Taiwan is not Ukraine
The West can and should stop an expansionist Russia’s aggression against Ukraine. Taiwan is a different story.
1. Taiwan Rhymes with Ukraine
Russia, a dictatorship that has become more hostile lately, threatened the neighboring nation of Ukraine and then launched a horrific invasion to conquer it.
China, a dictatorship that has become more hostile lately, is threatening the neighboring island of Taiwan, and many people worry that a horrific invasion is on the horizon.
Though the United States has no specific treaty obligation to help Ukraine defend itself, we are now spending large sums of money to bolster Ukraine’s military and government.
Though the United States has no specific treaty obligation to help Taiwan defend itself, we have in fact had a close military alliance with Taiwan for decades, and there have been growing calls to make a clearer statement of support in order to deter a future Chinese invasion.
Despite these similarities, it is important to remember the differences between the two disputes.
2. Internationally Recognized Borders Matter
There are large practical and legal differences between a conflict between countries and a conflict within a country. Article 2 of the United Nations Charter prohibits “the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state.” It is relatively rare these days for one nation to invade another, and often such an invasion is met with a collective response, as when Iraq invaded Kuwait in 1990.
In contrast, many countries have suffered internal military conflicts in the last fifty years. Article 2 of the UN Charter goes on to warn that “Nothing contained in the present Charter shall authorize the United Nations to intervene in matters which are essentially within the domestic jurisdiction of any state”. The United States has in fact intervened internally in many countries, sometimes with good justification and often without, but in either case, Americans have often regretted such interventions.
Ukraine is recognized as an independent nation by all countries. It’s right to independence was recognized by Russia in 1991, and Russia signed the Budapest Memorandum of 1994 in which “The United States of America, the Russian Federation, and the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, reaffirm their obligation to refrain from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of Ukraine…” There is no way that Russia’s 2022 invasion can be seen as anything other than the violation of an independent nation’s borders. This gives the US, NATO, and all nations a strong legal basis for helping Ukraine, even though the United Nations will not act on Ukraine because of the Russian veto on the Security Council. Though there is a strong consensus among Democrats and Republicans that the US should not directly fight Russia, the blatant illegality of Russia’s invasion makes it easy to justify any measures to repel the invasion, including the direct use of force.
Like Ukraine, Taiwan is a democratic, self-governing territory in which the people do not want to be ruled by their larger neighbor. Taiwan is governed as the Republic of China (ROC), which formerly ruled all of China until the government was removed from the mainland by the People’s Republic of China (PRC). In 1971, the UN recognized the PRC as the sole representative of China in the United Nations; the US voted in favor of the motion. In 1979, the US also formally recognized the PRC and ended official relations with the ROC. However, later that year, the Taiwan Relations Act established unofficial diplomatic relations with the “governing authorities on Taiwan.” The purpose of the Act (according to its text) is (in part)
(3) to make clear that the United States decision to establish diplomatic relations with the People’s Republic of China rests upon the expectation that the future of Taiwan will be deter-
mined by peaceful means;
(4) to consider any effort to determine the future of Taiwan by other than peaceful means, including by boycotts or embargoes, a threat to the peace and security of the Western Pacific area and of grave concern to the United States;
(5) to provide Taiwan with arms of a defensive character; and
(6) to maintain the capacity of the United States to resist any resort to force or other forms of coercion that would jeopardize the security, or the social or economic system, of the people on Taiwan.
The US is on record as opposing any attempt by the People’s Republic of China to conquer Taiwan. Such an invasion would certainly be a humanitarian and political catastrophe. However, according to the legal status recognized by the US and the UN, it would be an internal Chinese matter.
3. What Comes Next Matters
Ukraine is just one part of Vladimir Putin’s expansionist program. His past and present behavior as well as recent statements suggest that any country that was once part of the Soviet Union is at risk of attack. This includes NATO members Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia. Given that Putin’s allegiance is not to the idea of the USSR but of imperialist Russia, that puts Poland and other countries at risk. Failure to stop Russia in Ukraine heightens the risk of future aggression.
An attack on NATO members would be extremely risky for Russia, since it would almost certainly bring an exchange of fire with the US and allies. This adds a level of deterrence that Ukraine did not have. But the attack on Ukraine was itself so reckless that we really can’t count on caution from Putin. If he wins in Ukraine, he might decide that he would win in the Baltics as well, even against the United States.
In contrast, Taiwan is a unique problem for China, the only major Chinese-populated territory which is recognized as part of China but which China does not control. Certainly, a Chinese attack on Taiwan would make people in neighboring countries such as Japan and South Korea nervous. But there is less reason to believe that a successful absorption of Taiwan would lead to attempts against other countries. This reduces the justification for taking risks on behalf of Taiwan.
4. Power Matters
It was a relatively easy decision for US leaders to send the military to remove Iraqi forces from Kuwait because the US military was confident that it had overwhelming superiority over Iraq. If, say, Egyptian leaders felt called upon to unilaterally fight Iraq in Kuwait, their risk-benefit calculus would have been very different.
Russia is a medium-population country: 140 million people, 9th biggest, between Bangladesh (170 M) and Mexico (130 M). It’s population is dwarfed by the United States (330 million) and by the rest of Europe (around 600 M), and its per capita GDP is significantly less than other European countries. Though Ukraine has a much smaller population (40 M), its population is highly motivated to fight, and with NATO support could field an army of several hundred thousand people. Backed by the combined resources of NATO, such an army could potentially be superior to Russia’s in many respects.
China has a population of nearly 1.5 billion people, at least four times larger than every country on Earth except India, over 50 times larger than Taiwan, and twice the combined population of the US, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, and the Philippines. While it’s 2021 per capita income (PPP) of about $19,000 is dwarfed by Japan ($43,000) and the US ($69,000), that income has nearly doubled in the past decade.
Taiwan has managed to survive next to the PRC for 70 years in part because historically China has not had much of a navy. However, China has been working hard to change this, tripling the number of ships in its fleet to about the same number as the US, though with less tonnage and fewer active duty personnel. Near the Chinese coast (and Taiwan), the Chinese navy would also be augmented by land based forces, including anti-ship missiles.
Russian attacks in Ukraine have not reached the western part of the country, except for some missile strikes. This has made it relatively easy for NATO countries to supply Ukraine. Also, given Russia’s difficulties fighting the Ukrainian army, starting a direct, non-nuclear conflict with NATO would make Russia’s military position in Ukraine much more difficult.
It is possible China would make a different calculation about the costs and benefits of attacking American ships. Doing so could isolate Taiwan from allied support, and it could assert Chinese military supremacy in East Asia. For the United States, it could pose a mortal dilemma: escalate or back off? Backing off would be a bitter pill for the US to swallow after one or more US ships were sunk, but engaging in all-out (but non-nuclear) war with a resurgent China could be disastrous. The US had trouble fighting the Chinese army in Korea in 1950, when the PRC was only a year old and China was an impoverished and technologically backwards country. A war with China in the twenty first century could bring costs to the US that far exceed those of World War II and possibly with a much less happy outcome for us.
5. Nuclear Differences May Not Matter
The US and Russia have a similar large number of nuclear warheads, about 5,000 and 6,000, respectively. China has far fewer – currently a few hundred – but is rapidly building more. The calculus of an all-out nuclear war is probably about the same as during the Cold War. Hitting even a dozen cities with nuclear weapons in any of these countries could be a nation-ending injury, and none of the three main nuclear powers can assume they could nuke either of the others without catastrophic retaliation. Therefore, it is likely that all countries will continue to try to avoid such an all-out nuclear exchange.
One factor which makes war with Russia significantly riskier than with China is its arsenal of tactical nuclear warheads. These are designed to be used against military targets rather than to obliterate cities, and are much weaker than the most powerful nukes, but still much stronger than conventional bombs. Russia is said to have 2000 such bombs, compared to about 200 in the US arsenal. Besides posing a direct risk to NATO troops (if we get into a war with Russia), these weapons are feared because they blur the line between nuclear and non-nuclear war. A single low-yield attack on a military base would probably not lead to massive city-destroying retaliation, but it could start an escalatory cycle that eventually leads to overwhelming destruction for both sides.
Of course, in the event of war, the US and China might also be tempted to resort to tactical nuclear bombs. The same risks apply.
6. What Does Matter?
For Taiwan, success looks like deterring a Chinese attack. For the US, that would also be success, but partial success looks like avoiding a war with China in the next few decades. Military clashes leading to a nuclear war with either Russia or China would be a particularly dismal failure.
It’s possible that helping Taiwan fend off a Chinese attack could be a success for both the US and Taiwan. I don’t know who would be most likely to win such a war, and probably no one else does either. I am not a military expert, but it looks to me like a very painful conflict, possibly ending in US defeat, is a plausible outcome of such a war.
Legal, strategic, and military aspects of NATO’s friction with Russia argue for an all-out effort to dislodge Russia from Ukraine, at least from territory taken this year. While NATO countries have the potential to be much stronger militarily than Russia, it is not clear to me that we are currently devoting sufficient resources. Since the start of the Russian invasion, the US has increased troop numbers in Europe from 70,000 to 100,000, and Germany has promised to raise military spending from 1.5% to over 2% of GDP, with over $100 B in additional funding in 2022. The US has also approved $54 B in direct aid (military and nonmilitary) to Ukraine. Still, fighting in Ukraine has shown the gargantuan amount of resources being consumed, with artillery shells alone being counted in the hundreds of thousands. Given how much more dangerous the world has gotten, even the US probably needs to increase the military budget to be prepared for further escalations.
At the same time, legal, strategic, and military considerations make it much less clear that the US should make as strong a commitment to the defense of Taiwan. I am not necessarily suggesting we should abandon Taiwan, but it is dangerous to go beyond the ambiguous commitment the US has had in the past. We shouldn’t make any promises that we will regret.
The US and allies have strong economic ties to China. How to manage those ties in the context of worry about future clashes with China is a very sensitive business. As far as I can tell, we need to reduce our dependence on China, so that we are not at their mercy the way Europe is at the mercy of Gazprom. On the other hand, it is good for peace and stability that China has economic ties to democratic countries. We should not try to completely isolate China even as we disagree with them about human rights within mainland China and threats to Taiwan.