates the incident and, despite Secretary of State Colin Powell’s constructive visit to Beijing in July, has continued since. Rather, the explanation seems to lie in the administration’s sympathy for Taiwan, its dour assessment of Chinese intentions and the prospect, in its view, of heightened instability in the Taiwan Strait. There is more than just talk going on: the administration is pursuing broad coordination with Taiwan’s military to enable cooperation in a possible war with China, that coordination being an objective of many Republican defense and foreign policy specialists and members of Congress since 1996.

This is a well-intended but misguided effort. Such cooperation will not make Taiwan more secure, the United States more effective militarily or the deterrence of war more assured. Should the Bush Administration nevertheless continue this policy, it will eventually elicit mainland opposition because it threatens to reverse the essence of the post-1979 U.S.-China strategic understanding on Taiwan. It is worth emphasizing the core of that understanding from the Chinese point of view, to which many American analysts have somehow become oblivious.
From the days of the Korean War until 1979, Taiwan loomed in Beijing’s eyes as a kind of American "Cuba." In other words, Beijing believed that the U.S. presence on Taiwan enabled the United States to threaten China’s borders directly, just as the United States believed that the Soviet presence in Cuba threatened U.S. security from the early 1960s to the end of the Cold War. Indeed, in 1954 Washington and Taipei signed the U.S.-Republic of China Mutual Defense Treaty, which led to the U.S. deployment of advanced aircraft and nuclear-capable missiles on the island. But in 1979, when Washington normalized diplomatic relations with Beijing, it agreed to terminate the 1954 treaty with Taiwan and to withdraw its military presence from the island, thus satisfying China’s demand that the United States cease using Taiwan to threaten Chinese security.

If Chinese leaders believe, in their bedrock strategic realism, that the United States is out to reverse the 1979 understanding, they have a full menu of riposte at their disposal. . . .