The tiny island nation state of Taiwan is in the eye of the storm between USA and China, but the question is- will it end up being the next Ukraine
In the lexicon of international politics, it is said when a country is caught in the crossfire of two great powers, it is known as being sandwiched. That exactly appears to be the condition of the democratic island nation state of Taiwan. The speaker of the House of Representatives- the lower house of the US congress Nancy Pelosi was on her recent tour of East Asia announced a surprising yet extremely controversial visit of the self governed democratic nation state of Taiwan. As expected China which claims Taiwan to be its own territory went hammer and tongs to protest the arrival of a high profile US official to the island state and warned of severe repercussions. Disregarding the warnings from China, Mrs Pelosi paid a 26 hour long visit to Taipei. China as usual began not only being opprobrious of such a visit, but launched military drills which included fighter plane sorties, precision strikes in the Taiwan strait. Some of the missiles landed close to the Japanese exclusive economic zone which caused the latter to register a strong protest with Beijing. Also Beijing has sanctioned Pelosi and has imposed a ban on certain Taiwanese products.
Decoding Chinese claims
It is necessary to understand the history of the politics of Chinese behaviour in the context of Taiwan. From 1923-1948, China was ruled by the Kuomintang party headed by the charismatic Chiang Kai Shek, he was a sworn enemy of the communist party headed by Mao Zedong and made every attempt to destroy the party and its members. This included the infamous massacre of communists amounting to some 250,000 in 1927. This sparked off the Chinese civil war. To escape the persecution orchestrated Chiang and his Kuomintang party, the Communists retaliated with guerrilla warfare and when the situation appeared grim, they broke through Kuomintang lines of offense and embarked on the famed Long March in the 1930s.
As Chiang and his party Kuomintang gradually lost support due to a combination of repressive policies and economic downturn the Communists began gradually consolidated their support by their land redistribution programme and by portraying themselves as defenders of their country in the face of a Japanese invasion and onslaught. After the end of the Second World War in Asia with the surrender of Japan in August 1945 the communists under the leadership of Mao Zedong whose popularity was gradually soaring began their final assault. In October 1949 the final remnants of the Kuomintang were wiped out by the communists and Chiang and his followers fled to the island of Formosa (currently Taiwan). Mao declared himself as the first republic of the People’s Republic of China. However he and his successive leaders always made it a point to get Taiwan back with force if necessary. However at the time of its inception, Communist China was too weak to enforce properly in the international community the one China principle, but as its strength grew both militarily and economically China by a combination of economic sops and threat of hard power coercion forced several nation-states to affirm the one China principle. This policy still continues to this day.
Taiwan the next Ukraine?
With China reacting furiously over the visit, the million dollar question that has arisen is will the country end up with the fate of Ukraine, there is in reality no definite answer. Till the recent past president Xi has spoken about Taiwan being an inalienable part of China and derided the country and its leadership as separatist. He even spoke of the need to integrate Taiwan with the mainland with the use of extreme force. He warned Taiwan that they would meet the fate of Hong Kong if they dared to go far. Even at the time of this writing, Chinese fighter jets breached Taiwanese airspace prompting Taipei to scramble its own fighter jets to warn off the Chinese jets. While international politics does allow commentators and academics to speculate about what could be the turn of events in a conflict, yet it is best to avoid speculation. At the moment it doesn’t appear that Taiwan may go the Ukraine way as the US is under a constitutional obligation to protect Taiwan even though the Washington DC doesn’t have formal diplomatic ties with Taipei.
At the same time, China would be only foolish enough to launch an outright invasion of Taiwan as this would generate a worldwide outrage over the bellicose behavior of the dragon. Notwithstanding the fact that China is deeply integrated with the global supply chains as it is the producer of important commodities and is an economic powerhouse the invasion of Taiwan would prompt China’s rivals particularly India, Japan, Vietnam, Australia etc to consolidate themselves against Chinese aggression. China could ill afford to upset its Neighbours in general and USA in particular as the former has strong commercial ties with all these countries.
Conclusion
With the global community still coming to terms with the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the Covid-19 pandemic, it is imperative that China in its capacity as a responsible country desist from such belligerent behavior and instead protect and promote the current rules based international order.
Economics and biology: two key aspects of our present reality. Artificial Intelligence seeks to enhance and prolong human life, but to what end? The economic improvement of living conditions for the poor is surely a good thing, but what of this obsession with prolonged life? What will it profit us to live to 150 years-old? Returning to the internet and the nation-state, it is now clear that the internet will be increasingly controlled in the future as national interests overcome globalization. In fact, the only form of globalization which actually exists is global capitalism, and as I have argued elsewhere, global capitalism already manifests fascist tendencies in its alignment of consumerism, goods and services. Marxism is not the solution, as technological advances in Artificial Intelligence have made Marx’s analyses of the modes of production defunct. The division of labour still exists, and is in fact deepening as the rich get richer and the poor poorer: Marx was right on this, as was his prediction that capitalism would become global. But Artificial Intelligence has made the modes of production far more subtle and sophisticated than even Marx could have predicted.
The nation-state is on the rise again. National interests supersede international co-operation, as is evident in the failure of the United Nations to bring about world peace. The military is using Artificial Intelligence to enhance its destructive capabilities, a most worrying sign for peace around the globe. Artificial Intelligence has made positive contributions in medicine and other fields, but is certainly not the panacea that some hope it to be. The rise of the nation-state, and the censorship of the internet promise a future of socio-economic competition between nations, and the control of the flow of information around the globe.
(Disclaimer: The views of the writer do not represent the views of FGS)