IISS
Date: 27th September 2019
By: Brendan Taylor
TAIWAN STRAIT – 29 OCTOBER, 2018: (SOUTH AFRICA OUT) The Strait of Taiwan, located between the coast of southeast China and Taiwan. (Photo by Gallo Images / Orbital Horizon/Copernicus Sentinel Data 2019)
Brendan Taylor, author of a new IISS book on Taiwan’s security, explains why, amid shifts in the military balance between China and the US, there is an increasing risk of a cross-strait conflict flaring up and why policymakers should be worried about it.
In your new book, Dangerous Decade: Taiwan’s Security and Crisis Management, you argue that the prospects for a conflict over Taiwan are real and intensifying. Why has the situation deteriorated and why should policymakers be worried about it?
The situation has deteriorated for many reasons, but it is fundamentally down to shifts in the military balance between China and Taiwan and, increasingly, between China and the US. Ever since Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalist forces retreated to the island of Taiwan in the late 1940s following their defeat to the Communists in the Chinese Civil War, America has been able to use its overwhelming military advantage to steer this flashpoint. It has deterred Beijing from using force by suggesting that it might intervene on Taiwan’s behalf, as it did during two strategic crises during the 1950s and again in the mid-1990s. But the US has also dissuaded Taiwan from formally declaring independence, by indicating that its support might not be forthcoming in the event that Taipei were to provoke Beijing unduly.
That equation is now changing due to the significant advances that China’s military has made since the mid-1990s. There is literally no military balance now left to speak of between China and Taiwan. The gap between China and the US is also narrowing, as Beijing develops the wherewithal – through, for instance, its significantly more powerful and accurate anti-shipping missiles – to challenge America’s ability to come to Taiwan’s defence. Indeed, based on current trends, and barring an as yet unanticipated technological breakthrough, America will probably have lost the ability to defend Taiwan within the decade. [FULL STORY]