The last military
exercises that China has carried out for six days with the deployment of dozens
of Chinese planes and ships in the Taiwan Strait together with the announcement
by Beijing of the suspension of cooperation mechanisms with Washington have
increased tension in the already difficult relations between both countries.
There seems to be no doubt that Beijing has staged a mock invasion of Taiwan
regardless of the fact that the Chinese military response is clearly
disproportionate. It provides China with undeniable military experience,
especially in the joint field where the different branches of the Chinese Armed
Forces participate.
The area of East Asia where these military exercises take
place around Taiwan forms one of the four great current world geopolitical
dilemmas. In this particular area, it is about resolving the unstable
Sino-Japanese geopolitical balance along with the existing disputes in the
South China Sea (MCM), the North Korean nuclear conflict and the very future of
ancient Formosa.
The other three major geopolitical dilemmas are related to
who will achieve world leadership once the United States could lose its role as
global hegemon; that is, an actor from the democratic bloc or one from the
authoritarian bloc. Another is the Intermarium or rather the Baltic Sea-Black
Sea line in the sense of knowing if it will be the EU or Russia who will
achieve peace and control of this isthmus; and the third aims to solve the
labyrinth of frictions existing in the Middle East where countries and regional
and international entities maintain a critical geostrategic competition.
To be realistic, from a strategic and operational point of
view, the People's Liberation Army (PLA) is not yet ready to carry out an
invasion of Taiwan that would constitute one of the largest and most complex
military amphibious landing operations in history. world at the same time that
it would face a possible conflict with the United States.
It is true that China regards the 36,000 km2 Taiwan as a
breakaway province and is committed to reunification, by force if necessary.
But it is also true that the Taiwanese leadership claims that it is much more
than a province, arguing that it is a sovereign state. Taiwan has its own
constitution, democratically elected leaders and a military of about 300,000
strong. Currently the number of countries that recognize Taiwan as a State are
14, including the Vatican.
Current President Tsai Ing-wen, who leads the Democratic
Progressive Party (DPP) that advocates formal independence from China, was
re-elected in 2020. Several months earlier, Hong Kong had suffered major
unrest, with protesters protesting Beijing's growing influence. . This
situation was experienced in Taipei with alarm and great concern. Also in 2020,
the entry into force of a national security law in Hong Kong was interpreted as
yet another sign that Beijing was increasingly asserting its authority over the
territory. Long gone was the Chinese policy of “one country, two systems”.
It must be borne in mind that, regardless of Chinese
interests with respect to Taiwan, China has developed and is developing the old
geopolitical doctrine of Friedrich Ratzel's vital space - used by the Nazi
regime -, a pattern of coercive and unilateral behavior with claims territorial
rights in the South China Sea not endorsed by international law against other
claims by coastal states such as Brunei, the Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia,
Thailand and Taiwan. Furthermore, Beijing has militarized atolls, reefs and
islands for strategic reasons and in support of its illegal territorial claims.
The strategic aim of China's land reclamation activities
together with the establishment of naval and air bases on artificial islands
scattered by the MCM, especially the Paracelsus and Spratley Islands, provide
Beijing with critical footholds for exercise its maritime power projection
capacity, in its broadest sense, first around the South China Sea and then
extend its expansion towards the Pacific Ocean beyond the First Island Chain or
towards the Indian Ocean through the Strait from Malacca..
For Washington, the alliance with Taiwan has an important
strategic asset, taking into account the aforementioned claims by Beijing in
the MCM and the advantages that control of this area would have in terms of
access to hydrocarbon reserves and trade lines. Chinese control of some of the
Spratley and Paracelsus islands could certify Beijing's dominance over the MCM,
changing the regional order through the privileges and benefits offered by the
respective Exclusive Economic Zones (EEZs).
On the other hand, the American response to the rise of
China constitutes one of its main military objectives in the near future. The
speed with which China has built and then militarized a set of artificial
islands in the South China Sea in violation of international law is a
unilateral decision that increases the risk of conflict in the MCM while
threatening regional and international stability.
The aggressive Chinese military exercises carried out in
front of Taiwan, which betray China's traditional foreign policy of peaceful
expansion, are highly significant. This radical change that does not respect
what is often called with pride and satisfaction, by the Chinese authorities,
as Beijing's modus operandi, indicates the transformation of the use of Chinese
soft power, especially through economic measures, by hard power, through
performances in the military field, using the terminology of Joseph Nye.
The impact of China's aspirations in East Asia regarding
international security is manifested, apart from the conflict with Taiwan and
the disputes in the MCM, not only in the Sino-American confrontation in
geostrategy in the Western Pacific or in the commercial field but also in the
position with Japan, China's main regional geopolitical rival, and in its
actions with respect to the North Korean nuclear conflict.
The way in which China addresses and resolves these
potential conflict situations will be a sample and an indication of what type
of leadership the country of the Great Wall will adopt as a hegemonic power in
East Asia or as a great power, in its case, in the international board. The
coercive live-fire military exercises that it has just carried out, violating
the existing median line of separation in the Taiwan Strait, using hard power
creates many misgivings and concerns in the Western Pacific countries.
In the current and foreseeable geopolitics of power, the
United States and China will be the main protagonists, accompanied by the
European Union and Russia, respectively. As the geopolitical center of gravity
of the first half of the 21st century is located in Asia-Pacific, dominance
over Taiwan may constitute the first key strategic asset that will modulate the
geostrategic chessboard of East Asia that will powerfully influence the new
international order that will emerge.
The three Taiwan
Strait crises
Since 1949, the relationship between Taiwan and China has
been changing from the initial clear distancing to an increase in treatment
between the two nations. However, the complex political and legal situation
seems far from being resolved and the unification of both territories in a
single China continues to be an old, but current, aspiration of the CCP. The
double circumstance of being considered part of China and at the same time
being a prosperous country, a liberal democracy and with the support of most
Western countries, have made Taiwan the perfect point of friction between the
People's Republic of China and the US. In fact, there have been three moments
in which the tension between the two countries grew to the point of fearing an
armed conflict. They are the well-known three Taiwan Strait crises.
First Taiwan Strait
Crisis.
The first crisis occurred shortly after the end of the
Chinese civil war, in 1954. After the end of the Chinese civil war, the flight
of the Kuomintang and its refuge in Taiwan did not make the mainland
authorities forget their desire to conquer the entire territory. and totally
win. This fact, that of an inconclusive war, is the origin of the tension that
has been prolonged over time.
The trigger for the first crisis was the talks that gave
rise to the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO[3], in its acronym in
English) and in which Taiwan participated. The Beijing authorities would not
passively accept the mere possibility of the ROC being recognized in an
international forum as an autonomous country of the PRC.
In the international framework described, the Chinese
attacks took place on the two islands belonging to Taiwan and located about two
miles from China, Matsu and Quemoy. Through these actions, China intended to
pressure Taiwan to abandon its attempt to establish itself as a de facto
independent country while showing its rejection of this situation to the rest
of the SEATO countries. In addition, for China, these islands were Taiwan's
first line of defense and were considered its vanguard for a possible
reconquest of mainland China; their bombardment was a warning of Taiwan's
possible intentions.
On the other hand, the US had deployed the Seventh Fleet in
the Taiwan Strait, whose main theoretical objective was to prevent attacks
between China and Taiwan, but whose presence was interpreted by China as an
offensive maneuver. When President Eisenhower withdrew the American ships upon
coming to power in 1953, China saw a window of opportunity open to attack
Taiwan without fear of a swift American retaliation. As already indicated, the
talks for the creation of SEATO were the excuse for the Chinese attack. The
Chinese bombardments on the islands had as a major consequence the death of two
American soldiers. The US responded immediately with the deployment of three
combat groups in the area. The international tension in the conflict grew,
including the threat: the US had, China did not, although this information was
unknown, and the USSR had and to what extent it would be willing to support its
ideological ally.
The crisis was followed with great international concern,
but the main actors expressed in their speeches, and through some of their
acts, wills that were different from the real ones, as has been known later. In
fact, neither China nor the US wanted to reach an armed conflict, much less the
USSR. China's claims were to show its possibilities and ratify its position and
determination on the idea of a single China and, although in a risky way, it
laid the foundations of its relations with the US for a long period of time and
the role of China in the sphere international. Finally, as quickly as it had
appeared, the crisis ended with Mao Zedong's statements alluding to China's
unwillingness to go to war.
Second Taiwan Strait
Crisis.
The second crisis in the Taiwan Strait would come soon
after, in 1958. In August of that year, China began an offensive against the
Taiwanese islands closest to the mainland. After a start of daily and
continuous bombardments, they switched to intermittent artillery attacks,
alternating the days of attacks, warning the population of the islands and
avoiding important targets so that the crisis did not escalate. Clearly, the
bombing was used as a political rather than a military tool.
The Chinese maneuver had three objectives. First, the
Chinese government verified the American commitment to the defense of Taiwan.
Second, it served in some way to draw the attention of the US to the need to
hold talks with China and serve as a counterbalance to American power, which
had just intervened in Lebanon, demonstrating its world leadership. And, third
and last, it reaffirmed the power and importance of the new China in the world.
In addition to these three objectives, China achieved a fourth, which was to
clarify the position of the USSR. Despite being ideological allies, their
alliance began to weaken.
Although the crisis continued for longer, China achieved its
goals relatively quickly when it resumed diplomatic talks with the US. However,
the tension between the three countries continued for a time to the point of a
nuclear threat, as had happened in the first crisis. Despite the fact that it
was internationally accepted that China had the support of the Soviet arsenal,
as it became known later, the USSR recognized that China had no intention of
using such weapons in this conflict.
The final result was more than a thousand deaths, the
resumption of talks between the US and China, which would last a short period
of time, and the mistrust between these two countries in the medium term, in
addition to a greater separation between China and its ideological ally the
USSR.
Third Taiwan Strait
Crisis.
The third crisis occurred in the 1990s, already in a
different framework than the two previous crises. Taiwan was already a
modernized, democratic country with, increasingly, international recognition
and weight. For its part, China had proposed a unification of both countries
under the formula similar to Hong Kong's "one country, two systems."
In addition, in the newborn Taiwanese democracy, voices began to be heard
advocating for its own national identity and separate from the idea of
unification (the recovery of mainland China). This greater international role
of Taiwan began to bother China and affect its relations with other countries,
such as the US, also a protagonist in this crisis.
Lee Teng-Hui, Taiwan's president since 1988, had begun a
series of diplomatic activities to strengthen Taiwan's role globally. The straw
that broke the camel's back for China was Lee's visit to his former US
university, which took place in 1995. Although unofficial, this visit was an
act of protest by Taiwan and with clear criticism of China. Thus, in response,
China severed diplomatic relations (which had been normalized since bilateral
talks in 1972) with the US and began military missile-firing exercises off
China's southeastern coast.
Although talks had already begun to reduce tension with the
US, the crisis was delayed when China increased pressure on Taiwan as the
elections to the island's Parliament approached, scheduled for December 2,
1995. Despite this fact , the talks achieved a gradual reduction in tension and
the recovery of the previous status quo.
The three crises described above represented the three
moments of greatest tension between China and Taiwan and represented a
demonstration of the US role in Taiwan and its commitment to its defense. These
levels of tension have not been experienced since then, despite the fact that
there have been numerous moments of tension between the two countries.
In addition to the three crises described, the relationship
between the two countries has evolved since the establishment of the Kuomintang
in 1950. If the three crises that occurred in the Taiwan Strait are analyzed,
it can be seen that the first two were very close to the end of the war civil
China and more violent than the third, in 1995. Furthermore, in none of the
three, and according to subsequent revelations, has there been a clear will by
China to conquer Taiwan.
Over the years, Taiwan's democracy and economic prosperity
have been established. China, for its part, has become a great power, for which
Taiwan remains an old aspiration. This desire to annex Taiwan has regained
importance with the arrival of Xi Jimping to power. To understand this
conflict, before analyzing the most current facts, it is necessary to know
another series of aspects, such as the internal political situation of Taiwan,
its society and the ties that unite both countries.
To be continued…