February 19 2024
February 19 2024
Defending Taiwan
FLASH Putin critic Alexei Navalny dead in prison
1 Taiwan’s location is strategic
2 Taiwan’s democracy represents a better future for China
3 Taiwan manufacturers the world’s advanced semiconductors
4 An invasion of Taiwan would spark global nuclear proliferation
5 An invasion of Taiwan would box the US out of Asia’s economy
2/19/1945 US Marines invade Iwo Jima
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The following comes from an OPINION piece about why America should defend Taiwan in the event of a Chinese invasion
1 Taiwan’s location is strategic
When [Douglas] MacArthur wrote his memo in June 1950, Communist insurgencies were convulsing Southeast Asia, and the Korean Peninsula was teetering on the brink of war. The military utility of Taiwan—then called Formosa in the West—beckoned. “Formosa in the hands of the Communists,” he wrote, “can be compared to an unsinkable aircraft carrier and submarine tender [a ship that supplies submarines] ideally located to accomplish Soviet offensive strategy and at the same time checkmate counteroffensive operations by United States Forces based on Okinawa and the Philippines.” MacArthur explained how imperial Japan, which ruled Taiwan from 1895 to 1945, had used the island as “a springboard for military aggression” beyond East Asia and warned that Communist forces could do the same.
2 Taiwan’s democracy represents a better future for China
It is difficult to overstate the significance of Taiwan’s strong democracy, given the political realities just across the Taiwan Strait, where more than 1.4 billion people sharing many linguistic and cultural traditions are subject to totalitarian rule. Numerous Chinese citizens draw inspiration from Taiwan’s political transition from martial law to democracy, which offers a model for what China could become. Fearing precisely such a result, officials in Beijing have long tried to caricature Taiwan as slavishly imitating Western forms of governance. But it is actually the Chinese Communist Party that is doing so by clinging to its Marxist-Leninist system, a discredited political model imported from Europe.
The loss of Taiwan as a democratic alternative would end the experiment with popular, multiparty self-governance by a society with significant Chinese heritage, with bad tidings for the possibility of democracy in China and far beyond.
3 Taiwan manufacturers the world’s advanced semiconductors
A Chinese takeover of Taiwan would devastate semiconductor manufacturing—the backbone of almost every strategically important industry today and the lifeblood of our big data world. The planet now produces approximately $600 billion worth of chips each year. Those chips end up in products—from smartphones to cars to supercomputers—that are collectively worth multiple trillions of dollars, and the services delivered by these devices amount to tens of trillions annually. The very latest generation chips (those with circuits five nanometers or smaller) are produced in only two places: Taiwan (by Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, or TSMC) and, to a much lesser extent, South Korea (by Samsung). Taiwan now accounts for roughly half the global production capacity for all semiconductors and a much higher proportion—perhaps 90 percent—for the most advanced chips. Put differently, Taiwan’s market share for advanced semiconductors is roughly twice the share of oil produced by OPEC.
Much as cheap Russian energy fueled German industry for decades, so, too, have abundant Taiwanese semiconductors propelled global technological progress, the artificial intelligence boom, and the rise of trillion-dollar U.S. tech titans such as Apple, Google, Microsoft, and Nvidia.
4 An invasion of Taiwan would spark a global chain reaction of nuclear proliferation
Ever since China’s first nuclear test, in 1964, Washington has been able to dissuade most East and Southeast Asian countries from going nuclear. But an Asia reeling from the annexation of Taiwan would present very different circumstances and might send leaders scrambling to acquire nuclear armaments to protect themselves.
Japan has the shortest path to developing nuclear weapons, boasting both its own facilities for processing nuclear fuel and what is likely the world’s largest plutonium stockpile.
South Korea, for its part, has a world-class civilian nuclear program, with 26 reactors in service. Although the country currently lacks the domestic enrichment or reprocessing facilities required to build nuclear weapons, its politicians openly debate the question of whether to develop a nuclear arsenal.
Were Japan or South Korea to go nuclear, the effects might not stop there. Leaders in Beijing might conclude that they needed considerably more than the 1,500 warheads China is expected to have by 2035. Should China decide to expand its arsenal, both the United States and Russia would likely seek to expand their arsenals, too. India would probably follow suit; indeed, there are already signs that it is considering doing so. In December 2022, India tested an updated version of its Agni-5 ballistic missile, whose range exceeds 4,000 miles—sufficient to reach all of China. If India expanded its nuclear stockpile, historical patterns suggest its archrival, Pakistan, would likely seek parity.
Asian nuclear proliferation could even spill over into the Middle East, where Iran continues to edge closer to breakout capability. If two of the United States’ closest Asian allies, Japan and South Korea, became nuclear weapons states, it would be functionally impossible for Washington to secure a multinational coalition to punish Iran for building a bomb—something Iran might be more tempted to try in the chaos that would follow a takeover of Taiwan. If Iran went nuclear, Saudi Arabia would almost certainly do so, too
5 An invasion of Taiwan would box the US out of Asia’s dynamic economy
If China annexed Taiwan, the United States could well lose access to valuable trade and investment opportunities in Asia, severely damaging the U.S. economy.
Chinese attempts to hive off Asia, the world’s largest, most dynamic economic region, would deal a devastating blow to U.S. economic interests. East Asia and the Pacific account for one-third of global GDP in purchasing power parity terms, a share roughly twice that of the United States. The region’s vibrant, open trading networks would likely degenerate into more of a hub-and-spoke system, with China as the hub and subjugated countries at the end of the spokes. In the worst-case scenario, the United States could lose access to trade volumes with its nine largest Asian trade partners other than China. This group’s two-way goods trade with the United States was nearly $940 billion in 2023—about 60 percent larger than the U.S. goods trade with China itself.
Foreign Affairs
https://reader.foreignaffairs.com/2024/02/16/the-taiwan-catastrophe/content.html
2/19/1945 U.S. Marines invade Iwo Jima
Thanks for reading!
