The Dispatch Podcast - Will Taiwan Fight?

Episode Date: July 10, 2023

Bonnie Glaser, managing director of the Indo-Pacific Program at the German Marshall Fund, joins Executive Director Adam O'Neal to discuss how the U.S. and China manage their differences over Taiwan. Also: -Taiwan’s relationship with Trump and Biden -China’s military transformation -The significance of 2049 Show Notes: -Bonnie Glaser's profile for the German Marshall Fund -U.S.-Taiwan Relations: Will China's Challenge Lead to a Crisis Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to the Dispatch podcast. I'm Adam O'Neill, executive editor of the dispatch. On the show today, we have Bonnie Glazer. Bonnie is managing director of the German Marshall Fund's Indo-Pacific program. She also is a co-author of a new book, U.S. Taiwan Relations. Will China's challenge lead to a crisis out recently from Brookings Press? She's been thinking about the Asia Pacific and U.S. policy for decades, and she brought plenty of insight into today's conversation about Taiwan. Hope you enjoy. Bonnie, welcome to the show. Thanks for coming on. You're the co-author of a new book on U.S.-Taiwan relations. So maybe I'll start with my colleague, Jonah Goldberg's favorite question. What's your book about? Well, the book is about U.S.-Taiwan relations,

and it tries to provide a history of, of the U.S.-Taiwan relationship and then examines how that relationship has evolved, particularly on the question of the China factor and how Taiwan and the United States have managed the tensions that have arisen from China. And that's, in fact, the chapter that I wrote and it examines this eight-year period under the Trump and Biden administrations in the United States. And then in Taiwan, that period has been the time when Taing Wen has been in power. She, of course, is still president and will wrap up her eight-year term in May of next year. And then the final chapter, which Ryan Hass wrote, is about scenarios of possible development

of U.S.-Taiwan relations going forward pertaining to, again, the China factor. and then has some discussion of policy recommendations going forward for how to preserve stability in the Taiwan Strait and strengthen U.S. Taiwan relations going forward. We've seen a lot of aggressive Chinese behavior in and around the Taiwan Strait in recent weeks and months. You know, naval vessels coming very close during freedom of navigation operations or what have you, different examples entering Taiwan's air and air identification zone, that sort of thing. Are we living in a particularly dangerous time in the region, or is this sort of just been the status quo for 60, 70 years now? Well, it hasn't been the status quo for 60 or 70 years because China's military capability 60 or 70 years ago was very, very limited. It was really limited to protecting China's own coastline. And it's only really been

in the last 10 years that China has developed capabilities to use force against Taiwan. But even more importantly, China's developed capabilities that could be used against U.S. military assets or other foreign military assets, Navy ships and aircraft that could be operating in the area around the Taiwan Strait or the South China Sea in a crisis. We call them anti-access area denial capabilities, and they would put at risk our carriers, for example, if they were operating close to China shores. China now has very large numbers of very highly capable missiles that can accurately target, you know, precision-guided missiles. they can, they're very accurate and they can hit targets as far away as, as Guam and, and, and, and potentially moving ships like aircraft carriers. So that's really transformed, uh, the military

balance. I mean, as recently as maybe 15 years ago, Taiwan still had air superiority. It had more advanced fighter aircraft than China had. That is absolutely not true today. So, The military balance has changed fundamentally between China and Taiwan and the capabilities, both quantity and quality of China's military compared with the United States, which, of course, you can't just compare aircraft to aircraft. The problem is that the geography is so different. The United States would have to bring in military forces from very, very far away. It only has so much that's located, for example, at our bases in Japan.

So we would have to flow forces also from Hawaii. So, you know, China has really developed enormous capabilities. And so that is part of the equation now when we think about how to potentially protect Taiwan if a future president chooses to protect Taiwan against a Chinese attack. What's the logic of the PLA Navy conducting these dangerous maneuvers coming very close to an American ship, risking, possibly accidentally ramming into it? Why do this when the U.S. Navy is sailing through the Taiwan Strait? Well, the particular episode that you're referring to, which took place on June 3rd, is unprecedented. We have seen Chinese aircraft operate very close to U.S. aircraft in very unprofessional maneuvers.

And also Canadian-Australian aircraft. There was one incident last year where a PLA aircraft was trying to communicate to an Australian aircraft to leave the area. And after it didn't respond to its communications, release chaff, you know, like little bits of aluminum. that went into one of the engines of the Australian aircraft. That was a particularly dangerous episode. So it's not just against the United States. But in the Taiwan Strait, the June 3rd episode really was unusual because the U.S. Navy ships sail through the Taiwan Straits approximately once every month and usually do so in a way that is, they stay on the, there's a sort of invisible media line in the

straight and the U.S. usually operates on the Taiwan side. So I don't think that there was anything unusual about what the U.S. destroyer was doing. But the Chinese I have talked to actually claim that the U.S. ship was behaving erratically, slowing down, speeding up, changing direction. Whatever it was doing, it was operating on what we call the high seas. This is, you know, international waters. It's not the 12 nautical mile territorial sea space, which we still, according to the law of the sea, have a right to pass through as long as we're conducting what's known as innocent passage. But the U.S. ship wasn't operating there. But in response to your question, I think it is, from my perspective, what's going on is that the Chinese believe that if

they act in aggressive ways and they introduce more risk that the United States will become more cautious. Maybe we will operate more cautious ways, maybe farther away from China's coastline, maybe conduct fewer of these freedom of navigation operations. Ultimately, their goal is to push the U.S. military out of the region. They don't want us to have military bases in countries like Japan or Korea. They don't want us operating in the Taiwan Straits or in the South China Sea. So the Biden administration has tried to revive the dialogue between the two militaries to talk about how to avoid accidents. And the Chinese so far are just not interested. And I think part of the reason is that introducing risks serves their interests. Before you alluded to if a U.S. President were to decide to deploy

American forces in the event of an invasion. And a little background on this is that the Chinese consider Taiwan part of China. It's a breakaway province. I think that is the language that's typically used. The U.S. acknowledges but doesn't necessarily accept this principle, the one China principle. And the Chinese have always reserved the right to unify the island by force. What do you make of Joe Biden's approach to the question of whether the U.S. would defend China, which correct me if I'm wrong, it seems to be fairly consistently Biden will say in an interview, we'll deploy, we will get involved, we will intervene if China tries to change the status quo by force, and then the next day the White House says, we'll walk that back and say, no, the policy actually hasn't changed, which in a way is its own form of ambiguity. way of saying, what do you make of the Biden administration's approach to the Taiwan question? I think we could spend a whole hour on the Biden administration's approach, but I'll try to be concise. I think that President Biden was actually in the Senate at the time of the creation of

the Taiwan Relations Act, which is the legislation the Congress passed after the United States broke diplomatic ties with Taiwan. So January 2009, the U.S. established diplomatic ties with the People's Republic of China. We had had a mutual defense treating with Taiwan, which obligated us to come to Taiwan's defense. And the Congress really did want to put something else in place. And the Taiwan Relations Act, known as the TRA, is the law that we continue to abide by. It does not obligate the United States to defend Taiwan. It leaves that decision up to Congress and the president. But it does mandate that the United States has to sell weapons to Taiwan, defensive weapons,

and that the United States has to maintain a capability to prevent China from intimidating and coercing Taiwan. So we're supposed to maintain a robust. military capability in the Western Pacific. And there are other features of the Taiwan Relations Act, but that's the part that's most relevant to your question. And President Biden has said on four occasions that he would defend Taiwan if it were attacked. So that language is not in the Taiwan Relations Act. And we can only speculate as to why he has said that, but I believe that in 1979, there were many members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee who understood the Taiwan Relations Act as basically the way that we would continue to defend Taiwan even as we broke

diplomatic ties with it. So in his mind, I think he views the TRA as an obligation to defend Taiwan. And I think he's also worried about the growing hawkishness from Republicans on China, and he doesn't want to be seen as soft on China. So his instinct is to come out and say, I will defend Taiwan if it is an attack. I think he also believes that there is a need to signal Xi Jinping that he will defend Taiwan because he doesn't want China's leader to miscalculate and think that the United States would sit back if China used force. So I think there's a lot of different things going on.

but the White House has made clear that, yes, the president really is not changing U.S. policy. And if you were to ask President Biden directly, are you changing U.S. policy? I think he'd say no, because what he has said very explicitly is that we have a longstanding commitment to defend Taiwan. That's actually not the case, but that's what he believes. I was a foreign correspondent for several years before I took this current job. And one sort of consistent theme that I would notice when talking to Americans about some of the countries I was covering is they would try to understand that country's behavior through an American lens. So, for example, people would say to me, why would Putin invade Ukraine? But Putin obviously is operating from a different sort of calculation than a Western leader or someone in Germany or France might.

And that same problem can often happen with, I think that same problem is amplified when you're dealing with China, right, which is a, the way that Jishin-Ping, the way he came up in the world, you know, growing up in the cultural revolution, being a princeling in China and now rising through the ranks of the Communist Party, he doesn't look at the world the same way that Lincoln or Joe Biden might. What does Xi Jinping want out of Taiwan and what would make him calculate? whether an invasion is worth it or not. And I know it's impossible to know, you know, particularly in an authoritarian and closed-off regime like his, exactly what he's thinking. But what are some ways to think about, based on the publicly available information, the way that the Chinese Communist Party thinks about this problem and how they measure the cost-benefit analysis here?

Well, Xi Jinping's cost-benefit calculus is a very important part of this question. But first, let me say that the Chinese-competitive. Communist Party frames this issue against the background of what the Chinese call the century of national humiliation. So from the top of the opium wars in the middle of the 19th century to the 20th century, when in 1949 the People's Republic was established. But really extended past that because this is the period that China felt it was its territory was being nibbled away at by foreigners, although China, of course, was never colonized like some

other countries in Asia, but they believed that this was a period where foreigners dictated to them, and they were forced to accept these unequal treaties, and that Taiwan ultimately was allowed to not, was prevented from being integrated. into China by the United States. So, you know, when the People's Republic came into being there, of course, it was preceded by a civil war between the Chinese Communist Party and the Nationalist Party that was led by Chiang Kai Shech. And Chiang Kai Shek was defeated.

So from the view of the communist, they won that war. But Changchak receded to Taiwan. He set up his government there. And the United States, at one point, was soon after the end of that war in the early 50s, was willing to allow China to eventually take Taiwan. But then the Korean War happened. The United States then introduced the 7th Fleet into the Taiwan Strait. And then we ended up in 1954 having a mutual defense treaty with Taiwan. And so the United States has had a stake in the future of Taiwan and seeing it not become communist, as we thought about then in the 1950s.

Taiwan wasn't a democracy. It was authoritarian. It over time became a very vibrant democracy. I live there in 1979, 1980. Taiwan was under martial law. It was not a democracy. But it's changed very fundamentally today. So my view is that this is something that the Chinese have as a holdover from history. It's this piece of their history, the only piece of their territory that they say remains not integrated into the People's Republic of China. Although one could wonder whether in the future the Chinese might decide to reassert their claim over the UQU Islands, which are part of Japan. we recently heard Xi Jinping talk about Okinawa. Some people say maybe the Chinese would try to reclaim or reassert a claim over Mongolia. I don't know if that could happen eventually. But certainly Taiwan is seen as this very important peace that is necessary to achieve national rejuvenation.

And so the question is, how urgent is it for Xi Jinping? Is it a legacy issue for Xi Jinping? He has stated that reunification is a requirement for national rejuvenation, and he has set a target date of 2049 for national rejuvenation. Xi Jinping will be 96 that year. My guess is he will not be ruling China. So maybe he wants to achieve progress toward reunification during his time in power. I don't think that actually achieving reunification is a legacy issue for. him, but there are others who do hold that view. But I think that if Xi Jinping believes that

trying to achieve reunification could end up undermining the ability of China to actually achieve national rejuvenation, that he'll think twice about it. If he thinks that the PLA would be defeated and potentially that could lead to the loss of the legitimacy of the rule of the Chinese Communist Party. Well, he's going to think more than twice. And so that's where we get into this question of what's the cost-benefit calculus. The benefits are clear, but the risks are great. We want to make sure every day, Xi Jinping wakes up and says, today is not the day because the risks, the costs are too high. Not long ago, I saw someone go through a sudden loss, and it was a stark reminder of how quickly life can change and why protecting the people you love is so important.

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retailer, or go to explore Volvo.com. This episode is brought to you by Squarespace. Squarespace is the platform that helps you create a polished professional home online. Whether you're building a site for your business, your writing, or a new project, Squarespace brings everything together in one place. With Squarespace's cutting-edge design tools, you can launch a website that looks sharp from day one. Use one of their award-winning templates or try the new Blueprint AI, which tailors a site for you based on your goals and style. It's quick, intuitive, and requires zero coding experience. You can also tap into built-in analytics and see who's engaging with your site and email campaigns to stay connected with subscribers or clients.

And Squarespace goes beyond design. You can offer services, book appointments, and receive payments directly through your site. It's a single hub for managing your work and reaching your audience without having to piece together a bunch of different tools. All seamlessly integrated. Go to Squarespace.com slash dispatch for a free trial. mile. And when you're ready to launch, use offer code dispatch to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. You know, we've talked about, and I take the blame for this because I asked the questions,

but we talked about the U.S. perspective, whether America would fight. We talked about whether Xi would send his soldiers and his ships to fight. But what about Taiwan? There's a great journal article, Wall Street Journal article, a couple days ago. I think of the headlines with something like Ukraine or Hong Kong, what do you guys prefer? It's like the calculation, which might be a little bit of an oversimplification, but we sometimes forget that the Taiwanese will also have a say, and perhaps they'll decide that it's not worth having the country flattened and trying to defend itself from China or maybe not.

What are your views on whether Taiwan is both ready or willing to fight if it comes to that? Well, I think that many people in Taiwan, including the government, may not see the threat quite as urgently as the United States government and our intelligence community does. That said, there is certainly a growing urgency in Taiwan. There is a growing concern about whether or not Taiwan can even hold out before a sufficient. sufficient U.S. force could arrive. And Taiwan, even if it can defend itself for weeks, probably could not hold out much longer. For the U.S., we want Taiwan to be able to hold out as long as possible. But even more importantly, if Taiwan demonstrates the determination to defend

itself, hopefully it can deter that attack from ever taking place. So it is essential for Taiwan to demonstrate a will to fight. And that means procuring the right kind of weapons. It means engaging in serious training. It means ensuring that its reserves are ready to fight. It means developing civil defense that is then integrated with other parts of their defense planning. There are many different aspects of ways to demonstrate the will to fight and to actually prepare to execute their plans if, in fact, the Chinese were to attack. And Taiwan has a lot of work. Their defense spending for many years was going down. We've had this consistent statement by Taiwanese leaders, both the current president and the prior president.

that defense spending should be 3% of GDP, and Taiwan went down as low as 1.9%, which was really low, and now they're back up to 2.4, but nowhere near 3%. That's only, of course, one measure of willingness to fight and readiness. It's also the kind of weapons that they procure, whether or not, they're acquiring what we call asymmetric weapons. We used to have an official in the Defense Department who used to say, Taiwan should procure a large number of small things and a small number of large things. So if we're talking about things like fighter jets, you know, okay, small numbers, they definitely need to have advanced aircraft to be able to intercept PLA aircraft that are

operating, as you said earlier in the Air Defense Identification Zone, or maybe even in the territorial airspace, in peacetime, they still have to be able to defend their territory. But at the same time, you don't want to be spending half of your defense budget, you know, on advanced fighter aircraft, because odds are in the early hours of a war, if one should take place, that air capability is probably not going to survive. So they really need to think through that. And I think we're seeing them procure more things like Singers and High Mars, which are being used very effectively in Ukraine. But we're also seeing the Russians develop counter capabilities to some of these systems.

So this is going to be challenging for Taiwan going forward. But I'll just make the point also that Ukraine has made a huge difference for Taiwan's attitude toward. the potential threat that they see from China. I think the military and a lot of the average public is watching what's going on in Ukraine. At the beginning of the war, it was aired on television or on, you know, news shows every night. And people really, I think it drove home the message, you know, wow, you know, war can happen when you least expect it. even when it seems to be against the interests of this perpetrator country, Russia. So I think, yeah, it has been a wake-up call for Taiwan.

And on Ukraine, there's a pretty common debate. I don't think it's ever going to be settled. But one question is, are we using all of our good stuff, to make it really simple? Are we sending all of our stuff to Ukraine when we should be keeping it for Taiwan? I'm curious on your views. Can the U.S. help out both of those countries at the same time, or is there a real tradeoff that maybe the Biden administration is underestimated? It's a good question. My view is that we do have to set our priority based on the war that's happening today. It would be a profoundly negative, very consequential outcome if Ukraine is actually defeated by Russia, or if there is,

a negotiated solution that is against Ukraine's interest. So my view is that we do have to focus on that more. In fact, even the representative from Taiwan to the United States has underscored the importance of winning the war. I believe she has said Representative Bikam Siao in Ukraine, that the implications for Taiwan would be exceptionally negative if Ukraine is defeated. So, I mean, that said, we don't have the luxury of focusing 100% on Ukraine, nor are we. And it is very important that presidential drawdown authority is now being used for Taiwan. If not for that war in Ukraine, nobody would have even come up with the idea of using PDA for Taiwan. But we have now begun, and this is, of course, means whatever is in the U.S. inventory can be,

send directly to Taiwan. This has been used for Ukraine for just billions of dollars of equipment. And yes, some of the things that we're giving to Ukraine would be useful for Taiwan. But maybe we have to think smarter about how to produce large quantities of munitions for Taiwan. Maybe they should be produced in Taiwan. Maybe we should be thinking more about co-production. of our defense industry with Taiwan in order to build up large stockpiles because one of the really important lessons to be learned from Ukraine, which is obvious, is that we've been able to resupply Ukraine over friendly borders from countries like Poland. And we're not going to be able to do that if there's a war in the Taiwan Strait. The Chinese will impose a blockade

and they're going to have to have energy and food and weapons supplies. They are not going to be able to rely as the Ukrainians have on getting assistance from the outside. One question I wanted to ask about is the diplomatic fight. You know, this is a military question. It's a political one, but it's also a diplomatic one. And the Chinese have become famous for what they call wolf warrior diplomacy, although sometimes I read that they're pulling back. on that and sometimes I read that they're not. But Chinese diplomats are particularly aggressive. You know, I know, I think it was the Chinese ambassador to Cuba for some reason was tweeting

at you. And you're a very prominent person, but it seems a little strange for, you know, the Cuban ambassador to be attacking you online. You know, you'd think he'd be busy installing a style figuring out how to install another spy installation. And then you have Wang Yi, the high-ranking foreign affairs official who made a frankly racist comment that the Japanese and South Koreans will never be Westerners because of the color of their skin and the shape of their nose. And I mean, I grew up next to people from Hong Kong. They were my next door neighbors.

They were pretty much American and Western, despite not looking like my family. But do you think that Chinese diplomacy is a help or a hindrance the way that they've been conducting it the past few years? this sort of aggressive approach? I think that the Chinese would rather be feared than loved. So in some places, it has had the impact that the Chinese want. And in other places, it's been counterproductive. The Chinese combine this aggressive talk or wolf warrior diplomacy with economic coercion,

for example, other tools that they can use to try and influence other countries' policies. And in some cases, I think they have seen some effect. But then there are countries where it's really backfired. It's certainly backfired in Australia, where we've seen a real change in policy in Korea after the elections there. And I don't think it's helped them in many countries in Europe. But actually, China's diplomacy has been very welcomed by many developing countries in the global south that want to see China and Russia stand up to the United States.

And this is also true of countries in the Middle East that don't particularly like the United States these days. So you really have to ask about what the target country is. It lands differently in different countries, and it has worked in some places. But when it comes to Taiwan, what I really worry about is disinformation. China's development of its narrative there, its use of propaganda, and its disinformation about how the United States would not defend Taiwan. In fact, when Russia invaded Ukraine, the Chinese immediately started spreading this narrative

in Taiwan that, oh, the United States didn't put boots on the ground in Ukraine, so don't think they're going to come and rescue you. And so this is what I really worry about, because I see that there. this messaging from China actually is having an impact in Taiwan. And if we want to see Taiwan be more resilient, we need to see more bipartisanship, you know, less of a divide between the political parties. But similar to what we see in our own country in the United States, there's really significant differences between the political parties in Taiwan.

one and China exploits those differences. One last question here. I don't speak Mandarin. You know, I've read a few books about China from people who do speak Mandarin and they seem to know quite a bit. You do. How does, especially in, like I said before, just such a completely different world and in many ways a different value system, a way of perceiving the world, how does speaking Mandarin

and being able to go to primary sources or listen to official speeches, in the original tongue, how does that influence your way of thinking about these issues and how does it inform your analysis? And could you do what you do if you didn't speak Mandarin, maybe? Well, I think I would first say that I have known experts who do not speak Mandarin, who are really excellent experts and assessments of China. So there are exceptions. But I still think that they're handicapped, that they have to rely on other people to interpret for them what a specific passage in a speech might mean.

For character expressions that the Chinese use, you really have to understand what they mean and even reading them literally may not help you. So if you're not American, and you don't speak English, and somebody says to you, oh, but this person said that President Trump was willing to throw Taiwan under the bus, and you literally said, oh, my God, he was willing to, what, destroy Taiwan? Well, obviously, that's not what Trump was trying to do, because that's just a phrase, right? You wouldn't, if you were a native English speaker, you wouldn't take that seriously. And there are some examples in Chinese where people take things very literally that I think are not really meant literally. They mean something different in Chinese. Or when Xi Jinping talks about struggle, what does it mean struggle? And so you have to, I think, if you put it in the context of the primary source, you understand Mandarin, you can compare it. You can look at how struggle is used in other contexts.

The Chinese are told to struggle for everything, not just to struggle to take back Taiwan. Struggle has become a very common call of Xi Jinping and the Chinese Communist Party. I do think it matters. And so I would say that if you're trying to understand China and you don't speak the language, that you do need to rely on others who do to have. help you interpret different parts of what is said or what is published in the Chinese media. You're never going to be able to do it completely on your own. And so if you understand that you miss that piece, you have to build the capability

or access the capability to have somebody else inform you. But you can still be a very good analyst. Thanks for taking the time to come on the podcast. Thanks for having me, Adam. I'm going to be able to be.