What would Sun Tzu and Clausewitz think about Ukraine and Taiwan?
- When it comes to its own survival, Beijing is probably a better student of the two perennial philosophers of war than Washington and Brussels
Continuity of leadership in a big organisation is important. So it may be a good thing that Anders Fogh Rasmussen, former Nato chief, sounds exactly like his successor Jens Stoltenberg while discoursing in public. Let’s hope they – or rather Washington, their real boss – can find another clone as Stoltenberg is about to retire.
Only Western unity would enable Ukraine to win, Rasmussen wrote in the Financial Times recently, and nothing less than victory would discourage Beijing from invading Taiwan. He didn’t define what that victory would look like, though: regaining all territories, rolling back all Russians and deposing Vladimir Putin? All those outcomes look unrealistic at the moment.
“The final and most important way to deter a Chinese move on Taiwan is to ensure a Ukrainian victory in the current conflict,” he wrote.
“If Russia can gain territory and establish a new status quo by force, it sets a dangerous precedent. China and other autocratic powers will learn that the democratic world’s resolve is weak and that nuclear blackmail and military aggression work.”
It sounds exactly like what Stoltenberg said at a Nato conference a few months ago and countless times before. So you wonder why Rasmussen even bothered. Oh, he recently visited the island of Taiwan, he told us by the second paragraph. Unfortunately it wasn’t well covered by the news media. That tends to happen when you are merely the former head of Nato. So presumably he was covering himself for our benefit. It’s hard for an old politician to lose the limelight – he was a Danish prime minister.
More charitably, though, I guess in both their brilliant minds, Nato is already Naapto (North Atlantic-Asia-Pacific Treaty Organisation), and the military alliance’s propagandists need to keep drumming up this message, however dangerous and absurd, until it sounds normal to us poor Asians. Now that’s a scary thought. It’s not like there is not enough powder in the keg for World War III in the Asian region already.