The dangers of not resisting and not deterring China

Beyond the Middle East, the world faces the possibility of two major wars escalating in Europe and East Asia, over Ukraine and Taiwan.

Australia has one of these wars to worry about, but ultimately it is the potential loss of Taiwan to China that could be the central issue for our national security.

Ukraine and Taiwan each face a military threat from a major nuclear-armed neighboring power. In the case of Ukraine, Russia has already invaded and the two have been at war for more than two and a half years. In the case of Taiwan, Communist Chinese President Xi Jinping is increasingly making threats that China would integrate Taiwan, and he reserves the right to use force to occupy the country.

In the case of Russia, Putin is engaged in a slow war of attrition, which he did not expect. And he is making more and more threats about the use of nuclear weapons. Ukraine’s recent occupation of Russian territory in the Kursk Oblast (region) marks the first time that a non-nuclear power has invaded the territory of a nuclear superpower. One of Putin’s self-appointed advisers, Sergei Karaganov, recently said: “Any attack on our territory must be met with a nuclear response.”

However, there are some clear differences between Ukraine and Taiwan. First, Ukraine is an internationally recognized independent state, and we should not forget that post-communist Russia recognized it as such in the 1994 Minsk Agreement.

In the case of Taiwan, there is no recognition that it is an independent country. On the contrary, almost every major power in the world does not recognize Taiwan as a separate, independent nation-state. Yet more than 70 percent of Taiwanese identify themselves as Taiwanese and not Chinese.

This brings us to another important difference. Ukraine cannot yet be recognized as a full democracy, free of corruption and with an independent judiciary. On the contrary. After Ukraine became a separate country, the country experienced long-term instability and violence due to the rise of oligarchs and widespread corruption involving criminal gangs. Corruption remains a major obstacle to accession to the European Union.

By comparison, Taiwan is not only a long-standing democracy, but it also fares much better in surveys on corruption and has an essentially independent judiciary.

Both countries have a turbulent recent history. Ukraine declared its independence from Russia in 1990. Yeltsin was so eager to become president of a separate Russia that, despite being reminded by one of his senior advisers to raise the issue of Crimea with the new Ukrainian president, Leonid Kravchuk, Yeltsin hastily noted that Crimea would later could be arranged.

In January 1994, Ukraine agreed to cease being a nuclear power; it transferred 1,300 strategic nuclear warheads to Russia in exchange for security guarantees from the US and Russia over Ukrainian sovereignty. If Ukraine had retained some nuclear weapons, it probably would not have suffered the humiliation of an invasion by Russia.

In the case of Taiwan, the country was effectively under brutal martial law from 1949 under dictator Chiang Kai-shek until the demise of the KMT one-party system and the rise of the democracy movement in the 1980s. Martial law was eventually lifted in 1987 by Chiang’s son, President Chiang Ching-kuo, and constitutional democracy was restored.

We have now seen a vibrant democracy in Taiwan with routine, peaceful changes of government over the past 37 years. The success of democracy in Taiwan contradicts an old claim that the Chinese people, including those in Singapore and Hong Kong, could never make democracy work properly.

This brings us to the crucial issue of total military contingency involving the survival of both countries and their differing strategic implications for Australia. In the case of Ukraine, the big question is what Australia would do if Russia’s war with Ukraine escalated into a full-blown military confrontation between Russia and NATO. From a moral and international legal perspective, there would be pressure on us to contribute. But Ukraine is not in our region of broader strategic importance in the Asia-Pacific region. Furthermore, if the war in Europe were to escalate to include Russian attacks on neighboring NATO members such as Poland and the Baltic countries, it would involve a very intense land-based military conflict for which the Australian Defense Force is not structured. We could make no more than a limited military contribution.

But such an escalating European war could create an opportunity for China to attack Taiwan. China might attack Taiwan at the same time that Russia is expanding its war into neighboring NATO countries. Although Taiwan itself is not in Australia’s area of immediate strategic interest (Southeast Asia and the South Pacific), a successful capture of Taiwan and China’s defeat of America would potentially pose first-order strategic threats to Australia, and our own survival as a fully independent country. state, for the following reasons.

First, if China were to decisively defeat the United States in such a war, nothing would stop China from expanding southward and establishing military bases in our immediate vicinity. And a defeated US could retreat into one of its historic phases of isolationism. Australia would then be strategically isolated and without a protector. Southeast Asia and the South Pacific would effectively come within China’s sphere of influence.

Second, such a shocking US defeat would have serious consequences for Japan and South Korea. It would mean handing over sea and air control of the East China Sea and the South China Sea to China. A China in command of the island of Taiwan would have military dominance over the South China Sea and Southeast Asia. A new China-centric geopolitical order would then most likely prevail throughout East Asia. Such a crisis could reasonably prompt Japan and South Korea to acquire their own reliable nuclear attack retaliation capability.

Third, Australia should consider where its future lay under the boot of a dominant Beijing. Without the U.S. alliance and our critical access to U.S. intelligence, surveillance, targeting, weapons systems and leading military platforms, we would no longer have credible military capabilities. Would we then retreat to a neutral stance with only the pitiful remains of a credible military force?

Fourth, the truly nightmare scenario would be a combination of Russian military successes against neighboring NATO members such as the Baltics and Poland, with America’s Chinese defeat on Taiwan and the resulting dominance of Japan and South Korea. This bad brew then conjures up the ultimate event of all-out nuclear war.

The Australians who casually proclaim that the United States is over, that China will inevitably dominate the entire Asia-Pacific region and that our only survival will be to leave the ANZUS partnership need to think again. Theirs is a values-free world in which we would be on the receiving end of communist China’s dominance.

What could Australia contribute in the event of a US war with China over Taiwan? Our defense force is modest in size, but we have significant potential to defend ourselves if, instead of just waiting for AUKUS submarines, we quickly acquire enough long-range anti-ship missiles with a range of more than 2,000 kilometers.

However, we would need access to airports and ports – for example in Okinawa, which is less than 600 kilometers from Taiwan. But a more credible military mission for us would be to deny the narrow straits of Southeast Asia (Malacca, Sunda and Lombok) to China’s maritime traffic – including 80 percent of its oil imports.

The purpose of this analysis was to demonstrate the dangers of listening to those who focus only on the risks of opposing and deterring China. Instead, my analysis here focuses on the dangers of failing to resist and deter China.

Moreover, when it comes to strategic matters, we must recognize that Taiwan, unlike Ukraine, can play a direct role in our defense planning priorities. Yet we have a strong national interest in seeing Ukraine freed from Russia’s illegal invasion, and we must do what we can to make that happen.

Paul Dibb is Emeritus Professor of Strategic Studies at ANU. He is a former Deputy Secretary of Defense and Director of the Defense Intelligence Organization.

This article was published by ASPI on September 30, 2024.