The Taiwan Catastrophe

Excerpt

Washington and its allies face many potential geopolitical catastrophes over the next decade, but nearly all pale in comparison to what would ensue if China annexed or invaded Taiwan. Such an outcome, one U.S. official put it, “would be a disaster of utmost importance to the United States, and I am convinced that time is of the essence.” That was General Douglas MacArthur in June 1950, then overseeing occupied Japan and worrying in a top-secret memo to Washington about the prospect that the Communists in China might seek to vanquish their Nationalist enemies once and for all. More than 70 years later, MacArthur’s words ring truer than ever.

Then, as now, Taiwan’s geography matters. A self-governing Taiwan anchors Japan’s defense and denies China a springboard from which it could threaten U.S. allies in the western Pacific. But unlike in the 1950s, when Taiwan was under the authoritarian rule of Chiang Kai-Shek, today the island is a full-blown liberal democracy—whose subjugation to Beijing’s totalitarianism would hinder democratic aspirations across the region, including in China itself. And unlike in MacArthur’s time, Taiwan today is economically crucial to the rest of the world, by virtue of its role as the primary producer of advanced microchips. A war over the island could easily cause a global depression. Yet another key difference between MacArthur’s time and today is the flourishing of a wide network of U.S. allies across the Indo-Pacific, countries that rely on U.S. support for their security. A Chinese seizure of Taiwan could trigger a race among nations to develop their own nuclear arsenals as U.S. security guarantees lost credibility.

Andrew S. Erickson is Professor of Strategy in the Naval War College’s China Maritime Studies Institute and a Visiting Scholar in Harvard University’s Government Department. Gabriel B. Collins is a Fellow at Rice University’s Baker Institute for Public Policy, Center for Energy Studies, and heads the center’s Program on Energy & Geopolitics in Eurasia. Matt Pottinger served as U.S. Deputy National Security Adviser from 2019 to 2021 and is editor of the forthcoming book The Boiling Moat: Urgent Steps to Defend Taiwan.