Rethinking US Security Commitment to Taiwan

Wang, Yuan-kang

doi:10.1007/978-3-319-77125-0_10

Yuan-kang Wang⁵

Part of the book series: Politics and Development of Contemporary China ((PDCC))

934 Accesses

Abstract

Should the United States end its security commitment to Taiwan to avoid war with an increasingly powerful China? This chapter argues that accommodating China on Taiwan will increase—not decrease—the probability of conflict in East Asia. Drawing on IR theory, I analyze the five errors of accommodationist proposals—underestimation of structural pressures, mistaken assumption of China’s limited aims, damage to US alliance credibility, downplaying of Taiwan’s democratic and strategic values, and destruction of the delicate balance between deterrence and reassurance. Contrary to accommodationist arguments, ending US security commitment to Taiwan will not make Asia more peaceful but rather more dangerous. For US grand strategy toward Asia, Taiwan is an asset, not a liability.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Log in via an institution

Chapter: USD 29.95; Price excludes VAT (USA)

eBook: USD 129.00; Price excludes VAT (USA)

Softcover Book: USD 169.99; Price excludes VAT (USA)

Hardcover Book: USD 169.99; Price excludes VAT (USA)

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

Notes

1.
Nancy Bernkopf Tucker, Strait Talk: United States-Taiwan Relations and the Crisis with China (Cambridge, MA.: Harvard University Press, 2009), 1. There is general agreement on Taiwan’s war-triggering potential. For instance, Chas Freeman observes: “The Taiwan issue is the only one with the potential to ignite a war between China and the United States.” Chas W. Freeman, Jr., “Beijing, Washington, and the Shifting Balance of Prestige: Remarks to the China Maritime Studies Institute (May 10, 2011),” http://www.mepc.org/articles-commentary/speeches/beijing-washington-and-shifting-balance-prestige. Alan Romberg contends that “the Taiwan question is the only issue in the world today that could realistically lead to war between two major powers.” Alan D. Romberg, Rein in at the Brink of the Precipice: American Policy toward Taiwan and U.S.-PRC Relations (Washington, D.C.: Henry L. Stimson Center, 2003), 14.
2.
Robert Gilpin, War and Change in World Politics (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1981); A.F.K. Organski and Jacek Kugler, The War Ledger (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1982).
3.
T. V. Paul, ed., Accommodating Rising Powers: Past, Present, and Future (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016).
4.
Bill Owens, “America Must Start Treating China as a Friend,” Financial Times, November 17, 2009; Bruce Gilley, “Not So Dire Straits: How the Finlandization of Taiwan Benefits U.S. Security,” Foreign Affairs 89, no. 1 (January/February 2010): 44–60; Freeman, “Beijing, Washington, and the Shifting Balance of Prestige: Remarks to the China Maritime Studies Institute (May 10, 2011)”; Charles L. Glaser, “Will China’s Rise Lead to War? Why Realism Does Not Mean Pessimism,” Foreign Affairs 90, no. 2 (March/April 2011): 80–91; Charles L. Glaser, “A U.S.-China Grand Bargain? The Hard Choice between Military Competition and Accommodation,” International Security 39, no. 4 (Spring 2015): 49–90.
5.
Graham T. Allison, “The Thucydides Trap: Are the US and China Headed for War?” The Atlantic, September 24, 2015, http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2015/09/united-states-china-war-thucydides-trap/406756/.
6.
“Full text of Xi Jinping’s speech on China-US relations in Seattle,” Xinhua, September 22, 2015, http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2015-09/24/c_134653326.htm.
7.
Paul, Accommodating Rising Powers, 4. Paul, however, does not distinguish between “accommodation” and “appeasement.” He lists “When is accommodation not appeasement?” as one of the research questions, but does not offer a clear distinction between accommodation and appeasement. Ibid., 29.
8.
Norrin M. Ripsman and Jack S. Levy, “Wishful Thinking or Buying Time? The Logic of British Appeasement in the 1930s,” International Security 33, no. 2 (Fall 2008): 148–181 at 149. See also Daniel Treisman, “Rational Appeasement,” International Organization 58, no. 2 (Spring 2004): 345–373.
9.
Glaser, “A U.S.-China Grand Bargain? The Hard Choice between Military Competition and Accommodation,” 56, n. 16.
10.
Freeman, “Beijing, Washington, and the Shifting Balance of Prestige: Remarks to the China Maritime Studies Institute (May 10, 2011).”
11.
Glaser, “Will China’s Rise Lead to War? Why Realism Does Not Mean Pessimism,” 87.
12.
Glaser, “A U.S.-China Grand Bargain? The Hard Choice between Military Competition and Accommodation,” 72.
13.
Gilley, “Not So Dire Straits: How the Finlandization of Taiwan Benefits U.S. Security,” 56.
14.
Glaser, “A U.S.-China Grand Bargain? The Hard Choice between Military Competition and Accommodation,” 64.
15.
Freeman, “Beijing, Washington, and the Shifting Balance of Prestige: Remarks to the China Maritime Studies Institute (May 10, 2011).”
16.
Gilley, “Not So Dire Straits: How the Finlandization of Taiwan Benefits U.S. Security,” 51.
17.
Glaser explicitly draws on defense realism. Glaser, “A U.S.-China Grand Bargain? The Hard Choice between Military Competition and Accommodation.” For his exposition of defensive realism, see Charles L. Glaser, Rational Theory of International Politics: The Logic of Competition and Cooperation (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2010); Charles Glaser, “Realists as Optimists: Cooperation as Self-Help,” International Security 19, no. 3 (Winter 1994/95): 50–90; Charles L. Glaser, “The Security Dilemma Revisited,” World Politics 50, no. 1 (October 1997): 171–201.
18.
For defensive realism, security can be scare when offense has the advantage.
19.
Glaser, “Will China’s Rise Lead to War? Why Realism Does Not Mean Pessimism,” 81.
20.
For an offensive realist view, see John J. Mearsheimer, “Can China Rise Peacefully?” The National Interest, October 25, 2014, http://nationalinterest.org/commentary/can-china-rise-peacefully-10204.
21.
Glaser, Rational Theory of International Politics, 2, 23.
22.
John J. Mearsheimer, “Realists as Idealists,” Security Studies 20, no. 3 (2011): 424–430.
23.
See, for example, Jack L. Snyder, Myths of Empire: Domestic Politics and International Ambition (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1991); Stephen Van Evera, Causes of War: Power and the Roots of Conflict (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1999).
24.
This may be the key reason why Glaser insists on a separation between the desirability of his grand bargain proposal and its political feasibility: “Analytically, the desirability and political feasibility of U.S. security policy can often be productively separated.” See Glaser, “A U.S.-China Grand Bargain? The Hard Choice between Military Competition and Accommodation,” 55. It is worth noting that the two rejoinders to his article faults him on the political infeasibility of his proposal. Leif-Eric Easley, Patricia Kim, and Charles L. Glaser, “Correspondence: Grand Bargain or Bad Idea? U.S. Relations with China and Taiwan,” International Security 40, no. 4 (Spring 2016): 178–191.
25.
The definitive work is John J. Mearsheimer, The Tragedy of Great Power Politics (New York: W. W. Norton, 2001).
26.
Kier A. Lieber, “Grasping the Technological Peace: The Offense-Defense Balance and International Security,” International Security 25, no. 1 (Summer 2000): 71–104.
27.
Sebastian Rosato, “The Inscrutable Intentions of Great Powers,” International Security 39, no. 3 (Winter 2014/15): 48–88.
28.
Mearsheimer, The Tragedy of Great Power Politics, 36.
29.
Ibid.
30.
Quoted in John Lewis Gaddis, Strategies of Containment: A Critical Appraisal of Postwar American National Security Policy (New York: Oxford University Press, 1982), 201.
31.
Henry Kissinger, Does America Need a Foreign Policy? Toward a Diplomacy for the 21st Century (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2001), 135.
32.
Joseph S. Nye, “The Case for Deep Engagement,” Foreign Affairs 74, no. 4 (July/August 1995): 90–102 at 91.
33.
For a contrasting view, see Michael D. Swaine, America’s Challenge: Engaging a Rising China in the Twenty-First Century (Washington, DC: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 2011); Aaron L. Friedberg, A Contest for Supremacy: China, America, and the Struggle for Mastery in Asia, 1st Ed. (New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 2011).
34.
Rosato, “The Inscrutable Intentions of Great Powers,” 59.
35.
Nancy Bernkopf Tucker and Bonnie Glaser, “Should the United States Abandon Taiwan?,” The Washington Quarterly 24, no. 4 (Fall 2011): 23–37 at 25; Shelley Rigger, “Why Giving up Taiwan Will Not Help Us with China,” AEI Asian Outlook, no. 3 (November 2011): 1–9. Rigger writes: “If the United States withdraws its support, we should expect nationalists and hardliners in the PRC to press the Chinese Communist Party leadership to solve the Taiwan problem sooner rather than later.”
36.
Mearsheimer, The Tragedy of Great Power Politics, 164.
37.
Edward Friedman, “China’s Ambitions, America’s Interests, Taiwan’s Destiny, and Asia’s Future,” Asian Survey 53, no. 2 (2013): 225–244 at 244.
38.
Quoted in Richard K. Betts, “Realism Is an Attitude, Not a Doctrine,” The National Interest, September/October 2015, http://nationalinterest.org/print/feature/realism-attitude-not-doctrine-13659.
39.
For a summary of the literature on credibility, see Glaser, “A U.S.-China Grand Bargain? The Hard Choice between Military Competition and Accommodation,” 58–60.
40.
Tucker and Glaser, “Should the United States Abandon Taiwan?,” 33.
41.
Rigger, “Why Giving up Taiwan Will Not Help Us with China.”
42.
Sergei. N. Goncharov, John W. Lewis, and Litai Xue, Uncertain Partners: Stalin, Mao, and the Korean War (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1993), 142.
43.
Jian Chen, China’s Road to the Korean War: The Making of the Sino-American Confrontation (New York: Columbia University Press, 1994), 126.
44.
Thomas J. Christensen, Useful Adversaries: Grand Strategy, Domestic Mobilization, and Sino-American Conflict, 1947–1958 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1996), 151.
45.
Tucker and Glaser, “Should the United States Abandon Taiwan?.”; Rigger, “Why Giving up Taiwan Will Not Help Us with China.”
46.
The White House, “Statement by President George W. Bush on Taiwan’s Election,” March 25, 2008, http://www.ait.org.tw/en/officialtext-ot0802.html.
47.
Glaser, “A U.S.-China Grand Bargain? The Hard Choice between Military Competition and Accommodation,” 72.
48.
Ibid., 73.
49.
John J. Mearsheimer, “Taiwan’s Dire Straits,” The National Interest, no. 130 (March/April 2014): 29–39 at 35. Mearsheimer is often mistakenly categorized in the “abandon Taiwan” camp. His view is actually more nuanced. He holds that before China reaches power parity with the United States, Washington will go out of its way to support Taiwan, not abandon it. It is only when China becomes as powerful as the United States (which may not happen) that Washington, no longer capable of protecting Taiwan, would be reluctantly forced to give it up. Note that the title of Mearsheimer’s article (“Taiwan’s Dire Straits”) in the printed journal The National Interest is different from the one on its website (“Say Goodbye to Taiwan”), which was chosen by the website editor, not by Mearsheimer.
50.
Quoted in Toshi Yoshihara and James R. Holmes, Red Star over the Pacific: China’s Rise and the Challenge to U.S. Maritime Strategy (Annapolis, Md.: Naval Institute Press, 2010), 52–53.
51.
Quoted in ibid., 21.
52.
Richard C. Bush, Untying the Knot: Making Peace in the Taiwan Strait (Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution Press, 2005), 259–265.
53.
Thomas C. Schelling, Arms and Influence (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1966), 74.
54.
Thomas J. Christensen, “The Contemporary Security Dilemma: Deterring a Taiwan Conflict,” The Washington Quarterly 25, no. 4 (Autumn 2002): 7–21 at 10.
55.
Andrew J. Nathan, “What’s Wrong with American Taiwan Policy,” The Washington Quarterly 23, no. 2 (Spring 2000): 93–106 at 97, 102.
56.
Steve Tsang, “The U.S. Military and American Commitment to Taiwan’s Security,” Asian Survey 52, no. 4 (2012): 777–797.
57.
Vincent Wei-cheng Wang, “The U.S. Asia Rebalancing and the Taiwan Strait Rapprochement,” Orbis 59, no. 3 (Summer 2015): 361–379.
58.
On the security externalities of trade, see Joanne Gowa, Allies, Adversaries, and International Trade (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1994); Scott L. Kastner, Political Conflict and Economic Interdependence across the Taiwan Strait and Beyond (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2009).
59.
Mainland Affairs Council, Liangan jingji tongji yuebao (Cross-strait economic statistics monthly), no. 238 (2012).
60.
Investment Commission, Ministry of Economic Affairs, Republic of China (Taiwan), http://www.moeaic.gov.tw/system_external/ctlr?PRO=PublicationLoad&id=135
http://www.moeaic.gov.tw/system_external/ctlr?PRO=PublicationLoad&lang=1&id=134.
61.
Richard C. Bush, Uncharted Strait: The Future of China-Taiwan Relations (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 2013), 141.
62.
Wang, “The U.S. Asia Rebalancing and the Taiwan Strait Rapprochement,” 378.
63.
Fareed Zakaria, From Wealth to Power: The Unusual Origins of America’s World Role (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1998); Mearsheimer, The Tragedy of Great Power Politics.

Bibliography

Allison, Graham T. 2015. The Thucydides Trap: Are the US and China Headed for War? The Atlantic, September 24. http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2015/09/united-states-china-war-thucydides-trap/406756/.
Betts, Richard K. 2015. Realism Is an Attitude, Not a Doctrine. The National Interest, September/October. http://nationalinterest.org/print/feature/realism-attitude-not-doctrine-13659.
Bush, Richard C. 2005. Untying the Knot: Making Peace in the Taiwan Strait. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press.
Google Scholar
———. 2013. Uncharted Strait: The Future of China-Taiwan Relations. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press.
Google Scholar
Chen, Jian. 1994. China’s Road to the Korean War: The Making of the Sino-American Confrontation. New York: Columbia University Press.
Google Scholar
Christensen, Thomas J. 1996. Useful Adversaries: Grand Strategy, Domestic Mobilization, and Sino-American Conflict, 1947–1958. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Google Scholar
———. 2002. The Contemporary Security Dilemma: Deterring a Taiwan Conflict. The Washington Quarterly 25 (4, Autumn): 7–21.
Article Google Scholar
Easley, Leif-Eric, Patricia Kim, and Charles L. Glaser. 2016 Spring. Correspondence: Grand Bargain or Bad Idea? U.S. Relations with China and Taiwan. International Security 40 (4): 178–191.
Article Google Scholar
Freeman, Chas W. Jr. 2011. Beijing, Washington, and the Shifting Balance of Prestige: Remarks to the China Maritime Studies Institute, May 10. http://www.mepc.org/articles-commentary/speeches/beijing-washington-and-shifting-balance-prestige.
Friedberg, Aaron L. 2011. A Contest for Supremacy: China, America, and the Struggle for Mastery in Asia. 1st ed. New York: W. W. Norton & Co.
Google Scholar
Friedman, Edward. 2013. China’s Ambitions, America’s Interests, Taiwan’s Destiny, and Asia’s Future. Asian Survey 53 (2): 225–244.
Article Google Scholar
Gaddis, John Lewis. 1982. Strategies of Containment: A Critical Appraisal of Postwar American National Security Policy. New York: Oxford University Press.
Google Scholar
Gilley, Bruce. 2010. Not So Dire Straits: How the Finlandization of Taiwan Benefits U.S. Security. Foreign Affairs 89 (1): 44–60.
Google Scholar
Gilpin, Robert. 1981. War and Change in World Politics. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Book Google Scholar
Glaser, Charles L. 1994/95. Realists as Optimists: Cooperation as Self-Help. International Security 19 (3, Winter): 50–90.
Article Google Scholar
———. 1997. The Security Dilemma Revisited. World Politics 50 (1): 171–201.
Article Google Scholar
———. 2010. Rational Theory of International Politics: The Logic of Competition and Cooperation. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Book Google Scholar
———. 2011. Will China’s Rise Lead to War? Why Realism Does Not Mean Pessimism. Foreign Affairs 90 (2): 80–91.
Google Scholar
———. 2015. A U.S.-China Grand Bargain? The Hard Choice Between Military Competition and Accommodation. International Security 39 (4, Spring): 49–90.
Article Google Scholar
Goncharov, Sergei N., John W. Lewis, and Litai Xue. 1993. Uncertain Partners: Stalin, Mao, and the Korean War. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
Book Google Scholar
Gowa, Joanne. 1994. Allies, Adversaries, and International Trade. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Google Scholar
Kastner, Scott L. 2009. Political Conflict and Economic Interdependence Across the Taiwan Strait and Beyond. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
Book Google Scholar
Kissinger, Henry. 2001. Does America Need a Foreign Policy? Toward a Diplomacy for the 21st Century. New York: Simon & Schuster.
Google Scholar
Lieber, Kier A. 2000. Grasping the Technological Peace: The Offense-Defense Balance and International Security. International Security 25 (1, Summer): 71–104.
Article Google Scholar
Mearsheimer, John J. 2001. The Tragedy of Great Power Politics. New York: W. W. Norton.
Google Scholar
———. 2011. Realists as Idealists. Security Studies 20 (3): 424–430.
Article Google Scholar
———. 2014a. Can China Rise Peacefully? The National Interest, October 25. http://nationalinterest.org/commentary/can-china-rise-peacefully-10204.
———. 2014b. Taiwan’s Dire Straits. The National Interest 130 (March/April): 29–39.
Google Scholar
Nathan, Andrew J. 2000. What’s Wrong with American Taiwan Policy. The Washington Quarterly 23 (2, Spring): 93–106.
Article Google Scholar
Nye, Joseph S. 1995. The Case for Deep Engagement. Foreign Affairs 74 (4): 90–102 at 91.
Article Google Scholar
Organski, A.F.K., and Jacek Kugler. 1982. The War Ledger. Chicago: Chicago University Press.
Google Scholar
Owens, Bill. 2009. America Must Start Treating China as a Friend. Financial Times, November 17.
Google Scholar
Paul, T.V., ed. 2016. Accommodating Rising Powers: Past, Present, and Future. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Google Scholar
Rigger, Shelley. 2011. Why Giving Up Taiwan Will Not Help Us with China. AEI Asian Outlook 3 (November): 1–9.
Google Scholar
Ripsman, Norrin M., and Jack S. Levy. 2008 Fall. Wishful Thinking or Buying Time? The Logic of British Appeasement in the 1930s. International Security 33 (2): 148–181.
Article Google Scholar
Romberg, Alan D. 2003. Rein in at the Brink of the Precipice: American Policy Toward Taiwan and U.S.-PRC Relations. Washington, DC: Henry L. Stimson Center.
Google Scholar
Rosato, Sebastian. 2014/2015. The Inscrutable Intentions of Great Powers. International Security 39 (3, Winter): 48–88.
Article Google Scholar
Schelling, Thomas C. 1966. Arms and Influence. New Haven: Yale University Press.
Google Scholar
Snyder, Jack L. 1991. Myths of Empire: Domestic Politics and International Ambition. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
Google Scholar
Swaine, Michael D. 2011. America’s Challenge: Engaging a Rising China in the Twenty-First Century. Washington, DC: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
Google Scholar
Treisman, Daniel. 2004 Spring. Rational Appeasement. International Organization 58 (2): 345–373.
Article Google Scholar
Tucker, Nancy Bernkopf. 2009. Strait Talk: United States-Taiwan Relations and the Crisis with China. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Google Scholar
Tucker, Nancy Bernkopf, and Bonnie Glaser. 2011 Fall. Should the United States Abandon Taiwan? The Washington Quarterly 24 (4): 23–37.
Article Google Scholar
Van Evera, Stephen. 1999. Causes of War: Power and the Roots of Conflict. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
Google Scholar
Wang, Vincent Wei-cheng. 2015. The U.S. Asia Rebalancing and the Taiwan Strait Rapprochement. Orbis 59 (3, Summer): 361–379.
Article Google Scholar
Yoshihara, Toshi, and James R. Holmes. 2010. Red Star Over the Pacific: China’s Rise and the Challenge to U.S. Maritime Strategy. Annapolis: Naval Institute Press.
Google Scholar
Zakaria, Fareed. 1998. From Wealth to Power: The Unusual Origins of America’s World Role. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Google Scholar

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Department of Political Science, Western Michigan University, Kalamazoo, MI, USA
Yuan-kang Wang

Authors

Yuan-kang Wang
View author publications
You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

Department of Politics and International Affairs, Wake Forest University, Winston-Salem, NC, USA
Wei-chin Lee

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

About this chapter

Cite this chapter

Wang, Yk. (2019). Rethinking US Security Commitment to Taiwan. In: Lee, Wc. (eds) Taiwan’s Political Re-Alignment and Diplomatic Challenges. Politics and Development of Contemporary China. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-77125-0_10

Download citation

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-77125-0_10
Published: 10 May 2018
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-77124-3
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-77125-0
eBook Packages: Political Science and International StudiesPolitical Science and International Studies (R0)

Publish with us

Policies and ethics