Re: [Salon] Historian Alfred McCoy: As Tensions Rise over Taiwan, U.S. & China “Edging Ever Closer” to War

Scott:

In the case of China, we have abandoned diplomacy as an instrument of national defense and foreign relations and adopted a purely military approach. The casus belli between us is Taiwan’s separation from the rest of China, which was the unintended result of our military intervention to separate the parties to the Chinese civil war. We no longer even pretend to comply with the basic agreements that we later worked out with Beijing to enable it to set the Taiwan issue aside for future peaceful resolution. (These included an end to official relations with Taipei, the removal of all military forces and installations from the island, and the abandonment of our commitment to defend it. A subsequent agreement committed us to reduce arms sales to Taiwan. We currently honor none of these undertakings. Now, all the talk is about how to fight a war to determine Taiwan’s status. Both sides must know that such a war would be catastrophic for Taiwan, disastrous for both the United States and China, and severely damaging to any country that joined either us or the Chinese in the fight. But no one in Washington is attempting to find either solutions or a temporizing modus vivendi for managing Sino-American differences over Taiwan, as the Nixon administration did fifty years ago. We are back in the middle of the unfinished Chinese civil war.

No one should doubt Beijing's determination to end the division of China by peaceful means, if at all possible, or by force, if there is no path to peaceful reunification on at least a symbolic basis. The Chinese anti-secession law (https://china.usc.edu/anti-secession-law-adopted-npc-march-14-2005 ) spells out the circumstances that would trigger the use of force. The law itself is worth reading in its entirety but here are the operative articles relevant to the use of force:

Article 8 In the event that the "Taiwan independence" secessionist forces should act under any name or by any means to cause the fact of Taiwan's secession from China, or that major incidents entailing Taiwan's secession from China should occur, or that possibilities for a peaceful reunification should be completely exhausted, the state shall employ non-peaceful means and other necessary measures to protect China's sovereignty and territorial integrity.

The State Council and the Central Military Commission shall decide on and execute the non-peaceful means and other necessary measures as provided for in the preceding paragraph and shall promptly report to the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress.

Article 9 In the event of employing and executing non-peaceful means and other necessary measures as provided for in this Law, the state shall exert its utmost to protect the lives, property and other legitimate rights and interests of Taiwan civilians and foreign nationals in Taiwan, and to minimize losses. At the same time, the state shall protect the rights and interests of the Taiwan compatriots in other parts of China in accordance with law.

At this point, you would be very hard pressed to find anyone in authority in Beijing who believes that peaceful reunification is still possible, given U.S. policy and the stance of the ruling authorities in Taipei. Many see the conditions for the use of force stipulated in Article 8 (above) as having been met. Since that is the case, war is an eventual near certainty, with only the time and circumstances to be decided.

Chas