Tricky times loom in Taiwan

Nancy Pelosi’s brief visit to Taiwan this week caused great if somewhat confected anger in Beijing, but the Chinese Communist regime was not her main target.

The Speaker of the House of Representatives has long supported Taiwan, and will be aware both the government and the people are in need of some reassurance.

The likelihood of a Chinese invasion of Taiwan is rising, and the prospect of direct US military support in that event is falling, both trends driven by the shifting strategic balance in the Western Pacific.

Pelosi is not a military strategist, but she cannot have failed to notice the changing tone of the military briefings she gets on the subject from the US navy and air force. They can no longer guarantee they would prevail in a war fought 12,000km from home to thwart a Chinese invasion of Taiwan.

The official US strategy remains ‘strategic ambiguity’: it won’t say whether or not it would actually fight China to protect Taiwan. This used to be just a device to get around the awkward contradiction between recognising the Communist regime in Beijing and protecting the separate existence of the island state of Taiwan – but everybody assumed the US would fight for that if necessary.

Now strategic ambiguity is mostly a way to disguise the fact that Washington would probably not intervene directly to stop a Chinese invasion of Taiwan. China has accumulated so many ballistic and cruise missiles along its east coast that the US navy is reluctant to risk its carriers in those waters in wartime, and only one air base within range of Taiwan is available for US strike aircraft.

And there is the immense strategic fact that neither China nor the United States wants to risk a nuclear war.

However, China might be able to conquer Taiwan without nuclear weapons. Hence its growing confidence, Taiwan’s belated anxiety, and President Joe Biden’s attempts to reassure Taiwan by making impromptu declarations that the US would indeed fight for Taiwan (which are promptly walked back by Biden’s staff).

But the reality is clear from Biden’s ultracautious response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine – slow and selective arms deliveries, no Nato troops on the ground, not even a ‘no-fly’ zone over Ukraine. He’s being very careful and measured because he doesn’t want a nuclear war. So if he’s that cautious with Russia, how careful would he be if Taiwan is invaded by China, a country with 10 times Russia’s population and 20 times its wealth?

The long-standing American policy of ‘strategic ambiguity’ has lost credibility as a deterrent, and Taiwan is really on its own now. This doesn’t mean that it is doomed, but its free ride is over.

Taiwan is an island 180 km from China, which means it could theoretically defend itself from anything except Chinese nuclear weapons. (Beijing is unlikely to use nukes on fellow Chinese people.)

However, they are not remotely prepared for that now. It would take half a dozen years of defence spending at 5% or 6% of GDP to acquire the weapons and capabilities that might enable the country to defend itself without help.

It’s unlikely this is the message Pelosi brought to Taiwan; she just wants to show solidarity with their struggle to remain free. But other American officials have doubtless been breaking the bad news to the Taiwanese government as gently as possible.

The next five years will be very tricky.