A fragile peace
The Russian invasion of Ukraine has reinforced fears that the world is teetering back to a Cold War-esque era in which the most powerful countries compete for dominance.
That could mean not only Russia exercising control over Eastern Europe, but China imposing itself over East and Southeast Asia – especially Taiwan.
China has laid claim to Taiwan since the island split from the mainland in 1949 and has threatened to reunite the two by force. It considers the issue a top priority: Days after the Russian invasion, Chinese officials reiterated their determination to “solve the Taiwan issue”. In a Friday conversation with President Biden about the Russian invasion, Chinese leader Xi Jinping seemed more concerned about the fate of Taiwan than about the war in Ukraine.
China, like Russia, seems to see a void after the Western powers withdrew from the global stage, sidelined by internal disputes and the failed US wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. In the West, a Cold War victory had convinced many that a new democratic world order would keep the peace—without realizing how fragile that peace really was.
“People forgot about big power politics,” said Jennifer Lind, an East Asia expert at Dartmouth College. “People had hoped we had transformed international politics, but we didn’t.”
But Russia’s failure to overpower Ukraine so far, and the West’s haste to punish and isolate Russia for its invasion, should leave major or emerging powers skeptical of similar incursions, experts say.
After all, China has benefited from the relatively peaceful world order of recent decades; it turned into the US’s only real economic rival as the world became more and more integrated. An invasion of Taiwan could disrupt that order and potentially isolate China from the global economy, as Russia’s experience has shown.
So what happens in Taiwan will probably be influenced by what happens in Ukraine. If Russia succeeds in overtaking Ukraine, it will increase the danger for Taiwan. If Russia eventually pulls out or suffers lasting, damaging effects, that could be good news for the island.
Because the Russian invasion has gone badly, Chinese officials are likely to be more cautious about sending troops to Taiwan, said Liang-chih Evans Chen of the Institute for National Defense and Security Research in Taiwan.
That would be a relief for Taiwan, an island of nearly 24 million people with a strong liberal democracy – the only Asian government to legally allow same-sex marriage – and a modern economy.
Taiwan doesn’t expect it to defeat China’s powerful military outright, especially without direct US help. Taiwan, on the other hand, wants to make a war seem so expensive to China that it is deterred from invading.
The war in Ukraine has shown how this can turn out. Ukrainian resistance has been fiercer than anyone expected – thousands of Russian troops have been killed, according to US estimates. The same could be true in Taiwan, where polls show nearly three-quarters of the population is willing to fight a Chinese invasion.
The West’s sweeping sanctions against Russia also suggest that an invasion of Taiwan could cause economic pain for China. Along with the weapons shipped to Ukraine, the sanctions demonstrate the willingness of Western countries to support democracies under attack.
The West’s resolve could go even further in Taiwan, with the possibility of US forces acting directly against an invasion. Biden has said US troops will not fight in Ukraine, but the US is keeping a deliberately blurred line on Taiwan.
China’s advantages:
China has strengths that Russia does not have. The economy is much larger and more diversified, mitigating the damage that sanctions can inflict. The countries that could impose sanctions on China, from the US to European countries to Japan, generally rely more on trade with China than on trade with Russia.
Unlike Ukraine, Taiwan is not globally recognized as an independent country — not even by the US — which could lead to questions about whether China’s attack would be an invasion at all.
China also has a huge military advantage, with about a million active ground troops, compared to Taiwan’s 88,000. (Although unlike Russia, China would have to cross 100 miles of water to invade — a difficult, complex undertaking.)
The response to the Russian invasion has also exposed some limits on how far the West is willing to go, with countries refusing to send troops to defend Ukraine. And the US ambiguity about Taiwan leaves room for US troops to stay out of combat.
Most importantly, China has time: Any invasion of Taiwan could take years, if at all, experts said. That gives China time to build its military, isolate its economy from potential sanctions, study what Russia did wrong in Ukraine, and see if Western resolve actually holds up.
Thus, the return of major power politics could depend on the outcome of the war in Ukraine — and whether it was ultimately worth it from Russia’s perspective.
State of the war
Russia posted significant gains yesterday. It penetrated the center of the besieged city of Mariupol and moved closer to linking its forces in southern Ukraine with separatist allies in the east.
Mariupol is one of the many places where Russian troops dealt blows to the Ukrainian army. Russia also destroyed a barracks in the south, killing at least 40 Marines in one of the deadliest attacks on Ukrainian troops since the start of the war, and knocked out a weapons depot in the west.
Russia said it had used hypersonic missiles to destroy the depot, but could not be independently confirmed. Launching the missiles would be an escalation and the first use of such weapons in combat; they can travel at five times the speed of sound.
Russia seems to be digging in for a long fight over Kiev, the biggest prize. Satellite images showed Russian troops taking up defensive positions.
More about Ukraine
Ukrainians placed 109 empty strollers in a public square to symbolize the children killed in Russian bombing.
The Biden administration is trying to help Ukraine without fueling a wider conflict, leading to sometimes tortured policy distinctions.
NEWS
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