Please tell me we're not going to try to protect Taiwan's sovereignty. I foresee us going to war with China somewhere down the road, and I don't look forward to that by any means. But, I'm not sure protecting Taiwan (whom, if I'm not mistaken, we still don't officially recognize as a nation) is worth that type of hellish war.
----Well stated, Prime Minister Chamberlain. With such wisdom, I'm sure we will have "peace in our time."
You are correct that we don't recognize Taiwan as a nation, but rather, as a province of China. However, we have signed the Taiwan Relations Act.
It is the policy of the United States... to consider any effort to determine the future of Taiwan by other than peaceful means, including by boycotts or embargoes, a threat to the peace and security of the Western Pacific area and of grave concern to the United States; to provide Taiwan with arms of a defensive character; and to maintain the capacity of the United States to resist any resort to force or other forms of coercion that would jeopardize the security, or the social or economic system, of the people on Taiwan.
If the United States were to stand by and let China takeover Taiwan by force, all of our treaty commitments would be called into question. What would Japan's reaction be? God help us if we allowed Taiwan and its 22 million people to fall under Communist rule. Taiwan has the 17th largest economy in the world, just behind Russia.
OK, I'll admit my bias up front. My wife is a naturalized US citizen from Taiwan. Her half of MY family and my daughter's family still live in Taiwan. Taiwan is the last bastion of unregulated, free-wheeling capitalism left IN THE WORLD. They are our best friends in the region -- even better friends than the Japanese, IMHO. How could we not come to their aid if they requested it? The Taiwanese are no longer recognized as a country due to Carter's cowardly kowtowing to the Chicoms back in the 70s. To your average Taiwanese, the only president worse than Bill Clinton was Jimma Carter. They despise the man. The Taiwanese are a scrappy bunch. They will defend their island NATION to the death. And to hear my wife tell it, if the Chicoms mess with them they will deeply regret it (she believes that any Chinese victory will be a pyrrhic one). I think she's right. The Chicoms need to back off and get over it. They have NEVER had claim to Taiwan. I believe what we should do to show our resolve toward Taiwan would be to recognise them as a nation once again. Let the Chicoms bluster. Who needs the trade between China and the US more -- them or us? Myself, I can do without all the cheap Chinese crap imports until they come to their senses.
If you see it as inevitable then would it be better to put it off until later after they have taken Taiwan and consolidated their power?
Failing to defend Taiwan would be a disaster. Our allies in the Pacific Rim and the Indian Ocean would rightly judge that we will not stand by them either and will gravitate into China's orbit.
That will deeply degrade our ability to project power into the Western Pacific and the Indian Ocean. This guarantees that, when the big war comes with China, we will operate at a severe strategic disadvantage and that the war will be fought over Midway and Hawaii, rather than Taiwan and Japan and Singapore.
OTOH, if we defend Taiwan, our allies remain firm and there may never be the big war with China as the correlation of forces (in their terminology) is not favorable.
Were Taiwan independence the only issue at stake, then you might have an argument--although throwing millions of freedom-loving, loyal allies to the tender mercies of the PRC strikes me a morally bankrupt--especially when we have promised to defend them.
Well, we already know the U.S. can't be trusted and doesn't keep it's word, so I suppose there's a good chance we'll just let Taiwan swing.
That's what Chamberlain argued, vis a vis the Sudetenland.