Sea Control - Sea Control 348 - Taiwan & European Security with Meia Nouwens

Episode Date: May 26, 2022

Links1. Taiwan, Cross-strait Stability and European Security: Implications and Response Options, by Henry Boyd, Franz-Stefan Gady, Oskar Glaese, Meia Nouwens and Benjamin Schreer, International Institute for Strategic Studies, March 2022. 2. Sounds Strategic Podcast

Hey, folks, it's Jared. I'm joined today by Maya Nowens to discuss Taiwan and European security concerns. If you enjoy Maya here, check out her podcast, Sound Strategic. You can find it at the link in the show notes. This episode was edited and produced by Alexia Bulagi. We are still looking for additional audio editors. We're happy to provide you some very basic training materials and instruction in a low-stress environment. So if you're interested in finding a way to contribute to SimSec and add to your resume and personal skill set, please send us an email with your resume to ccontrol at simsec.org.

Finally, I want to take the opportunity to recommend our partners in the SimSec Podcast Network, The Bilge Bumps. You can find Alex, Jamie, Drack, and a pile of Iron Brew bottles wherever you download your podcasts. On that note, I'll turn it over to Kimber's men. You're listening to Sea Control, hosted by the Center for International Maritime Security. Aloha, Shoemates, and welcome back aboard Sea Control. My guest today is Mia Nowens, and we'll be discussing a report she contributed to for the International Institute for Strategic Studies in Taiwan, Cross-Strait Stability and European Security Implications and Response Options.

She is also the host of the Sound Strategic Podcast, so you will find that down in the show notes there if you want to check that out. Mia, thank you for joining us today. Could you tell the listeners a little bit more about your background, please? Sure, absolutely. And thanks for having me on, Jared. Well, I'm a senior fellow for Chinese defense policy and military modernization at the WWS in London, and as you said, a host of the WWS's podcast. I come to this from a background

in sinology, but also as a policy wonk working previously for the European Union as a diplomat in Taiwan and in Wellington. And I also grew up in East Asia. So I finished high school in Taiwan, went to university in China. So there's a long history of looking at the region. Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't your sister also sort of a East Asia policy expert? And then what kind of conversations do you two get into and what the family gets together? I would imagine those are slightly different than what, you know, my family and I talk about the Chicago Cubs or what the pitching rotation is going to look like this year, but what kind of arguments do you and your sister get into? That's right. My sister, Verlaine Owens, is the head of the Indo-Pacific

program and also a sinologist, but at the Royal United Services Institute in London. And our dad as a veteran and works for the Dutch government. So we have some hefty political debates around our dinner table. All right. Well, thank you again for coming on. As a reminder to the listeners, all opinions are our own and not reflective of any institution with which we might be otherwise associated. So in the context of your report, European is a very broad term that can encompass a lot of different entities. Who or what are we discussing here when we address, quote unquote, European security? Is it the EU? Are we talking about what I think of as kind of the middle powers say the UK, France, Germany, or is it something else? I think it really depends on whether we're

looking at the political, economic, and military dimensions. So when you look at the political and economic dimensions of this, you actually see that across the European Union and indeed also the United Kingdom, which we also include as Europe, of course, smaller powers can play a pretty big role when it comes to balancing the relationship with China and Taiwan. Lithuania as a key example of this, which has recently come into some trouble with the PRC by stating that it seeks to deepen its relationship with Taiwan. That goes against what it's done in the past, but nevertheless, it's a small country. And when we look at military considerations for the military section, we looked at seven countries to kind of narrow down the scope,

but also keep into consideration, of course, that a large part of Europe will be concerned with European security primarily. So the seven countries that we looked at were France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, Spain, and the UK, and those collectively amount for about 80% of combined defense budgets of Europe's NATO members in 2021. They have the bulk of the continent's expeditionary military capabilities, and they also include all European countries who currently have national Indo-Pacific strategies or visions as well. We're discussing this as the Russian invasion of Ukraine is ongoing. As you know, we are recording this April 2nd, so if If anything changes geopolitically in the span of time between as we're recording this

and this gets aired, that's the reason. Why do you believe now is the time for Europe to be more clear eyed regarding its policy towards Taiwan? I mean, this is a paper that we started in the third quarter of 2021. So we've been working at this for a while. And I think the heightened awareness of China and Taiwan relations in Europe, I think, has increased over the last few years. And this has a lot to do with, for example, China's greater trend towards illiberalism and autocracy, a greater assertiveness in the Indo-Pacific, primarily against Taiwan, but also, of course, European partners and allies in the region, rather European partners in the region.

And of course, also things like China's welfare diplomacy, the role of China with regards to COVID, all of these things I think have changed the environment in Europe when it comes to opinions about China and the PRC and its leadership at the moment. So I think the time is right for Europe to start thinking about what its role might be in the regions, one of the regions most likely or more important flashpoints in the future. So in that sense, Ukraine, I think, has offered an interesting starting point to kind of kickstart European thinking about this. I think it's led to a realization, a surprising realization in Europe that European unity and transatlantic unity is possible if there's political will, that the role of sanctions and the European private sector are important and actually can cooperate with government initiatives.

And of course, also that the European general public, I think, supports or has shown support for Ukraine and Ukrainians. And so all of that together, I think means that now is the time to question certain assumptions in Europe about what our relationship with China is, what our relationship with Europe could be, and what the role of Europe would be in a contingency.

And there are questions that are pretty basic, like are we as dependent on the Chinese market for trade as we think we are? The answer there is no. Europe trades far more internally with itself than it does with China. Secondly, is China's economic coercion as impactful as Beijing would like to be? There again, the answer is no, actually. Research has

shown the opposite. And lastly, are European militaries really unable to support the United States in the Taiwan scenario in any way? Again, our research has shown that no, there are small ways in which European militaries could play a supporting role to the United States if political will is there. We'll get into some of those questions in a minute, but I do want to talk about the way the Europeans view Taiwan. So how the European attitude shifted towards Taiwan since 2000? What's driven that change? So I think the greatest driver here has to be President Xi Jinping's turn towards authoritarianism in China. Again, as I said before, COVID played an important role here in shifting attitudes in Europe with regards to China. The increased threats of

economic coercion, wolf warrior diplomacy, all of these, I think, have meant that Europeans have a less reticent attitude towards criticizing the government of the PRC. Similarly, the European Union in its 2019 kind of strategic outlook with regards to China stated that it now considers China, among other things, to be a systemic rival. So there's a greater sense of competition here as well. And thinking about Taiwan as a values, like-minded partner when it comes to norms and support for the rules-based international system, all of this, I think, opens the door for greater cooperation with Taiwan. I think this isn't just about values, though. I think it's also about supply chains and the realizations that have come about after COVID in particular. And if you think

about Taiwan and the vital role that it plays in the global ICT market, in particular, when it comes to advanced semiconductor chips. And there, of course, Europeans now see a greater interest, perhaps cynically so, in cooperating with Taiwan and ensuring Taiwan's security as well. Well, that's an excellent segue to the next question. What has Taiwan done to cultivate European support? And then how much trade is there between the various European countries and Taiwan? So I think Taiwan has played an active role in this by pushing the view and the narrative that Taiwan is a like-minded partner, that Taiwan can play a role to help the liberal democracies of the world uphold the rules-based international order. And that, of course, it seeks to not

change the status quo across the Taiwan Strait, but that, you know, it's simply responding in self-defense to the changes that the PRC has made in cross-strait relations in the last, well, since 2016, since Taiwan's election as president of Taiwan. In terms of trade, EU-Taiwan trade is, of course, much smaller than EU-China trade, and I think that's important to realize, but it is a steady relationship. It is a growing trade relationship, and of course, it's a less imbalanced trade relationship that Europe has with Taiwan than, for example, Europe has with the PRC, and part of that has to do with the openness that Taiwan's system has towards trade and services from Europe as well, not just trade in goods. If we think about the

place that the EU in this sense holds in trading relationships with Taiwan. Taiwan was the EU's 14th largest trading partner in 2020. But for Taiwan, the European Union is incredibly important. It was Taiwan's fourth largest trading partner in 2020 after China, the United States, and Japan. So not insignificant at all. I think for the EU and European countries, Taiwan is an important growing market for things like machinery, chemicals, and transport equipment. And of course, as I said before, for the European Union and its member states, Taiwan is an incredibly important source of ICT products. I think that trading relationship will expand. There's greater interest in the innovation in Taiwan that's currently taking place in areas like ICT,

financial services, pharmaceuticals, but also offshore wind. And of course, we've seen that Lithuania has received, just as an example, a 1 billion US dollar credit fund from Taiwan to bolster its economy following a trade embargo from China, which will focus on things like developing semiconductor talent, semiconductor industry, biotech, finance, satellites, and broader scientific research as well. So I think there's greater scope to increase that trade relationship in the future. What contingencies did you consider as you looked at possible European intervention on Taiwan's behalf? What I think is the starting point here is that from European perspective and from our own assessment, a conflict, a military conflict over

Taiwan isn't imminent in the next few years. But what we do think is important is that European policymakers kickstart their thinking on what the role might be in the event of one so that preparation can begin. Were there any assumptions that you had to make as you considered contingencies? So in terms of the role that Europe could play in Taiwan contingencies, it really depended in our report. We differentiated in our report between the role that Europe could play in deterring a conflict and the role that Europe could play during or in the event of a conflict. And so prior to a conflict, the role that Europe could play is really an important one in terms of signaling global political and economic consequences for China. And we know that

from Beijing's perspective, the economic hurt of a Taiwan scenario is one that it does take into consideration quite seriously. So here, the response that Ukraine, or the European response to Ukraine, and how that plays out in the next few months, if not years, will be very important. We need to consider how thorough sanctions are at the moment, how thorough they might become, whether or not secondary sanctions will be imposed, and also, of course, most importantly, how long these sanctions end up lasting. Because there is a consideration as to whether if for Xi Jinping or for whoever is president of China at the time, reunification with Taiwan is considered such a prize that there might be more willingness in Beijing to risk sanctions if it is considered

that these might not be long lasting or that they might eventually weaken so that this is a temporary pain rather than a long-lasting one. And during a conflict, we considered that the role of European militaries, the ones that we outlined in the report at least, would depend on the scenarios in question. So we followed four scenarios that were laid out in the latest US Department of Defense's China Military Power Report, ranging from gray zone activities, an air and maritime time blockade of Taiwan, whether informal or formal, an invasion scenario, and also an air and missile strike scenario against Taiwan. So depending on all of these scenarios, we assumed that Europe was never going to be the overwhelming provider of military support to Taiwan. We always

assumed that Europe would play a supporting role for the United States, whilst also maintaining European security in the Euro-Atlantic. So those are the constraining factors that we considered. We also, of course, consider that Eastern European countries, as I said, might be more concerned about NATO's Eastern Front and Southern Front rather than an Indo-Pacific scenario. Yeah, the Eastern Front piece was one reason I was a little surprised to see Poland's inclusion in your list of considerations. Were they included sort of as a representative European nation or because you think that they have a role to play in a Taiwan contingency? So Poland was included, again, because it was one of the largest military, well, because it is one of the largest militaries in Europe, and also because of its expeditionary capabilities as well, that it can contribute to any of these scenarios. Maybe I could just add that, of course, what we do consider in all of these scenarios is the question of political will and whether or not these countries will become involved in a Taiwan scenario really depends on the political will in Europe at the moment, and of course of governments in question within the European Union or the European continent and of course, whatever else is happening at that time in our own theater. Yeah, that's an important consideration. I would say that just as an outsider's view, that Poland does not appear to lack for political will where authoritarian regimes are concerned, as we're observing in Ukraine right now.

What European military capabilities could you see being deployed as part of a Taiwan contingency? So for each of the scenarios, we considered what the European ask would be from the United States, and we took into consideration certain requirements. So, for example, availability requirements, deployment requirements, and interoperability requirements from European militaries. So in the gray zone scenarios, which focuses on competition below the threshold of warfare, we considered that European militaries could work with the Taiwanese to, for example, set standards and norms of behavior to stigmatize China's gray zone coercion. We also saw that in addition to perhaps expanding bilateral exchanges with, for example, European and Taiwanese coast guards, Europe could play a particular role in the cyber domain by helping Taiwan fend off Chinese attacks in cyberspace or helping Taiwan defend its networks and defense operations. But this, of course, requires deeper peacetime cooperation moving forward. In the air and maritime blockade scenario of Taiwan, in terms of an informal blockade, we thought that European powers would seek to avoid military escalation.

And so participation would perhaps be more likely in providing international airlift to break the blockade by using civilian cargo planes, for example. And in the event of a full-scale blockade that's enforced by the PLA, that would be a much bigger challenge, because any ultimate participation by European militaries would lead to an escalation or a perceived escalation by Beijing. However, we also consider that this type of scenario would be a precursor to, or would likely be a precursor to, a full-scale invasion by the PLA of Taiwan. And so we considered that scenario and European capabilities in the invasion scenario that we discussed later on in the paper. In terms of an air and missile strike against Taiwan, we considered that European planners would mainly seek to avoid Taiwanese capitulation while deterring China from a full-scale invasion. We considered that European powers could potentially offer military assistance by airlifting air and missile defense systems and ground-based electronic warfare systems into Taiwan in the run-up to a conflict. But of course, warning time here is a question of that. We also consider that there would be competing demands for these assets, which aren't available in large numbers in a potential Russia contingency, which, as you might imagine, we've now written the paper prior to the Ukraine invasion.

So we'll have to take that into consideration in our work moving forward. But of course, there's limitations on strategic airlift capabilities in Europe as well that would make transporting any European assets to the Indo-Pacific region quite difficult. So perhaps here, Europe could play an important role by strengthening U.S. forces in the Western Pacific, or perhaps it could support the United States in the electromagnetic spectrum by, for example, supporting the tracking of PLA missile launchers or expanding assets of air, maritime, and ground-based electronic warfare capabilities to the Indo-Pacific if needed. And lastly, we could also consider whether Europeans might be able to contribute signals intelligence, surveillance, and electronic warfare assets more broadly to the region. In the event of the most tasking scenario, an invasion scenario, we would consider the European ask to be quite similar to the previous scenario of an air and missile strike against Taiwan. But we might consider that since the question of the timeliness of a European response and moving assets to the Indo-Pacific would be difficult, we considered instead whether Europe might be able to provide the United States support by replacing US naval assets currently assigned to, for example, the Fifth Fleet in the Middle East in the event of a conflict, so that the United States can instead more rapidly reinforce its own naval forces in the Western Pacific. And doing this, instead of contributing assets to the Indo-Pacific by European militaries, would also, of course, reduce that logistical burden that European militaries also face. So a range of options. As the European assessments of Russia's conventional power shift based on the events in Ukraine, is that, in your opinion, does that free up additional assets for Taiwan contingency?

Because I imagine as you're all watching Ukraine unfold and wrapping up the final preparations to publish this paper, there's probably a small amount of consternation as you figure it's like, okay, we're going to have to change some of our things on the fly here, or we're going to publish this and immediately go into, you know, reassessment as Ukraine unfolds. Well, the paper's already been published. So unfortunately, there's no going back, but we will be, as I'll say later, moving on to a much wider project on this in terms of scenario work this year. So we'll take it into consideration then. But I think it raises an interesting question of, one, our assessments of the PLA, which, of course, we haven't seen operationally in wartime either yet in terms of modern great power warfighting. So in that sense, our assessments about the PLA correct, and what does that mean moving forward? But I think the most important thing that the Russian invasion of Ukraine has offered here for European thinkers and strategic planners is the importance, the realization that Europe needs to invest more in defense and needs to invest more in its own strategic autonomy. I think this has been a wake up call for governments and also the general public in Europe that realpolitik isn't dead and that, you know, hard power is important and is a tool that countries will still use in the 21st century. And as such, investment in defense, I think, might become more politically acceptable to European voters than it has been in the past, especially in countries, for example, like Germany. I think that changes in defense spending, however, are just the beginning. And I refer here to Germany's announcement that it would increase its defense spending moving forward. There are questions such as how to invest, where to invest in defense. These are more important considerations, I think, than just simply throwing out a number and saying we'll increase our defense spending over time. And I also don't think we should fool ourselves into thinking that we'll see these results tomorrow. So this will take years to materialize. And we'll have to see what at the end of the line, European militaries look like and how that might impact how we would respond to an Indo-Pacific theater contingency.

But if anything, it is an acknowledgement that in the future, perhaps the United States could rely on Europe to defend European security more strongly in the event that it is required to act in the Indo-Pacific, and that it could prioritize its assets perhaps a little bit more freely than it can today. So I think our paper provides an interesting starting point for this discussion, and what Europe decides to do in the next few years will be a really important indication of what's possible in the future. Well, fortunately, that's all that we have time for today. I'd like to thank my guest, Mia Nowens. Mia, where can we find you online and what are you working on next? You can find me on Twitter, LinkedIn, and of course, the IISS website, IISS.org. And I'm listed under my full name, Mia Nowens, in each of those. And this year, my team who's contributed to the paper and I will continue our work on Taiwan, primarily thinking our way through how greater integration of emerging and disruptive technologies, as well as extra

regional participation might impact how a Taiwan conflict or various scenarios could play out. And of course, also be looking at China's military modernization, particularly in areas like its jointness ambitions, as we likely enter into Xi Jinping's third term in office this year. Thank you again for joining us. To listeners, thank you for tuning in. We'll see you next time. © BF-WATCH TV 2021 We'll be right back.