read the book first, Malarkey

China Post editorial:

Warnings of war diminished but still relevant 3 years on

Former American Institute in Taiwan chairman Richard Bush arrived in Taipei last week with fellow author and Brookings Institution scholar Michael O'Hanlan to promote the Chinese-language version of their 2007 book “A War Like No Other — The Truth About China's Challenge to America.”

That they received relatively little coverage by local media was perhaps not due to a perception that their findings are no longer pertinent since cross-Strait relations thawed significantly since Ma Ying-jeou took office in 2008. More likely it was because their key conclusion — that war in the Taiwan Strait, although unlikely, would be so costly to all concerned that specific precautions needed to be taken — was so serious, that every politician, academic, pundit and concerned citizen, whether in Taipei, Beijing, Washington or elsewhere around the world, would have long ago read the English original or had it translated for their personal use.

When introducing the book, Bush had said they reached an “optimistic conclusion with a pessimistic sub-conclusion.” In most areas, he said, the relationship between the United States and China — which the book characterized as “close cooperation and friendly rivalry”— was pretty good. The one place where the U.S. and China might come into conflict, they had predicted, was over the issue of Taiwan.

If war did erupt across the Taiwan Strait, Bush and O'Hanlan thought armed invasion of Taiwan would be too costly in terms of losses to the People's Liberation Army. Rather, they envisaged a military-backed blockade coupled with missile and cyber attacks. These, they said, would be far harder for Taipei and Washington to deal with than a conventional attack. Moreover, Taiwan's increased economic dependence on China would make a blockade that much easier to enforce.

Whether the United States came to Taiwan's aid would depend on various factors, they said, but hinged on interpretation of the 1979 Taiwan Relations Act, and which side was deemed to have provoked the conflict. In their absolute worst-of-the-worst scenario, the authors imagined China might attack U.S. Navy ships to inflict a few thousand casualties in the hope of deterring further U.S. participation. Bush and O'Hanlan imagined this having a contrary effect, however, with Washington launching military strikes against Chinese territories, including pre-emptive attacks on nuclear installations. This might then be followed by Beijing using its nuclear weapons before they were wiped out.

Fortunately this “unlikely but extremely costly” war has not erupted. Indeed, three years on, and China's patient cold-shouldering of Chen Shui-bian through the two terms of his Democratic Progressive Party administration has finally paid off. Even before Ma's election, the Chinese Communist Party was entertaining members of his Kuomintang, its erstwhile enemy, at functions in China in preparation for regime change in Taiwan.

In fact, it is U.S.-Chinese relations which have deteriorated during this period. Rather than “close cooperation,” they are now more frequently characterized by rivalry, and rivalry of a decreasingly “friendly” nature.

This is hardly unexpected, of course, and the Brookings authors' were long ago criticized by some as being too optimistic, if not naive, in imagining that relations between China, as it metamorphoses into a major power on the world stage, and the United States, as it struggles to maintain its position as the only remaining superpower, could ever be anything other than fractious.

China's scramble for resources to feed the appetite of its developing manufacturing sector (and its concomitant neo-colonial economic and diplomatic endeavors) set it on collision course with similar needs in the already developed nations. Though these conflicts have been temporarily eased due to the global economic downturn, the downturn has also brought into focus other areas of contention, such as the sizable amount of U.S. national debt held by China and China's intransigence with regard to revaluing the yuan.

In former times, such a cooling in U.S.-China relations would have been to Taiwan's advantage. Perhaps due to President Ma's cross-Strait initiatives, however, or perhaps because Washington needs Beijing's help in dealing with North Korea, or perhaps in line with previous Democrat pro-China policies during Bill Clinton's administration, U.S. President Obama is choosing to play a waiting game with China.

So publication of a Chinese-language edition of Bush and O'Hanlan's book is timely and relevant after all. Certainly, their key concern — the improved management of interactions between the U.S. and China during the latter's rise on the world stage — is as pertinent as ever.

Similarly, their key observations about Taiwan's role in that broader scenario — that the PRC's lack of substantial experience of democracy could easily lead it to misinterpret political developments in Taiwan, in particular its leaders' inability to distinguish actions and words that Taiwan's politicians make for political gain rather than those that truly reflect policy intentions — are things that politicians on both sides of the Taiwan Strait should constantly bear in mind.