The tensions between China and Taiwan could result in an all-out war with the US.

There are unfinished business between China and Taiwan.

He kicked out his emperor. Japan invaded. Then a brutal civil war tore the nation in half. That war never ended. Now it threatens to get hot again, fast.

The prospect was prominently featured in the Pentagon’s annual report: Years of rising tension in the Taiwan Strait appear to be coming to a head.

The coasts of Taiwan are the target of intimidating and regular military exercises by Beijing. The pressure on international forums to ignore Taipei has dramatically escalated. And the fate of Hong Kong has shattered hopes for a peaceful engagement.

“The Chinese civil war has never ended, it has simply changed means, modes and pace, and the ‘war’ has continued to this day,” writes retired CIA analyst John Culver for the Lowy Institute. “[That] The unfinished Chinese civil war will resurface not only as a military contest. And it is likely that from the moment the shooting begins, it will cease to be the unfinished Chinese civil war and become the war between China and the United States. “

How real is the threat?

“We may find out soon,” says Brookings Institution foreign policy analyst Robert Kagan.

“There has never been any mystery about what Chinese President Xi Jinping wants, because it is what Beijing has wanted for decades: to make the Chinese nation whole again, to subdue the opposition in Xinjiang and Tibet, to control the Sea. from South China and some strategically located islands in the East China Sea, to take back Hong Kong … and ‘reunify’ Taiwan with the mainland under the rule of the Chinese Communist Party. “

Rude relationships

The world has changed.

The optimism generated by the collapse of the Soviet Union has long since evaporated.

China has overcome its fear of being economically isolated from the rest of the world.

The United States is tired of its self-proclaimed role as a bulwark of democracy and freedom.

Now, 75 years of international order are breaking down. And Taiwan is on the fault line.

“The Chinese have largely hoped to achieve their goals by using their growing economic clout,” says Kagan. “Until recently, they were quite successful.”

The world was eager to take advantage of China’s economic growth.

He hoped that Beijing would “see the light” and constantly conform to the standards, rules and expectations of the international community.

But a cascade of crisis has put an end to that dream.

“Many of the understandings, military factors and ambiguous positions that allowed decades of peace, prosperity and democracy in Taiwan are now eroding,” Culver writes.

“[This is] due to China’s burgeoning economic and military power, Taiwan’s democratic consolidation led by the Progressive Democratic Party (DPP) in favor of autonomy, and the growing American determination to play the ‘Taiwan card’ ‘in its strategic rivalry with China. “

And Beijing’s relationship with the established world order has been broken.

“The liberal capitalist world has become less and less captivated by the money to be made in China and more concerned about Chinese economic competition,” Kagan notes.

“That has raised important questions for Xi and his colleagues. If the economic and peaceful route to their goals is closing, is it time to switch to more forceful means? Is it time to start making use of military capabilities in which have spent more than two decades and hundreds of billions of dollars building?

“Taiwan is likely to be the place where these questions are answered.”

Great powers

Hong Kong has “fallen”. The East and South Seas of China are about to become Beijing’s private lakes. India, Nepal and Borneo are contemplating redrawing borders in favor of China.

“What is happening today is exactly what was predicted and exactly what the Chinese leaders intended,” Kagan argues. “Our outrage, while appropriate, is also shameful.”

Beijing is exercising its newfound boldness.

And it has the military, the technology and the economy to back it up.

“That Xi has now decided to end the Hong Kong charade once and for all has sinister implications for Taiwan,” Kagan writes. “China can launch devastating missile strikes against Taiwan in the first 24 hours of a conflict, leaving Taipei with the option to surrender or resist to see if the Americans will arrive in time to avoid total annihilation.”

But Culver is not convinced that war is Beijing’s only option.

“It is telling that China’s 2005 law laying the groundwork for the use of force is an ‘anti-secession’ law, not a ‘reunification law,'” he argues.

He sees it as a carefully crafted distinction that aims to preserve the status quo: an independent Taiwan that is isolated from the world community. And it allows Xi to continue his campaign to recast the United States as the “thug of the world” rather than the “police officer of the world.”

“Instead of being the ‘guarantor of the security of the Western Pacific’, China will seek to make the United States the ‘guarantor of insecurity’ that disrupts trade, prosperity and peace in the region (and the world), and will create doubts and gaps between the United States and its allies and partners, “writes Culver.

That is not to say that crises are unlikely to continue.

“[Beijing] may seek the right time and conditions to demonstrate to the people of Taiwan – and to Japan, Australia, and the US – that the US military cannot prevent or undo China’s actions, and that it will not endanger its main military assets, or assets therefore, will suffer staggering and politically devastating losses. “

The dogs of war

Whatever form it takes, if a war were to break out, it would be immensely costly, both in human and economic terms.

“The region that has fueled global economic growth over the past decades would become a war zone, breaking down global supply chains, transportation links, and financial systems,” Culver warns.

“Taiwan would be the first battleground of intensive combat operations between the world’s two most powerful military forces in a war that would quickly cease to be primarily about autonomy, Taiwan’s prosperity, or the lives and livelihoods of its 24 million population”.

The implications of war are deep and profound.

“For the CCP, such a conflict would be about its legitimacy and survival, and China’s return as the dominant power in East Asia. Failure to contest would probably not be an option for the CCP,” Culver notes.

“For Washington, it would present a Hobbesian option: intervene in an indefinite and financially ruinous conflict with another nuclear power for the first time and risk unprecedented combat losses, or be seen as stepping aside in the face of an assault on a vibrant democracy. . and its 24 million citizens. “

Kagan, however, believes that Xi’s temptation to stamp his will on the world is enormous.

“A China in possession of Taiwan would be poised to dominate East Asia and the Western Pacific like never before, fighting against the entire global strategic equation,” he says.

“This would be a historic achievement for Xi, but there are also enormous risks. To try to take Taiwan and fail would be catastrophic, both for Xi personally and possibly for the regime itself.”

Time will tell

Decades of diplomatic vacillations culminate in crisis.

After World War II, Washington was eager to stem the rising tide of communism. He took the fight to Korea and Vietnam. He fought to a halt in Korea. Vietnam lost.

He was equally interested in containing communist China. But the alternative wasn’t that good either.

“The US decision not to support the unpopular and deeply corrupt KMT leader Chiang Kai-shek, a World War II ally, in his fight on the mainland accelerated the CCP’s victory there,” Culver writes.

This decision set the stage for a political quagmire.

The United States still maintains that it does not have an official position on China’s unity. He just wants the two sides to settle their differences peacefully. And he is prepared to defend Taiwan’s right to do so.

Thus was born the idea of ​​”One nation, two systems.”

It got like that because Washington sent the Seventh Fleet to the Taiwan Strait during the Korean War. This prevented Communist China from invading the last nationalist enclave.

Since then, China and Taiwan have been nervously watching each other for an informal “medial line” of control in the center of the Taiwan Strait.

“Over the past 40 years, in part because of the United States’ commitment not to support Taiwan independence or abandon its former ally, China shifted the priorities of its war with Taiwan to establish cross-strait relations,” Culver says .

The nationalist dictatorship of Taiwan collapsed in 1987. Chiang’s son had a different perspective than his father. He wanted a modern and healthy economy for his nation. And that, he realized, would only flourish with the lifting of martial law and the eradication of corruption.

So he put the island nation on the path to democracy.

Communism didn’t start out so well for China. Hungry. Political purges. Oppression. Isolation. Everything constricted the nation until it adopted a policy of “opening up” to the world in the 1990s. Now, the self-proclaimed “central leader” of the Communist Party and president for life Xi Jinping, at the height of this economic success, seeks to impose his version of the “Chinese characteristics” both in his empire and in the world.

And he has made Taiwan a personal challenge.

“For China, the center of gravity of its adversaries is not its purely military ability to stop an invasion. Instead, it is the will of the Taiwanese people and military to fight, and the willingness and ability of the United States to intervene,” he says Culver. .