As of: February 10, 2024, 1:22 p.m
From: Foreign Policy
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This photo from a Chinese military exercise is reminiscent of a steel wall © Sergei Grits/dpa
Taiwan could become the focus of a confrontation between China and the US.
But how ready is the Chinese army for war?
How big is the risk of a war over Taiwan?
Experts Michael Beckley and Hal Brands shed light on the question in this analysis.
Beijing
is becoming
more and more aggressive
: the military balance is shifting
Chinese history
is marked by
violence and war
: Is the next confrontation with China now coming?
This article is available for the first time in German - it was first published by
Foreign Policy
magazine on February 4, 2024 .
Washington, DC – How likely is it that China will start a war?
This is perhaps the most important question in international politics today.
If China uses military force against Taiwan or another target in the Western Pacific, the result could be a war with the United States - a battle between two nuclear-armed giants vying for dominance in this region and around the world.
If China were to attack amid ongoing wars in Ukraine and the Middle East, the world would be ravaged by interlocking conflicts in key regions of Eurasia - a global conflagration not seen since World War II.
Possibility of confrontation with China off Taiwan: How worried should we be?
Despite recent high-level diplomatic efforts between Washington and Beijing, the warning signs are certainly there.
Under Chinese President Xi Jinping, Beijing is amassing ships, planes and missiles in the largest military buildup by a country in decades.
Despite some recent efforts to re-attract unsettled foreign investors, China is stockpiling fuel and food and trying to reduce its economy's vulnerability to sanctions - steps that could be taken as conflict approaches.
Xi said China must prepare for "worst-case and extreme scenarios" and be ready to withstand "strong winds, choppy waters and even dangerous storms."
All this comes at a time when Beijing is becoming increasingly coercive (and occasionally violent) in its dealings with its neighbors, including the Philippines, Japan and India - and when it is regularly touting its ability to ram, blockade and perhaps blockade Taiwan to march in.
US officials see growing dangers of war
Many U.S. officials believe the risk of war is increasing.
CIA Director William Burns said Xi is seeking the ability to conquer Taiwan by 2027.
And as China's economy struggles, some observers - including reportedly U.S. intelligence analysts - are watching for signs that a peaked China might become aggressive to divert attention from internal problems or to protect profits. while it still can.
Other analysts believe the risk of Chinese aggression is exaggerated.
Some scholars say the threat is likely to be contained unless Washington provokes Beijing - an echo of a longstanding argument that China will not overturn a status quo that has served it well.
Others point out that China has not started a war since its invasion of Vietnam in 1979.
Still others dismiss the prospect of China fighting in response to a slowing economy and other domestic problems, saying the country has no history of diversionary warfare.
What unites these arguments is a belief in the fundamental continuity of Chinese behavior: the idea that a country that has not fought a catastrophic war in more than four decades will not do so now.
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Will China wage war over Taiwan?
Chinese circumstances are changing
We believe this confidence is dangerously misplaced.
A country's behavior is shaped not only by its strategic tradition but also by its circumstances, and China's circumstances are changing in explosive ways.
Political scientists and historians have identified a number of factors that make great powers more or less inclined to fight.
Looking at four of these factors, it becomes clear that many of the conditions that once facilitated peaceful advancement may now encourage violent decline.
First, the territorial disputes and other issues over which China fights are increasingly less susceptible to compromise or peaceful resolution than before, making foreign policy a zero-sum game.
Second, the military balance in Asia is shifting in ways that could make Beijing dangerously optimistic about the outcome of a war.
Third, as China's short-term military prospects improve, its long-term strategic and economic prospects darken - a combination that has often led revisionist powers to resort to more violence in the past.
Fourth, Xi has transformed China into a personalist dictatorship, particularly vulnerable to catastrophic miscalculations and costly wars.
This is not to say that China will invade Taiwan in any particular week, month or year.
It is impossible to predict exactly when a conflict will break out, as the trigger is often an unforeseen crisis.
We now know that Europe was prepared for war in 1914, but World War I probably would not have broken out then if the driver of the car carrying the Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand had not made one of the most fateful bad decisions in history.
Wars are more like earthquakes: we can't know exactly when they will happen, but we can identify factors that lead to higher or lower levels of risk.
Today, China's risk indicators are flashing red.
The possibility of war between the US and China may seem unlikely at first glance.
Beijing has not fought a major war in 44 years, and its military has not killed large numbers of foreigners since 1988, when Chinese frigates machine-gunned 64 Vietnamese sailors in a battle over the Spratly Islands.
The so-called Asian peace - the absence of interstate wars in East Asia since 1979 - is based on the Chinese peace.
Apparently peaceful powers can become a danger: Germany and Japan, for example
The absence of war hardly means the absence of aggression: Beijing has used its military and paramilitary capabilities to increase its influence in the South and East China Seas.
In recent years, China has also engaged in bloody skirmishes with India.
The fact that Beijing has stayed away from major wars - while the United States has fought several wars - has allowed Chinese officials to claim that their country is following a uniquely peaceful path to global power.
And it forces those who worry about wars to explain why China, which has experienced record growth made possible by two generations of peace, should change course so dramatically.
It wouldn't be the first time that a seemingly peaceful rising power made a misstep.
Before 1914, Germany had not fought a major war for more than 40 years.
In the 1920s, Japan appeared to many foreign observers as a responsible actor when it signed treaties pledging to limit its fleet, share its power in Asia and respect China's territorial integrity.
In the early 2000s, Russian President Vladimir Putin considered joining NATO and Russia's closer ties with the West.
That each of these nations nevertheless waged barbaric wars of conquest underscores a fundamental truth: things change.
The same country can behave differently, perhaps even radically different, depending on the circumstances.
One such circumstance is territorial disputes.
Most wars are about who owns which strip of the earth;
Around 85 percent of the international conflicts waged since 1945 have revolved around territorial claims.
Territory is difficult to divide because it often has symbolic or strategic meaning.
Even when nations agree to divide a territory, they often end up fighting over the most valuable parts, such as cities, oil reserves, sacred sites, waterways or strategically important heights.
Furthermore, securing an area requires physical presence in the form of fences, soldiers or settlers.
When nations claim the same territory, unpleasant contact often occurs.
Territorial disputes can escalate particularly when one side fears that its claims are rapidly dwindling.
The belief that sacred ground will be lost or that the nation will be dismembered by its enemies can trigger aggression that a country more secure about its borders would avoid.
China is becoming more aggressive: the military balance is shifting
A second cause of war is a shift in the military balance.
Wars are fought over different problems, but they all have one fundamental cause: false optimism.
They arise when both sides believe they can achieve their goals through force - in other words, when both sides believe they can win.
Of course, few wars are truly victorious, meaning that at least one side - and very often both sides - has catastrophically underestimated the enemy's strength.
In short, competing or unclear military balances cause wars;
therefore, anything that makes a given equilibrium more competitive or unclear, such as the introduction of new technologies or a massive military buildup by the weaker side, increases the risk of war.
Third, great powers become bellicose when they fear future decline.
Geopolitical competition is fierce and relentless, leaving nations nervously guarding their relative wealth and power.
Even the most powerful countries can descend into violent insecurity when threatened by economic stagnation, strategic encirclement, or other protracted developments that threaten their international position and expose them to the grasp of their enemies.
A heavily armed but increasingly fearful great power on the brink of decline will be anxious, even desperate, to stave off unfavorable developments by any means possible.
For Imperial Germany, Imperial Japan and Putin's Russia, this ultimately meant war.
Probability of war over Taiwan increases: China as a belligerent country
Ultimately, a country's behavior is also shaped by its regime.
Personalistic dictatorships are more than twice as likely to start wars as in democracies or autocracies where power lies in many hands.
Dictators start more wars because they are less exposed to the costs of conflict: Over the last 100 years, dictators who lost wars fell from power only 30 percent of the time, while other leaders who lost wars in almost 100 percent of the time were voted out or otherwise removed from office.
Dictators are prone to extremism because they are surrounded by sycophants who will do anything to fulfill the leader's demands.
Dictators also cultivate real and imagined enemies abroad because blood-and-soil nationalism helps them justify their repressive rule at home.
While the leaders of limited governments tend to rule modestly and fade into obscurity, dictators - including Adolf Hitler in Germany, Benito Mussolini in Italy, Josef Stalin in the Soviet Union, Mao Zedong in China, Saddam Hussein in Iraq and Putin in Russia - slaughter each other - often find their way into the history books.
These four factors—insecure borders, a competitive military balance, negative expectations, and dictatorship—help explain China's historic use of violence, and they have threatening implications today.
The People's Republic of China was born fighting.
After enduring a century of foreign imperialism, China bore the brunt of World War II in Asia following the Japanese invasion in 1937.
At least 14 million Chinese died.
Then, from 1945 to 1949, the Chinese Civil War reached its bloody climax, killing at least 2 million more people as the Communists fought their way to power.
In the midst of these conflicts, China developed into an extremely belligerent state.
For several decades it was one of the most embattled countries in the world, fighting five wars and becoming the main enemy of the two superpowers of the Cold War.
This violent record is not surprising since China had all the risk factors for war.
First of all, China was led by Mao, the epitome of one-man rule.
He routinely fired his colleagues and made unilateral decisions, often while half asleep in the middle of the night, based on inscrutable and shifting rationales.
He also showed a shocking disregard for human life.
During the Great Leap Forward, Mao's ill-conceived plan to transform China into a superpower during his lifetime, some 45 million people starved to death, were beaten or shot.
To rally the nation behind this disastrous campaign, Mao instigated an international crisis in 1958 by shelling the Nationalist government-held islands on Taiwan.
Chinese history is marked by violence and war: is the next confrontation now coming?
Mao may have been sadistic, but even a less ruthless leader would have struggled to keep such a shattered nation at peace.
After winning the civil war, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) had to restore the central government's authority village by village and painstakingly stamp out resistance from ethnic minorities, warlords and nationalist sympathizers.
To make matters worse, after the collapse of the Japanese and European empires, China was partially surrounded by new countries that were either hostile, unstable, or both.
Most of China's borders have been disputed to some degree;
In the 1960s, the border with the Soviet Union was the most militarized border in the world.
Taiwan was the base of a rival Chinese government, backed by the United States, with blatant plans to retake the mainland.
India hosted a Tibetan government-in-exile and claimed large swaths of Chinese territory;
and China's heartland was wedged between two Cold War flashpoints, Indochina and the Korean Peninsula.
China faced constant danger of being torn apart, a historical trauma compounded by the economic disasters and political upheaval under Mao.
Nevertheless, Beijing always had a viable strategy against each of its mainland neighbors, because China's huge population enabled the country to swallow its opponents through what Beijing called "people's war," a combination of waves of attacks and guerrilla attacks.
All in all, an explosive combination: a brutal dictatorship embroiled in territorial disputes and with a seemingly inexhaustible supply of manpower.
So China went from conflict to conflict, turning violent when it felt particularly vulnerable or feared an impending decline in its position.
In 1950, China defeated U.S. forces that had advanced deep into North Korea, risking a nuclear retaliation.
Later that decade, China nearly triggered two more wars by shelling Nationalist garrisons on offshore islands in the Taiwan Strait.
In 1962, Beijing attacked Indian forces after they set up outposts in Chinese-claimed territory in the Himalayas.
During the Vietnam War, China sent tens of thousands of soldiers to fight against US forces.
In 1969, Beijing risked nuclear war again by luring Moscow forces into an ambush on the Ussuri River after the Soviet Union had built up a sizeable force there.
Ten years later, China attacked Vietnam after that country welcomed Soviet forces and invaded Cambodia, one of Beijing's only close partners.
After that, China's guns largely fell silent.
There were exceptions, most notably in 1995 and 1996 when China fired missiles near Taiwan.
But in general, from 1980 to the mid-2000s, Beijing became less prickly and aggressive as circumstances changed dramatically.
Sudden turning point in Chinese history
At first the regime became more lenient.
In 1976, Mao died and was eventually replaced by Deng Xiaoping, who had been purged by Mao and recognized the dangers of one-man rule.
Under Deng's leadership, term limits were introduced for senior politicians.
The National People's Congress and the CPC Central Committee began to meet regularly.
A professionalized bureaucracy began to take shape.
These institutions were far from perfect, but they provided a check on power that had been completely lacking under Mao.
Second, China's geopolitical situation improved and threats to its territorial integrity diminished.
After the U.S. opened up to China in the 1970s, the rival government on Taiwan lost most of its diplomatic recognition and military alliance with the United States.
To corner the Soviet Union, the United States formed a quasi-alliance with China and transferred advanced technology to Chinese companies.
Taiwan, the Soviet Union, India and Vietnam could no longer invade Chinese territory without risking a US response.
And when the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, the biggest threats to China's land borders almost completely disappeared.
Without Russia's support, India, Vietnam and the newly formed states of Central Asia were unable to challenge China's borders.
Instead, they moved to normalize relations with Beijing.
Third, China's view of the future brightened.
After rapprochement with the United States and other democracies, China gained easy access to the global economy and a permanent seat on the UN Security Council.
From the late 1970s to the early 2000s, China's economy grew at a breakneck pace.
One country after another courted Beijing to gain access to its booming market.
Britain returned Hong Kong.
Portugal gave up Macau.
The United States fast-tracked China into the World Trade Organization.
With China's economy running smoothly and the world's most powerful nations welcoming the country's rise, Beijing had little incentive to change the status quo, which seemed to be improving by the day.
And finally, there were few opportunities for China to conquer.
While its economic and diplomatic weight increased, the Chinese military was clearly unable to conquer the still disputed territories, most of which were at sea.
With a pitiful air force and navy before the 2000s, a Chinese invasion of Taiwan would have amounted to a "million swim," and a clash with Japan's advanced naval forces might have been over in a matter of hours.
Above all, the United States could be expected to crush Chinese aggression in maritime Asia.
After watching U.S. forces decimate the Iraqi military in the Gulf War, Chinese leaders tended to heed Deng's maxim to hide their light and wait.
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Today's China under Xi Jinping is arming itself: territorial disputes are increasing
Today's China is done hiding and waiting.
Instead, it is producing warships and missiles faster than any country since World War II.
Chinese aircraft and warships simulate attacks on Taiwanese and US targets.
Asian sea lanes are dotted with Chinese military posts and packed with Chinese coast guard and fishing vessels, brazenly pushing their neighbors out of areas claimed by Beijing.
Meanwhile, China supports Russia's brutalization of Ukraine and is massing forces on the Sino-Indian border.
One reason China has become more combative is that it can.
China's inflation-adjusted military budget increased tenfold between 1990 and 2020.
Beijing now spends more money than every other country in Asia combined.
It has the largest ballistic missile force and navy in the world.
By the end of this decade, its nuclear arsenal could rival Washington's.
With conventional missiles capable of pulverizing US bases on Okinawa - the only ones within 500 miles of Taiwan - it is no longer clear that the Pentagon would be able to respond immediately to a Chinese attack on Taiwan, let alone could ward him off.
Historically, the United States has relied on its manufacturing capabilities to defeat its opponents in protracted wars.
But now that China is the world's workshop, Beijing may believe - rightly or not - that the longer a war drags on, the further the military balance shifts in its favor.
As territorial disputes intensify, there are more and more motives for war in China.
First of all, the peaceful means of reunifying Taiwan are increasingly disappearing.
In 1995, more Taiwanese citizens considered themselves pure Chinese than Taiwanese, and more supported unification with China than independence.
Today, nearly two-thirds of the population consider themselves exclusively Taiwanese, while only 4 percent identify as exclusively Chinese.
While most Taiwanese support maintaining the status quo, 49 percent of the population favor eventual independence over maintaining the status quo indefinitely (27 percent) or unification (12 percent).
Meanwhile, the United States has strengthened its ties with Taiwan.
US President Joe Biden said at least four times that the United States would defend the island from a Chinese attack.
As Washington and Taipei prepare their militaries for a possible conflict with China, concerns are growing in Beijing about the fate of the territory it covets most.
In the South China Sea, China has greatly expanded its military presence, but its diplomatic position has eroded.
In 2016, the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague ruled that China's extensive claims in the South China Sea were null and void.
Since 2022, the Philippines - the country that brought the case - has reasserted its maritime rights and allowed the US access to additional military bases on its territory to defend them.
Japan is forming a quasi-alliance with Manila, and a growing number of nations, including Britain, France and Germany, are sending warships to the South China Sea to defy Beijing's claims.
In response, China has also become physically aggressive.
Last year, for example, Chinese coast guard ships fired water cannons at Philippine supply boats, preventing them from delivering food to military personnel stationed on the Second Thomas Floe.
Chinese economy stagnates: But military growth continues
As China's military power has grown, so has its geopolitical prospects.
China's economy has recently been stagnating and shrinking compared to that of the United States.
Productivity has fallen and debt has exploded.
In mid-2023, when Beijing temporarily stopped publishing statistics on the problem, up to 20 percent of young adults were unemployed - a figure that certainly underestimates the scale of the problem.
Hordes of wealthy and well-educated Chinese are trying to get their money and their children out of the country.
These problems will worsen as China suffers the worst aging crisis in world history: Over the next 10 years, China will lose 70 million working-age adults while gaining 130 million older people.
Finally, China faces an increasingly hostile strategic environment.
The world's wealthiest countries are blocking the country's access to high-quality semiconductors - the lifeblood of economic and military innovation - and imposing new trade and investment restrictions on Beijing every year.
Anti-China pacts such as AUKUS, the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue and the trilateral agreement between the USA, Japan and South Korea are spreading.
China's only great power ally, Russia, has put its military through the meat grinder in Ukraine and turned public opinion in many European countries against Beijing.
If China were governed by a committee of technocrats, it could respond to these pressures with diplomatic compromises and economic reforms.
But China is ruled by a dictator who has already shown that he is willing to sacrifice the well-being of the Chinese people to achieve his grandiose goals.
Since taking power in 2012, Xi has named himself chairman for life, written his governing philosophy into the constitution and eliminated thousands of potential rivals.
He has taken an uncompromising stance on China's enormous territorial claims.
“We must not lose an inch of the territory left by our ancestors,” he warned US Defense Secretary James Mattis in 2018.
Xi has tied his legitimacy to making China a superpower: the state media now declares that China rose under Mao, got rich under Deng, and will become powerful under Xi.
In recent years, in internal speeches, Xi has ordered the Chinese military to prepare for war and the Chinese people to prepare for “extreme scenarios.”
China's Xi Jinping pushes internal escalation: External escalation could be the next step
Maybe this rhetoric is just bluster.
But many of Xi's actions - the brutal zero-COVID lockdowns, the concentration camps in Xinjiang, the crushing of freedoms in Hong Kong - show ruthlessness.
Combined with the other changes China is undergoing, these forms of internal aggression should make us very nervous about the external aggression that may lie ahead.
Of course, countries do not decide on war or peace in a vacuum;
they are also based on the general world situation.
In the 1930s, spreading international chaos demoralized the defenders of the existing order and emboldened those tempted to attack it.
So how might the current disarray - punctuated by the biggest war in Europe since World War II and a spreading conflict in the Middle East - influence China's decisions?
One view is that Russia's war in Ukraine makes other wars of aggression less likely by showing how badly they can backfire.
According to this view, held by Biden administration officials and some academic experts, China is drawing sobering lessons from Putin's misguided land grab.
Beijing is learning how difficult conquest can be against a dedicated defender, how poorly autocratic forces can perform in combat, how skillful the U.S. intelligence community is at uncovering plans for a raid, and how harshly the democratic world can punish countries that defy liberal norms defy order.
The U.S. is scrutinizing the Chinese military for the kind of corruption that has undermined the Russian military and has found that the rot runs much deeper than it appears.
U.S. officials certainly hope that China interprets recent events in a similar light.
But we should consider this interpretation carefully.
For one thing, it is incredibly difficult to know how China views the war in Ukraine.
After all, the lessons that matter are not those published by senior People's Liberation Army colonels or think tanks in Beijing.
The lessons that matter are learned by a pampered dictator whose perception of the world may be shaped by the usual pathologies of personalist regimes.
From what Xi has said publicly, there is little sign that the conflict has tempered his ambitions or fundamentally changed Chinese statecraft.
When Xi visited Moscow in March 2023, he told Putin: "Right now there are changes the likes of which we have not seen in 100 years, and we are the ones driving these changes together."
Furthermore, Xi may not view Ukraine and Taiwan as remotely comparable.
One reason Putin's forces struggled in Ukraine was that this was not the war for which they had been prepared and indoctrinated.
That wouldn't be a problem for China, because the country has been preparing for a war over Taiwan for decades - and constantly reminds its soldiers that reunification is central to the "great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation."
If Xi believes Taiwan is less capable than Ukraine of mounting society-wide resistance, he would not be alone.
Many U.S. officials and independent analysts have expressed the same concern.
Vielleicht ist Xi aber auch zu dem Schluss gekommen, dass die Vereinigten Staaten keinen Krieg gegen eine atomar bewaffnete Großmacht führen werden - so wie es Biden gesagt hat, als er erklärte, warum Washington Moskau nicht frontal konfrontieren würde. Vielleicht glaubt er, dass die Sanktionen des Westens gar nicht so schlimm sind: Zwei Jahre nach Beginn des Krieges kontrolliert Russland 20 Prozent des ukrainischen Territoriums, seine Öl- und anderen Exporte haben neue Märkte gefunden, seine Fabriken produzieren Rüstungsgüter, und seine Wirtschaft steht nicht kurz vor dem Zusammenbruch. Und vielleicht sieht er den jüngsten Verlauf des Krieges - in dem Russland ukrainischen Gegenangriffen standgehalten hat, während US-Politiker darüber streiten, ob sie Kiew mehr Geld und Waffen schicken sollen - als Beweis dafür, dass Autokratien mehr Kraft und Widerstandskraft aufbringen können als ihre demokratischen Gegner.
Möglicher Krieg um Taiwan: China muss effektiv abgeschreckt werden
Um es klar zu sagen: Wir wissen nicht, was Xi wirklich denkt. Aber es ist gefährlich anzunehmen, dass er genau die Lektionen lernt, die die Amerikaner ihm gerne beibringen würden - und nicht eine andere, weniger beruhigende Reihe von Lektionen, die Chinas Anreize zum Kampf verstärken könnten.
China könnte Taiwan - oder Indien, Japan, die Philippinen oder ein anderes Land - im Jahr 2025, 2027, 2029 oder nie angreifen. Wir können nicht mit Gewissheit vorhersagen, wann oder ob Peking Gewalt anwenden wird, da diese Entscheidung von vielen ungewissen Faktoren abhängt. Aber wir können einschätzen, ob Länder mehr oder weniger kriegsanfällig sind und ob ihre inneren Merkmale und äußeren Bedingungen das Risiko eines Ausbruchs erhöhen oder verringern. Vieles von dem, was Historiker und Politikwissenschaftler heute über die Ursachen von Kriegen wissen, deutet darauf hin, dass China auf Gewalt vorbereitet ist.
Leider kann Washington einige der Faktoren, die Peking auf diesen gefährlichen Weg treiben, nicht beeinflussen. Die Vereinigten Staaten können Chinas demografische Krise nicht beheben, die strukturellen wirtschaftlichen Probleme nicht lösen und Xis Festigung der Ein-Mann-Herrschaft nicht verhindern. Sie könnten vielleicht Chinas negative Zukunftserwartungen ändern, indem sie Peking den Zugang zu Spitzentechnologie erleichtern oder die Bemühungen um den Aufbau stärkerer Koalitionen im indopazifischen Raum aufgeben, obwohl dies die Position Washingtons fatal schwächen könnte. Die Vereinigten Staaten müssen versuchen, sich im Wettbewerb durchzusetzen und gleichzeitig einen schrecklichen Konflikt zu vermeiden. In diesem Zusammenhang sollten sie bestrebt sein, Chinas Optimismus über den Ausgang eines Krieges in Asien zu dämpfen und zu verhindern, dass Peking zu dem Schluss kommt, dass es kämpfen muss, um eine demütigende Niederlage zu vermeiden.
China den Kriegs-Optimismus nehmen: Die Maßnahmen wären recht einfach
Die Voraussetzungen dafür, China den Optimismus über den Ausgang eines Krieges zu nehmen, sind recht einfach – auch wenn sie nicht leicht zu erfüllen sind.
Dazu gehören:
- ein Taiwan, das mit Anti-Schiffs-Raketen, Seeminen, mobiler Luftabwehr und anderen billigen, aber tödlichen Fähigkeiten ausgestattet ist
- ein US-Militär, das Drohnen, U-Boote, Tarnkappenflugzeuge und enorme Mengen an Langstreckenwaffen einsetzen kann, um im westlichen Pazifik entscheidende Feuerkraft zu entfalten
- Abkommen mit Verbündeten und Partnern, die den US-Streitkräften Zugang zu mehr Stützpunkten in der Region verschaffen und weitere Länder in den Kampf gegen Peking einzubeziehen drohen
- eine globale Koalition von Ländern, die Chinas Wirtschaft mit Sanktionen unter Druck setzen und seinen Seehandel abwürgen können
- und eine wiederbelebte industrielle Basis, die die demokratischen Länder so lange im Kampf halten kann, bis sich ihre wirtschaftliche und finanzielle Überlegenheit am Ende als entscheidend erweist
Washington und seine Freunde sind bereits dabei, jede dieser Initiativen zu verfolgen. Aber sie tun dies nicht mit der Geschwindigkeit, den Ressourcen oder der Dringlichkeit, die nötig wären, um einer schnell heranreifenden chinesischen militärischen Bedrohung zuvorzukommen.
Die zweite Aufgabe besteht darin, Abschreckung und Beruhigung miteinander zu verbinden, um das Ausmaß zu begrenzen, in dem Untätigkeit in Xis Augen China zur Zerstückelung und Demütigung verurteilen könnte. Chinesische Beamte befürchten ernsthaft, dass die US-Politik und die taiwanesische Politik die Insel auf einen Weg in die Unabhängigkeit oder eine andere Form der dauerhaften Abspaltung bringen, auch wenn sie nicht erkennen, dass ihr eigenes Handeln weitgehend für diesen Trend verantwortlich ist. Daher müssen die Vereinigten Staaten in Bezug auf Taiwan vorsichtig vorgehen.
Washington sollte protzige Spektakel – wie den Besuch der damaligen Sprecherin des Repräsentantenhauses, Nancy Pelosi, auf der Insel im August 2022 – vermeiden, die nicht dazu beitragen, die Verteidigung der Insel zu stärken, sondern vielmehr Chinas Ängste und Zorn schüren. Die Vereinigten Staaten sollten die unter anderem vom ehemaligen US-Außenminister Mike Pompeo vorgeschlagene Idee ablehnen, die Ein-China-Politik aufzugeben und Taiwan formell anzuerkennen. Sie sollten sich gegen Unabhängigkeitserklärungen oder -aktionen der taiwanesischen Führung zur Wehr setzen. Kurz gesagt, die Vereinigten Staaten müssen glaubwürdig in der Lage sein, Taiwan zu verteidigen, und gleichzeitig ein glaubwürdiges Versprechen abgeben, dass sie verhindern wollen, dass eine der beiden Seiten den Status quo einseitig verändert.
This approach is so difficult because of its many contradictions.
Strengthening U.S. alliances could reduce China's military optimism but also increase its sense of unease.
The urgency required to strengthen deterrence may be difficult to reconcile with the prudence required by diplomacy between the two sides of the Strait - especially if China policy is dragged into the US presidential election campaign.
A powerful but restless China is heading in a bad direction.
The United States and its friends must use all strength and sobriety to prevent a slide into war.
To the authors
Michael Beckley
is an associate professor of political science at Tufts University and a non-resident senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.
Hal Brands
is the Henry A. Kissinger Professor of Global Affairs at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies and a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.
Twitter: @HalBrands
This article was first published in English in the magazine “ForeignPolicy.com” on February 4, 2024 - as part of a cooperation, it is now also available in translation to readers of the IPPEN.MEDIA portals.