Letters | Does Taiwan really want to be a US proxy in a war with China?

Name: US President Joe Biden says US military will defend Taiwan if attacked
Uploaded: 2022-05-26T06:30:15.000Z
Duration: 3 min 9 s
Description: US President Joe Biden says US military will defend Taiwan if attacked

Readers discuss why Taiwanese leaders should not glorify Ukrainians’ fighting spirit, Joe Biden’s words on Taiwan, and how China’s demographic problem has taken on a geopolitical dimension

Reading Time:3 minutes

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An honour guard at the National Revolutionary Martyrs’ Shrine in Taipei on May 24. Photo: Bloomberg

Letters

Published: 2:30pm, 26 May 2022

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Earlier this month, Taiwanese Foreign Minister Joseph Wu was interviewed by Fareed Zakaria on his CNN show. During the conversation, Wu emphasised that if a war broke out in Taiwan, the island would need support from friends and allies “as in the case of Ukraine”. While that statement is true, I argue that Taiwan should also be careful what it wishes for.

On the surface, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has been described as a war hero for his determination to resist Russian aggression. In reality, that status came at the cost of sacrificing the lives of his soldiers and letting his country become, essentially, a US proxy that helps achieve America’s goal of weakening Russia, as US Secretary of Defence Lloyd Austin has acknowledged.

Taiwan must not become the second one, yet the opposite seems to be taking shape. As academic Hal Brands pointed out, a proxy is a major power’s committed local partner ready to do the killing and dying. Unfortunately, the Taiwanese government seems to tick these boxes.

First, it has worked hard to prove itself as a committed partner of the United States by acceding to demands such as lifting the ban on imports of US pork containing ractopamine. Second, it has time and again shown its readiness to push Taiwanese onto the battlefield. For instance, in that same interview, Wu said the Ukrainian spirit of wanting to fight in the war zones was “enviable” and that Taiwanese should learn from it.

03:09

US President Joe Biden says US military will defend Taiwan if attacked

To make matters worse, the Taiwanese government seems to have embraced the role of vanguard in the US-China competition by trying to turn itself into a porcupine that can trap mainland Chinese forces. As a former Pentagon official put it, at the heart of this porcupine strategy is letting mainland Chinese soldiers battle beyond the beaches and fight for every square block in Taiwan. In other words, it would involve letting Taiwan play the role that Ukraine is playing now.

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.css-sioo19{color:#c79a00;}Letters | Does Taiwan really want to be a US proxy in a war with China?

Letters | Does Taiwan really want to be a US proxy in a war with China?