Taiwan Strait: The new hotspot of shifting American strategic goalposts

The strategic goal is not the defence of Taiwan as much as the encirclement and containment of China as a global economic power. (Image: AFP/File)

In the years since September 11, 2001, the United States has changed its strategic goalposts abroad, rather quickly. First, it was the war against global terrorism (read Osama bin Laden’s Al Qaeda), and Washington only managed to replace the Taliban regime in Kabul. Bin Laden slipped away until the US Navy Seals caught up with him in Abbottabad a decade later.

Since they weren’t interested in the Taliban, the Americans showed that they had another target in mind, Saddam Hussein in Iraq. In 2003, the US invaded Iraq and replaced the Saddam regime. In Afghanistan and in Iraq, the American troops were bogged down, for a decade in Iraq, and for two in Afghanistan. And no one, except India, remembered the global war against (Islamic) terrorism.

From Ukraine To Taiwan 

The listless Americans found a fresh provocation in the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. But this time around, instead of sending troops, Americans have restricted themselves to giving money and guns rather generously to Ukraine. It is now clear that the Americans are losing interest in Ukraine, and they have shifted attention to China and the contentious issue of Taiwan.

Again, Taiwan, the island-nation off the coast of China, which had become the base for the nationalist government of Chiang Kei-Sheik, and received American diplomatic recognition until Richard Nixon reconciled with Mao Zedong in 1972 through ping pong diplomacy, is only a pretext for flaunting American strength.

With an aggressive Beijing, the Americans feel called upon to stand up for Taiwan. But as with Ukraine, the Americans are not fully committed to Taiwan. The American demand from Beijing is that no force should be used to integrate Taiwan with the mainland. It means that the Americans have no problem if Taiwanese join China on their own.

China No Pushover 

The rivalry with China, then, is not centred around Taiwan, but on the growing economic and diplomatic heft of China in world affairs. And in spite of sabre rattling from both sides, the Americans and Chinese are keen to talk to each other, and the Chinese have no desire to engage America in Taiwan or beyond Taiwan.

The Americans have, however, been busy making the Indo-Pacific a centre of American geo-strategic interests, a questionable proposition because it is not clear whether China’s south-east Asian neighbours are keen to stand up to China. They would rather do business with the Big Brother in the region.

The Americans are aware that members of the Association of South-East Nations (ASEAN) are not interested in strategic alliance with the distant US. They have therefore created the new formation of the Quad comprising India, Japan, Australia and the US as a pressure group against China. All the four would want to contain China but apart from America and Australia, India and Japan are not willing to go to war with China in the Indo-Pacific.

The Economy, Stupid

The Americans seem to want to play the game of charades of turning Taiwan Strait into a potential war zone with the ostensible aim of defending Taiwan. But even for Australia and Japan, trade with China is more important than any economic advantage they could derive from Taiwan.

It can be safely predicted that even as Ukraine has been left to fight Russia, at the time of reckoning, Taiwan will be left to fight China, and with military and economic support from the West. And here too, the strategic goal is not the defence of Taiwan as much as the encirclement and containment of China as a global economic power.

Both China and America do not want to go to war with each other because each side recognises that the economic stakes are much higher, and that a clash does not help either. Americans know that China is no push-over economically, and Beijing could prove to be a sticky military rival. Americans cannot fight a war so far from home, and other countries in the Indo-Pacific like Japan, Australia, and India are not keen either to fight China in the South China Sea or in Taiwan Strait.

Tensions, And Little Else

So, after Afghanistan, Iraq and Ukraine, the Americans are looking to another hotspot to keep themselves engaged. Iran and the Straits of Hormuz could be as explosive as the Taiwan Strait, but the Americans are not going to open a war front against Iran.

It only goes to show that the Americans are running out of worthy causes for which they could flex their vaunted military muscle. Europe went to war with Germany when Belgium’s neutrality was violated in 1914 and again in 1940, and this led to the First and Second World Wars. Taiwan does not seem to be the Belgium of the Far East.

The palpable tension in Taiwan Strait, which separates mainland China from the Taiwan island by just 160 kilometres  at its narrowest, will keep the chancelleries and news networks abuzz, but nothing beyond that. There is much caution and restraint behind the outward show of recklessness on all sides – China, America and Taiwan.

Parsa Venkateshwar Rao Jr is a New Delhi-based journalist. Views are personal, and do not represent the stand of this publication.