A guarantee to China on Taiwan would be pointless

The U.S. and China are in tension over Taiwan. But this is not a legal antagonism, founded on some poor understanding of Taiwan’s status. It is instead a strategic antagonism over mutually conflicting long-term political, military and economic objectives. 

The Sino-American relationship hinges on the status of Taiwan as articulated in the 1970s. The Nixon-Kissinger opening to China, the result of a long diplomatic dance, was excruciatingly difficult to execute. Beijing was then a highly ideological Marxist-Maoist regime, inimically opposed to a de facto, let alone de jure, political unit on Taiwan, which was and remains the key to the American Indo-Pacific defense system. 

The American policymakers of the 1970s never actually expected an indefinite settlement with the Chinese. Beijing was, as it is today, a fundamentally acquisitive, expansionist regime unable, to escape the specter of Mao’s messianism. The goal of the U.S.-China understanding over Taiwan, at least as originally conceived, was not to reach any kind of concrete end-state. Nor was it to establish procedures or principles for American or Chinese engagement. Rather, the arrangement was political. The U.S. and China, after an enormous amount of lexical wrangling, found a way to bracket the Taiwan question. 

Taiwan’s status was not the root of Sino-American antagonism, but it was the clearest expression of it. By paying lip service to the political-ideological nature of the crisis and cloaking it in language of national determination — and thereby committing to accept a “political solution” to the Taiwan issue, in the abstract at least — the U.S. removed the public objective of “regime change” in China. In turn, absent the need to reject all U.S. security interests in Asia, Beijing was free to accept the reemergence of a natural security relationship with the U.S., as had existed until communist victory in the Chinese civil war. 

Once the Cold War had ended, the U.S. and China no longer needed to maintain a security relationship vis-a-vis the USSR. Yet the ideological antagonism had been thoroughly obfuscated through a combination of cultural, economic, and political contacts, facilitated by the U.S. de-recognition of Taipei. The result was a continuation of a Sino-American cultural relationship that goes back a century. 

The U.S. and China do not have the same sort of cultural connection as Russia and Germany, for example. But they do share common structural characteristics. Both are regional heavyweights. Both have a complex relationship with Europe politically, societally, and intellectually. Both share a history stretching back to the 19th century, when American missionaries built a link with China, and subsequently when U.S. policy supported free access to Chinese markets, in opposition to the Europeans. To that end, the U.S. supported Chinese territorial integrity, at least in diplomatic contexts. 

It is natural that, after 1991, China and the U.S. should revert to their pre-Cold War relationship, albeit on a much greater scale, with American capital and technology joining hands with Chinese productive capacity to transform the global economy.

Today, Taiwan has become the focal point of Sino-American antagonism, but it no longer contains within it all the elements of that antagonism. Today, China’s quarrel with the U.S. is far broader, based on the Chinese Communist Party’s Asian and Eurasian ambitions. 

Taiwan is the strategic center of the rivalry because of its role in the American defense system. It remains key to China’s self-image, but that self-image is now married to a much more aggressive military posture.

Thus, renewed legal discussion over Taiwan’s status has no real impact on the Sino-American relationship. The notion that the U.S. could meaningfully decrease the odds of confrontation by providing public or private assurances against a Taiwanese “independence” declaration is as politically vacuous as it is strategically irrelevant.

Taipei’s current stance is in no need of modification. Taiwan is an independent country under any definition, making it meaningless to say so in one manner or another. China has already lost Taiwan, insofar as Taiwan is not ruled by the mainland. The only reason to refrain from an independence declaration is to avoid giving China an additional pretext to wage war.

Deterring a Chinese move against Taiwan, meanwhile, requires deterring Chinese aggression throughout the Indo-Pacific. For Chinese ambitions are far more expansive than just Taiwan, a mere stepping-stone to regional dominance. Chinese control of Taiwan would jeopardize Japanese, Philippine and, in time, Australian defenses. The U.S. would need to choose between fighting a long, brutal war to break blockades against all three allies, or simply to abandon them to a Chinese bombardment and coercion into China’s economic sphere. 

The Malacca and Lombok Straits would fall under Chinese control, giving Beijing mastery over the eastern leg of Eurasia’s most important trade route. The Chinese understand this and have thought well past the first contingencies. China understands that it cannot simply overwhelm Taiwan and accept American punishment in retaliation. Rather, it must break the U.S. system in a series of predetermined offensive moves.

The result for policy is clear. The U.S. should focus on the military aspects of deterrence first, with a larger defense budget that can sustain the forces needed to fight a large-scale Indo-Pacific air-naval war. It should also, even more critically, integrate the capabilities of regional allies, allowing them to operate jointly with U.S. forces in combat. This must include Taiwan as well, considering Taipei’s geographic and military relevance.

Hence, the U.S. should equally encourage the Taiwanese to build bridges internationally and support Taiwanese participation in international organizations to provide Taipei with more diplomatic outlets.

Legal disputes may be the proximate cause of major wars, but they are inevitably mere symptoms of underlying antagonisms. It takes consummate diplomatic skill to grasp when a legal solution can ameliorate a political tension. In this case, the time for language games has passed.

Seth Cropsey is the founder and president of Yorktown Institute. He served as a naval officer and as deputy Undersecretary of the Navy and is the author of Mayday and Seablindness.