It’s time to rethink our defense commitments. Risking a catastrophic conflict is too great a price for Taiwanese independence.

The American Conservative
Date: February 20, 2018
By: TED GALEN CARPENTER

While America’s attention has been focused on the North Korea crisis, diverted

U.S. Pacific Fleet/Flickr

occasionally to developments in the South China Sea, another volatile East Asia confrontation has reemerged. China is adopting a growing number of measures to intimidate Taiwan, including emphasizing that any hopes the Taiwanese people and government have to perpetuate the island’s de facto independence are unrealistic and unacceptable. Hostile actions include a renewed effort to cajole and bribe the small number of nations that still maintain diplomatic relations with Taipei to switch ties to Beijing, extremely explicit warnings that China will use force if necessary to prevent any “separatist” moves by Taiwan, and a sharp increase in the number and scope of military exercises in the Taiwan Strait and other nearby areas.

The military maneuvers are especially unsettling. According to Taiwanese media accounts, China has conducted 16 military drills around Taiwan in 2017, compared to just eight in 2016 and even fewer during the years between 2008 and 2016. Chinese military aircraft engaged in exercises near Taiwan’s northern coast in December. Beijing’s naval and air power war games culminated in January 2018, when a flotilla including China’s only aircraft carrier sailed through the Strait. A senior Chinese official, Liu Junchuan, the liaison head of China’s Taiwan Affairs Office, boasted that “the contrast in power across the Taiwan Strait will become wider and wider, and we will have a full, overwhelming strategic advantage over Taiwan.”     [FULL  STORY]