Pentagon official says Beijing ‘act of aggression’ against Taiwan will draw response like Russia has seen
- ‘Where the world is now, the Ukraine scenario is a much more likely outcome,’ says Colin Kahl, the US undersecretary for defence policy
- Kahl also says indications are that Beijing ‘did not believe Russia actually planned to invade Ukraine’ and calls it an ‘intelligence failure’
A US military planner warned Beijing that should it undertake some “act of aggression” against Taiwan, the likely global response would be closer to that taken against Russia after it invaded Ukraine than the arm’s-length approach that followed the Chinese government’s crackdown in Hong Kong.
At a conference hosted by the Centre for a New American Security, Colin Kahl, the Pentagon’s undersecretary of defence for policy, said on Tuesday that “potential adversaries and aggressors everywhere else in the world are looking at the global response in Ukraine.
“If I’m sitting in Beijing, I think the fundamental question to draw is, you know, if they were to commit an act of aggression sometime in the future, will the world react the way that it did when China snuffed out democracy in Hong Kong, or will the world react more like they did in the case of Ukraine,” Kahl said.
“I think it’s imperative for the leadership in Beijing to understand that, where the world is now, the Ukraine scenario is a much more likely outcome than the Hong Kong scenario,” he added.
“So I hope that that’s soaking in, in Beijing and elsewhere.”
After anti-government protests in Hong Kong in 2019, dozens of former lawmakers and opposition activists were arrested under the national security law that Beijing imposed on the city in 2020.