Not Without Incident: Questioning Big Brother's Platitudes

What is certain is that we are at the cusp of a new age. In the coming new order Pax Americana will be at an end, and in the worst-case scenario, the entire human race will be a heap of ashes, a sadistic species punctuated by an immense mushroom cloud.

“After two centuries on imperialism’s receiving end, the Chinese empire strikes back. Trouble is, Xi’s vision of future global dominion is centrally controlled, collectively oppressive, individually crushing totalitarianism. He promises only misery for the masses.”[i]– Simon Tisdall

“It is important for the overall peace of the world for the United States and China to mitigate their adversarial relationship,”[ii]– Henry Kissinger

“Father and the son and the holy ghost
Communist comatose, show me all the wagers are a bet
The middle of a nuclear winter is a modern achievement of the retro apocalyptic horde”[iii]– Slipknot

There is a prevailing notion among the foreign policy experts that whatever happens in Ukraine will influence or determine what happens with China and Taiwan, and again, as I pointed out in my first post on this topic, the discourse begins from the position that China is planning to invade or coerce Taiwan to absorb it into the mainland. These experts would have us believe that Xi Jinping is watching Putin’s invasion of Ukraine closely, and that he is witnessing the test of Western resolve. If the West shows enough backbone, then he will consider putting off his invasion of Taiwan, in the words of Kurt Vonnegut, so it goes.[iv] The discourse about Taiwan begins from the wrong foundational questions, and that is that Taiwan is a sovereign entity that must not be invaded by China, however the official position of the White House and other Western governments is that there is one China. This is balanced with loose security relationships with Taiwan, and for the US this is in the form of the Taiwan Relations Act. If there is one China, then how can it be an invasion of Taiwan, and how can the planes that China is currently sending through Taiwanese airspace be considered invasive or intrusive in any way? This inevitably makes those who are plugged into the dominant discourse around Taiwan and China bristle, but consider the stakes, as the experts beg us to, without explaining them very well or noting the actual stakes. The stakes are not, as many claim, making a world safe for autocracy or democracy. This is a riff off the White House’s strategy of pitting democracies against autocracies, which is inane for several reasons, but to name a couple of noteworthy reasons, the US and other Western countries maintain close relationships with autocracies and have done so for decades. Even autocrats who were eventually overthrown at the behest of the transnational security elite were allies at some point in time. During the Cold War, dictators like Suharto and Pinochet were installed by the US in the fight against communism and consider the support the US gave to Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein during the Cold War, when they were fighting the reds, only to depose them years later. If you’re a dictator, you’re useful until you’re not, and then you are to be neutralized or deactivated, to use CIA jargon, so the claim that the resistance against China in support of Taiwan is carried out in the name of democracy against autocracy is ridiculous. How can the US be standing against making the world safe for autocracy when Biden goes from promising that he will make Saudi Arabia a pariah for the killing of Jamal Khashoggi to giving MBS a fist bump and giving him more arms to destroy Yemen? Saudi Arabia is but one example.

Just like there are good billionaires and bad billionaires, there are useful dictators and there are alienated dictators. If you threaten US hegemony, you are to be alienated. The decades long sanctions regime of the US is a prime example of its own use of coercion and isolation to maintain the status quo, American empire. Consider the state of North Korea, Iran, Myanmar, Cuba, and Venezuela, ruled by dictators, yes, but crushed by sanctions that ultimately hurt the people of these nations, not the ruling elite. Margaret Thatcher understood this reality and it is why she resisted for a long time the placement of sanctions on apartheid South Africa, as she argued it would hurt poor black South Africans, not the ruling elite.[v] For this many believe she supported apartheid South Africa and admired its regime.[vi] South Africa aside, the leaders of North Korea, Iran, Myanmar, Cuba, and Venezuela are who they are, and we must deal with them. Obama understood this when he was first running for president in 2008. He said that he would meet with any world leader unconditionally, and that was an important part of being a statesman.[vii] Obama was chastised by his opposition as such open dialogues would legitimize dictators. We saw this during the Trump presidency, as his summits with Putin and Kim Jong Un legitimized them as dictators, apparently.

Xi is the president of China, whether we like it or not, and the CCP is the ruling party in China. We must deal with them directly and openly. Where Xi has made it clear, the position of China on Taiwan is that it is a red line for China and is a core issue, the Biden White House continues to be vague on Taiwan, saying that they condemn Chinese coercion. The West and the US must respond directly to Chinese interests instead of continuing to pursue an inane and dangerous strategy of strategic ambiguity. In a recent article for Foreign Affairs, Jude Blanchette and Ryan Haas argue that the status quo, strategic ambiguity, is the best strategy for the US to pursue, and they note that “The sole metric on which U.S. policy should be judged is whether it helps preserve peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait—not whether it solves the question of Taiwan once and for all or keeps Taiwan permanently in the United States’ camp.”[viii] This is faulty, as in the eyes of China, Taiwan is a part of China, and forcing the choice between the US and China is the goal of the US more than China. The US offers a confusing position as it does not outright state that Taiwan is a part of China, which is precisely the point of strategic ambiguity, as Blanchette and Haas point out. They also note that “Critics may contend that this approach sidesteps the hard questions at the root of the confrontation, but that is precisely the point: sometimes, the best policy is to avoid bringing intractable challenges to a head and kick the can down the road instead.”[ix] This is unsustainable and talking around issues instead of directly addressing the concerns of China is dangerous, as if the US is intent on being ambiguous in its rhetoric while sending fleets of warships and flying planes near Taiwan, clearly marking its position that China is to leave Taiwan alone, then the argument put forth by Blanchette and Haas is nullified by reality. It seems they are crossing their fingers that they are not forced to officially posit the US position on Taiwan, and they call for de-escalation with China to put off this action, not to keep peace for the sake of humanity.

Primacy or Mushroom Cloud

“Gentlemen, you can’t fight in here! This is the War Room!”[x]– President Merkin Muffley

There are many experts who argue that if China were to invade Taiwan, it must be sanctioned and isolated by the international community. How has this worked out with Russia? Look how long it took to get India to condemn Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Some countries have not placed sanctions on Russia and still conduct business with it. The US eased sanctions on Venezuela in exchange for oil, and while sanctions relief is welcome and long overdue, the need for oil is the wrong reason. Sanctions on China would hurt US and the West a lot more than they would hurt China. As well as vying for influence in the Pacific, Africa, and South America and winning, China’s aid is not contingent on nations vowing to liberalize and become democracies. There is no pretending as there is with US led aid delivery. Isolating Russia is a dangerous mistake, and isolating China would be even more dangerous.

The way that foreign policy experts frame what they see as the necessary response to China invading Taiwan is as frightening as the cavalier attitude with which people like Michael McFaul, Oriana Skylar Mastro, and David Sacks discuss war with China over Taiwan. An example is an article by Michael O’Hanlon in the Brookings Institute, a think tank lavishly funded by the arms industry and that serves as a revolving door for government officials, just as many think tanks in Washington do, in which he writes after laying out potential military strategies that “The most promising strategy would center on all-out economic warfare against China.”[xi] Remember that during the Trump presidency, his choice to impose trade tariffs on China starting in 2018 was roundly and harshly critiqued by people at the Brookings Institute and other think tanks like the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), but O’Hanlon was one who agreed with many of the tariffs imposed. The tariffs on China also led to massive chaos within the administration. Gary Cohn, Trump’s former chief economic adviser, resigned and from then on trade policy was handled mostly by more nationalist figures like Robert Lighthizer and Peter Navarro.[xii] Trade is an area of foreign policy that changed significantly under the Trump presidency. His turn to protectionism is being continued and consolidated under Biden, notably in the passing of the CHIPS act.[xiii]

To see people like O’Hanlon, argue for economic warfare is disturbing. O’Hanlon is one expert who saw Trump’s trade war with China as a bright spot in his foreign policy, and he wrote a book The Senkaku Paradox: Risking Great Power War Over Small Stakes, in which he argues the US needs a strategy of integrated deterrence, where a combination of military capabilities and economic warfare is wielded to contain Russia and China.[xiv] The Washington elite may have disdain for Trump, but they adore the chance he gave them to muscle up to China. This is proven in the sluggish review of the tariffs imposed by the Trump administration, which Biden said he would review and rescind immediately during the 2020 campaign. How would the West fare if the Chinese market was isolated? How would the NBA? How about Hollywood? Would the world join us, and would it truly be a stand of solidarity with the world’s democracies? The answer is no. Instead of frantically pondering what we will do when China invades Taiwan, we should first ponder if that is an appropriate framing, as framing it this way, an invasion, implies that we have dropped strategic ambiguity.

Our transnational security elite would prefer nuclear winter over a world that is not dominated by America. Therefore, the Taiwan question is framed the way it is, and the purpose behind framing a crisis and a flashpoint around Taiwan is that if China decides to invade Taiwan, then the West must respond with economic warfare and arming it to the teeth or should potentially even commit troops. In contrast, China sees issues with Taiwan as internal affairs. How long can we pretend that we do not recognize Taiwan as a country? Is it reasonable for us to treat China as being provocative when we discuss the issue of Taiwan, which they view as an internal affair between their respective governments? These are a couple of important questions that debate on Taiwan should begin with. I will start answering them and these thoughts are nowhere near conclusive. My intent here and with all my commentary on this subject is to spark discussion, not to raise eyebrows or induce migraines.

On our grand act, that we do not recognize Taiwan as a country, which is necessary to maintain basic relations with China, while we also funnel arms to Taiwan and discuss everyday in Western media and academia how China could invade Taiwan any minute, and what our response should be, this makes this issue extremely frustrating. I’ve had discussion in my classes on this very topic, and the default position is that Taiwan is a democratic entity that faces coercion from China. This position is our starting point and discussion advances from there into how China should be deterred from a full-scale invasion, and how they may infiltrate the Taiwanese government or law, like they did in Hong Kong. The implication is that Taiwan is currently an autonomous entity, and this will change if China invades, and it will then be an entity occupied by China. Occupation is only so if it is carried out by a nation that is not Western. If the US put troops on the ground in response to a move into Taiwan by China, then how is that not occupation? Commentators who would sputter that these are different scenarios, as the US is acting defensively should keep in mind that China would say the same, that they are being actively defensive. This is an echo of past empires, like the Roman and Ottoman empires, who conquered lands out of self-defence and fear of invasion, as well as a need to satisfy the drain on resources their bloated militaries had become.

For many, like Max Boot and William Kristol, the US is a benevolent empire, thus US occupation is an act of goodwill, not imperialism. When the US was in Afghanistan for 20 years, that was to assist the Afghan people and to protect American national security from growing threats of terrorism. The US did such a good job consolidating the Afghan military and its democracy that within days of the US leaving, the Taliban marched in like they were going for a stroll and found tonnes of shiny weapons and vehicles left behind by the US. An example of this view that China seeks to ‘occupy’ Taiwan, and that this issue is seen as a flashpoint for competition in East Asia and the Western Pacific, is in an article by Lami Kim for The National Interest, in which she writes that “Occupying Taiwan would significantly increase China’s power projection capability in the Western Pacific.”[xv] See what she did there? It’s subtle, but this carefully crafted framing pits the benevolent and heroic West against the dastardly China. It’s as if the Qing Dynasty never fell and China is still an empire or is seeking to regain its status as an empire. To Kim, just as it is to many others, the Taiwan issue is about “U.S. primacy in the Western Pacific.”[xvi], and apparently China seeks to supplant this primacy and will do so if “it is allowed to invade Taiwan” as many who froth at the mouth for war with China say fervently. This is a faulty assumption. Hugh White makes the same assumption, and it is a huge issue in his 2022 Quarterly Essay I discussed in my last Taiwan post.[xvii] India is a more likely successor, even Indonesia is a more likely successor, if there will even be a successor.

Conclusion

“Put your hands into the water
Let your mouth go sick and dry
Put your life into your death now
Let them sing until you die”[xviii]– Slipknot

Those who have written on the history of empires, like Paul Kennedy, find patterns and they make assumptions about the future of the international system. After quoting a passage from The Economist on how if China’s economy continues to explode, then the military sector will follow and grow as well, Kennedy writes that “It is only a matter of time.”, and that is the end of his chapter on China.[xix] The implication is that China will eventually challenge US primacy and if this happens, it will be a return to when China was an empire many years ago and was the dominant power in East Asia, followed by Japanese empire under Emperor Hirohito and then the US after WWII. Just as Russia is seen as a past empire seeking to regain its imperial status, China is seen in the same way, and its goal of reunifying with Taiwan, or invading it in the eyes of mostly all Western punditry, is seen as the act of a humiliated power. Xi is seen as an ambitious imperialist while we in the West are pushing freedom and spreading the good word of democracy. This is captured in an article for The Guardian by Simon Tisdall, who writes that “Imperialism, in all its awful forms, still poses a threat. But it is no longer the imperialism of the west, rightly execrated and self-condemned. Today’s threat emanates from the east. Just as objectionable, and potentially more dangerous, it’s the prospect of a totalitarian 21st-century Chinese global empire.”[xx] This is both misleading and deranged. There is little indication, beyond Western chest thumping, that China, even under Xi, seeks to take more than Taiwan. As I’ve pointed out and have tried to underline, it’s only an annexation from a Western perspective, or at least, the unofficial position of the US and the West is recognition of Taiwanese autonomy, and its official position is that there is One China. Also, China is not presently a totalitarian state, as it is open to the rest of the world, thus it cannot be totalitarian in the traditional sense. Hannah Arendt argues in her salient book Origins of Totalitarianism, even Benito Mussolini’s Italy was not totalitarian, as it contained within it a hierarchical societal structure.[xxi] Under the traditional definition of totalitarianism, the societal structure is absent, and in its place, there is a mass of atomized individuals and a leader who formulates the thought and ambitions of the new society, or more fittingly, the movement. This matters because Tisdall inserts the word totalitarian to scare us into thinking that not only does China seek to dominate the world, but they will impose a 1984 style surveillance state onto all of us, however, totalitarianism has a definition, it means something, or it should, and Tisdall is casual and potentially misinformed on the concept. China, not just under Xi but the CCP system is more a version of inverted totalitarianism that yes, has leaders who utter the words democracy and freedom in their speeches, but typically distance themselves from the vision and rhetoric of supposed liberal democracies like the US and Canada.

Can China become a global empire like the US did after the second world war? That’s unlikely, and aside from being a different version of the same inverted totalitarianism that defines the West, China does not engage in costly military adventures overseas, in fact, they have a military base in Djibouti and people in Washington and Canberra are freaking out and chewing their nails over the possibility that China may build a military base in the Solomon Islands. To this point Tisdall notes that “Beijing does not fight distant foreign wars to sustain its dominance, as the US did in Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan and Britain did all over the world. Not yet, anyway.”[xxii] The final part of his sentence is key, not yet, as the assumption is that like us, China will eventually become hungry for more territory. Not satisfied with Tibet, Mongolia, Hong Kong, and Taiwan, they will seek to dominate the world, and Graham Allison mentions this in his book The Thucydides Trap, where he discusses whether we want China to be like us and are they?[xxiii] If Tisdall could provide his theory of where China would strike next, it would help his case.

As far as the West is concerned, China and Russia are seeking to regain imperial status, while the US and the West are resisting this through a show of solidarity among democracies, commentators who assert this line have a blatant blind spot. Now that America is a declining empire, what will it do in its waning days? Its twilight is already here. Rich Lowry of The National Review wrote an article titled “Beware Aggrieved Empires” in which he makes the case that China and Russia are past empires lashing out in anger from a diminished position, and he writes that “Xi views Taiwan much the same way as Putin views Ukraine: It rightfully belongs to China, and retaking it will help salve the geopolitical and psychological wounds of imperial China’s spectacular descent into disaster and powerlessness.”[xxiv] Is that why China wants to reunify with Taiwan? Is it the goal of a humiliated past imperial power? If so, how is America’s provocative and risky strategy towards Taiwan as part of a staunch resistance against China not the act of a humiliated empire? Consider the myriad military debacles the US has engaged in since the end of the second world war, from Vietnam and Korea to Iraq and Afghanistan. These wars, examples of what Alfred W. McCoy and other historians of empire refer to as micro-militarism, are each more catastrophic than the last. Taiwan could be the straw that breaks the camel’s back, and it could be America’s Suez. The crucial difference, however, is that in that event, Britain and France had no nuclear arsenal, nor did Egypt or the powers in the Middle East, and in a crisis over Taiwan, we have an armed to the teeth power in Taiwan facing a nuclear armed and massive military forced in China against a nuclear armed and waning power in the US. This could be a recipe for nuclear disaster.

McCoy argues in the end of his book on the decline of US empire that he sees five potential scenarios in how it will ultimately end, and one of his scenarios never came to fruition.[xxv] The 2020 scenario he outlines is a crisis in Kandahar where Taliban and Islamic fundamentalist fighters overwhelm a US garrison and start executing Americans.[xxvi] This spirals into belligerent reactions by the Trump White House, and in the face of a looming election, he decides to send in marines and this operation goes horribly wrong, and “As black clouds billow skyward from the Gulf’s oil ports and diplomats rise at the UN to bitterly denounce American actions, commentators worldwide reach back to the 1956 debacle that marked the end of the British Empire to brand this “America’s Suez.”[xxvii] This, he noted, was one of many possible scenarios for a military stretched across the entire globe. Potential hotspots are plentiful, from Ethiopia to North Korea. One more likely scenario is the Taiwan Strait, and when will this occur exactly? I will not pretend to know, I’m not a seer. Some say we have a matter of years. Some say a decade. What is certain is that we are at the cusp of a new age. In the coming new order Pax Americana will be at an end, and in the worst-case scenario, the entire human race will be a heap of ashes, a sadistic species punctuated by an immense mushroom cloud.

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[i] Tisdall, Simon. “In China’s New Age of Imperialism, Xi Jinping Gives Thumbs down to Democracy.” The Guardian, December 12, 2021. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/dec/12/xi-jinping-china-beijing-new-age-of-imperialism.

[ii] Meredith, Sam. “Henry Kissinger Says Taiwan Cannot Be at the Core of Negotiations between the U.S. And China.” CNBC, May 23, 2022. https://www.cnbc.com/2022/05/23/kissinger-says-taiwan-cannot-be-at-the-core-of-us-china-neogitations.html.

[iii] Slipknot. The Dying Song (Time to Sing). Roadrunner, 2022.

[iv] Vonnegut, Kurt. Slaughterhouse Five. London: Vintage Classics, 1969.

[v] Plaut, Martin. “Declassified Papers Reveal Thatcher’s Mixed Response to South Africa’s Bloody 1985.” New Statesman, December 30, 2014. https://www.newstatesman.com/world/2014/12/declassified-papers-reveal-thatchers-mixed-response-south-africas-bloody-1985.

[vi] Plaut, “Declassified Papers Reveal Thatcher’s Mixed Response to South Africa’s Bloody 1985.”

[vii] Youngman, Sam. “2008 Dems Face the New Face of Debates.” The Hill, July 24, 2007. https://thehill.com/homenews/news/10248-2008-dems-face-the-new-face-of-debates/., The Associated Press. “McCain Hammers Obama on Foreign Policy.” Gainesville Sun, May 20, 2008. https://www.gainesville.com/story/news/2008/05/20/mccain-hammers-obama-on-foreign-policy/31566211007/.

[viii] Haas, Ryan, and Jude Blanchette. “The Taiwan Long Game.” Foreign Affairs, December 20, 2022. https://www.foreignaffairs.com/china/taiwan-long-game-best-solution-jude-blanchette-ryan-hass.

[ix] Haas and Blanchette, “The Taiwan Long Game.”

[x] Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb. United States: Columbia Pictures, 1964.

[xi] O’Hanlon, Michael E. “But CAN the United States Defend Taiwan?” Brookings, June 1, 2022. https://www.brookings.edu/blog/order-from-chaos/2022/06/01/but-can-the-united-states-defend-taiwan/.

[xii] Mangan, Dan, and Jacob Pramuk. “Gary Cohn Resigns as Trump’s Top Economic Advisor.” CNBC, April 6, 2018. https://www.cnbc.com/2018/03/06/gary-cohn-plans-to-resign-as-trumps-top-economic-advisor-new-york-times.html.

[xiii] Dodwell, David. “With Its Chip and Battery Wars, the US Is No Defender of Free Trade.” South China Morning Post, November 27, 2022. https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3201148/its-chip-and-battery-wars-us-no-defender-free-trade.

[xiv] O’Hanlon, The Senkaku Paradox: Risking Great Power War over Small Stakes. Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution Press, 2019.

[xv] Kim, Lami. “Should the United States Defend or Ditch Taiwan?” The National Interest, June 3, 2022.

[xvi] Kim, “Should the United States Defend or Ditch Taiwan?”

[xvii] White, Hugh. Sleepwalk to War: Quarterly Essay 86. Collingwood, Victoria: Black Inc., An Imprint of Schwartz Books Pty Ltd, 2022.

[xviii] Slipknot. The Dying Song (Time to Sing).

[xix] Kennedy, Paul. The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers. Vintage, 2010.

[xx] Tisdall, “In China’s New Age of Imperialism, Xi Jinping Gives Thumbs down to Democracy.”

[xxi] Arendt, Hannah. The Origins of Totalitarianism. San Diego, New York, London: Harcourt Brace, 1985.

[xxii] Tisdall, “In China’s New Age of Imperialism, Xi Jinping Gives Thumbs down to Democracy.”

[xxiii] Allison, Graham. Destined for War: Can America and China Escape Thucydides’s Trap? S.L.: Scribe Publications, 2017.

[xxiv] Lowry, Rich. “Beware Aggrieved Empires.” National Review, December 27, 2022. https://www.nationalreview.com/2022/12/beware-aggrieved-empires/?bypass_key=UXg2QTNpVnhETXdqSWRuY0xQNk1mZz09OjpMekpoYVd0TlJUUm5NRGxNVWpaQllXNVlaMEV2WnowOQ%3D%3D&utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=NR%20Daily%20Monday%20through%20Friday%202022-12-27&utm_term=NRDaily-Smart.

[xxv] McCoy, Alfred W. In the Shadows of the American Century: The Rise and Decline of US Global Power. Haymarket Books, 2019.

[xxvi] McCoy, In the Shadows of the American Century: The Rise and Decline of US Global Power.

[xxvii] McCoy, In the Shadows of the American Century: The Rise and Decline of US Global Power.

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———. The Senkaku Paradox: Risking Great Power War over Small Stakes. Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution Press, 2019.

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