By Larry Kummer
Marines have faith the battles they fight are winnable and for causes that warrant their sacrifices. Unfortunately, those expectations will be disappointed in a fight for Taiwan’s independence. Fear is one of the strongest motives to fight [1], and the Chinese Communist Party fears that Taiwan’s U.S.-backed secession violates China’s sovereignty, threatens its civilizational identity, and undermines dynastic CCP legitimacy [2] [3]. The People’s Republic of China is therefore prepared to endure massive casualties and societal costs to prevent secession [4]. In contrast, U.S. motives to support Taiwan’s independence are elite self-interests [5] [6] as the outcome of China’s civil war poses no compelling threat to U.S. sovereignty or democracy. U.S. military intervention will lack whole of society support when an uncompromising PRC bleeds us for a dubious U.S. objective. Instead, the U.S. should modernize and preserve Fleet Marine Forces to fight against existential threats that China and others may someday pose to U.S. national security [7]. This will motivate whole of society determination to win decisively [8] for causes that fully warrant Marine sacrifices. But Taiwan’s independence from China is not one of them.
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Most U.S. experts hold that the status quo should and will continue as-is [19]. U.S. superpower and possibly [20] [21]Japanese protection, while not promised, is practically assured. When combined with the U.S.-armed Republic of China (ROC) Armed Forces the military balance of power favors a U.S.-backed Taiwan [22] going forward. Also, the PRC’s timeline for unification liberally spans from 2021 to 2049 – the 100th anniversaries of the founding of the CCP and the PRC, respectively [23].
However, the status quo path has been disrupted [24]. Ever since a congratulatory phone call from Taiwan’s President Tsai Ing-wen to Donald Trump in 2016 [25] tensions between Taiwan and the PRC have increased. Then in 2019 President Tsai sought Taiwan’s seating in the United Nations (UN) [26] as a nation separate from China. Following her 2020 reelection, President Tsai went further, and in a statement of solidarity with Hong Kong (HK) protesters, she rejected the PRC’s One Country, Two Systems vision for Taiwan [27]. Other disruptions include Taiwan’s harboring of HK agitators sought by the PRC as fugitives [28], contrast between the PRC’s and Taiwan’s handling of the COVID-19 pandemic [29] [30], loss of the CCP’s traditional ally aboard Taiwan; the nationalist Kuomintang (KMT) party [31] [32], international criticism of PRC internal policies [33] including the mass imprisonment of Muslim Uighurs [34] and deteriorating trade relations with the U.S. [35] [36]. In response to the destabilizing immediacy of Taiwan’s defiance Secretary Xi recently warned that the PRC will act under its Anti-Secession Law if necessary [37] [38].
The CCP also perceives a perfect storm of U.S.-debilitating events that have caused a favorable shift in PRC fortunes [39]. This includes the PRC’s earlier COVOID 19 recovery [40] [41], a global leadership vacuum as the U.S. struggles with the pandemic [42], blatant U.S. hypocrisy [43] in condemning rioting in the U.S.[44] while celebrating rioting in HK [45], unsubstantiated reports claiming that the combination of the pandemic [46] and domestic civil unrest [47] may have degraded U.S. readiness [48] and China’s long-held conviction that the U.S. is a civilization in decline [49] [50] [51] [52].
The U.S. military remains fully ready to fulfill its global obligations [53], and many experts insist the likelihood of a PRC invasion remains low [54]. On the other hand, there are indicators that the PRC may be executing policy and military [55] [56] precursors in preparation for forced unification [57]. These include the PRC’s imposition of tough national security laws in HK [58] [59] and aggressive People’s Liberation Army (PLA) Navy and Air Force activities in the South China Sea, East China Sea and Taiwan Strait [60]. In view of Taiwan’s accelerated alienation [61] [62] [63] from China, the CCP may perceive that it has little to lose externally [64] [65] and everything to gain internally [66] by unifying sooner [67].
As background, three Joint Communiqués published in 1972 [68], 1979 [69], and 1982 [70] have stabilized U.S.-PRC diplomatic relations with respect to Taiwan. In each the PRC stated there is only One China and that Taiwan is a part of China. While acknowledging the PRC position, the U.S. did not agree on Taiwan’s status, and maintains it is undetermined. However, none of the Three Communiques expressed U.S. support for Taiwan’s independence as a nation separate from China.
The PRC cherishes the Three Communiques, but its determination to unify Taiwan with the Mainland, peacefully or non-peacefully, transcends the political character of One China’s national leadership. Whether unification is achieved under the CCP, the KMT or another rival nationalist party such as China New Party (NP) [71], One China’s sovereign authority over Taiwan is non-negotiable [72].
Taiwan’s status became contested in 1971 when United Nations (UN) Resolution 2758 seated the PRC and expelled the U.S.-aligned totalitarian ROC [73] aboard Taiwan. Then on 1 January 1979 the U.S. President formally recognized the PRC, severed formal relations with the ROC and abrogated the Formosa Resolution [74] that required the U.S. to protect Taiwan. But Congress harbored deep reservations about the PRC, as it believed CCP policy excesses had caused the deaths of millions of Chinese, impeded China’s modernization, and threatened communist expansion throughout Asia, to include Taiwan [75]. Fearing a Mainland invasion, Congress enacted the Taiwan Relations Act (TRA) [76] on 10 April 1979 to militarily deter the PRC in the hope that the anti-communist ROC KMT would eventually succeed the CCP in ruling all China.
The TRA directs maintenance of informal U.S. relations with Taiwan, to include commercial and cultural ties separate from the formal U.S.-PRC diplomatic relationship. The TRA also mandates a Congressional role in providing military capabilities to the ROC for the island’s self-defense and directs that the U.S. maintain the capacity to resist any Mainland effort to force unification. It is important to note that the TRA does not legally obligate the U.S. to employ instruments of national power [77] if the PRC absorbs Taiwan by force. Also, the TRA is just one of several shaping factors that contribute to the totality of U.S., China, and Taiwan relations.
While the TRA’s allusions to intervention are not legally enforceable, fearing loss of credibility in its legally binding security assurances with other regional allies the U.S. will surely act on them as if they were [78] [79] [80]. In anticipation of the TRA’s enactment the PRC advised against the establishment of a separate U.S. security relationship with Taiwan knowing it would lead to conflict in the future [81]. It can be viewed as equivalent to China establishing a separate security relationship with, and arming Hawaii’s sovereignty movement [82].
Since 1979 the political and strategic context has evolved. In 1992 the one-time ROC KMT and PRC CCP archenemies began to work cooperatively towards peaceful unification, while tolerating different interpretations of China’s legal governance [83]. Separately, the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) [84] emerged as a center-left alternative party to the nationalist KMT that emphasized Taiwan’s distinctive identity. Since 2016 the DPP has retained power, and its insistence on Taiwan’s de jure independence [85] has been actively supported by U.S. special interests and increasingly by the U.S. Government [86] [87] [88] [89] [90]. Taiwan’s relationship with the U.S. has become indistinguishable from an alliance between two sovereign nations [91] [92].
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Separately, the Mainland PRC has evolved economically and militarily into a superpower and the U.S.’ most formidable peer competitor. The PRC perceives the U.S. as the primary threat to One China unification and quest for increased global influence [93]. Its military modernization is tailored to exploit U.S. asymmetries, technological dependencies, and vulnerabilities. This includes an anti-access area-denial strategy [94] that combines weaponized artificial intelligence [95] [96] [97], military space [98], anti-satellite weapons [99], a modern nuclear triad [100] that integrates new intercontinental ballistic missiles with multiple independently targetable reentry [101] and hypersonic glide vehicles [102], advanced undersea, surface anti-ship [103] and cyber warfare [104], as well as counter-command and control [105] capabilities – including high altitude electromagnetic pulse weapons [106]. In accordance with its unique, Unrestricted Warfare doctrine, the PRC’s arsenal also weaponizes financial tools [107] [108] that treat the U.S. national debt as a strategic vulnerability and exploits the PRC’s status as a sole source for critical rare earth natural resources [109], 5G telecommunications technology [110] [111], and PRC pharmaceutical [112] and other critical manufacturing monopolies. The ability of the U.S. to deter or contain China’s unified One China objective is no longer a foregone conclusion.
Once the CCP senses the necessity and opportunity [113] it will act under its Anti-Secession Law [114] using coercive tools short of kinetic war [115] to bring Taiwan to heel. Confident in both U.S. military intervention and in the difficulties the PRC would face in mounting a cross-strait amphibious assault [116], a defensively well-armed Taiwan [117] will remain intransigent, eventually triggering a kinetic conflict [118]. Pressured by ideological, commercial, and political special interests, the U.S. will feel obligated to militarily intervene under the TRA [119]. The PRC will view U.S. intervention as an existential threat to One China territorial sovereignty, and war with the U.S. will ensue [120].
If the PRC finds itself losing conventionally it knows that the loss of a U.S. carrier, regional base or other capital ship would generate [121] U.S. Congressional support for escalation. The Gulf of Tonkin Resolution [122] that drew the U.S. deeper into the Vietnam War serves as a precedent. Considering China’s maturing security ties with Russia [123] [124] [125] and Iran, and the obligation of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) to come to China’s mutual defense [126], a broader, global conflict is likely. Concurrently, the PRC’s reluctance to be the first to use nuclear weapons will likely evaporate [127]. Escalation would benefit China with economy of force when the opening of other fronts saddles the U.S. and Japan with theater-wide treaty obligations [128] [129] [130] [131].
Taiwan’s greater importance to China than to the U.S. will be evident in the contrasting willingness of the U.S. and PRC contenders to endure casualties over time. Motivated by CCP survival and PRC national honor, China will absorb tremendous PLA [132] and PRC civilian losses, even risking military defeat to outlast U.S. intolerance [133] [134] [135] for such losses, fully aware that U.S. motives will lack a whole of society resolve [136]. With no threat to U.S. territory or its democracy, a conflict would at best have an indecisive outcome like the Korea Armistice Agreement [137] or at worst end in Taiwan’s outright abandonment with our South Vietnam exit as a precedent [138]. The common feature of those two foreign civil wars was lacking whole of U.S. society-embraced motives [139] [140] [141] and lack of confident paths to victory.
Even if the PRC suffers a tactical defeat in the near-term it would still serve to extend CCP legitimacy [142], and represent a mere setback in the longer Chinese Civil War [143]. The PLA will also be able to recover and modernize in-stride more rapidly than the U.S. and Taiwan will be able to recover from their losses [144]. Finally, even in the absence of the PRC, any new government of Mainland China would likewise covet its littorals and insist that Taiwan is sovereign China [145]. A renewed war of unification under a different nationalistic regime would be inevitable. In any Taiwan scenario, escalation to unrestricted and globally destructive total war between the U.S. and PRC is likely, a regrettable outcome considering its cause was never a core U.S. national security interest [146].
The PRC has long emphasized that its strategies reflect Chinese characteristics [147] rather than not western conventions. One legendary characteristic has been China’s capacity and willingness to absorb massive losses in pursuit of regime objectives. For example, during the 19th Century the Qing Dynasty survived the Taiping, Muslim and other upheavals that reduced the Chinese population by 60 million [148]. In the 20th Century prior to 1949, between five and eight million Chinese died during the Chinese Civil War [149], yet both the PRC prevailed and the tactically defeated nationalist ROC survived. In 1950 up to 400,000 [150] poorly armed Chinese troops responded in Korea, and despite suffering disproportionately high losses, reversed the fortunes of a nuclear-armed U.S. [151] [152]. Later, the Great Leap Forward led to the starvation deaths of up to 40 million Chinese [153], and millions more died during the Cultural Revolution [154] [155]. Despite these tragedies the regime survived and emerged stronger while progressively embracing its imperial heritage [156].
The CCP is only the latest Chinese dynasty [157], and under Secretary Xi the regime mirrors the centralization of power under Mao Zedong [158]. A unique characteristic of Chinese politics is that political elites within regimes were the most common causes of regime overthrow, not foreign enemies or revolutions by the masses [159]. Therefore, the dynasty’s future depends on fulfillment of political class expectations [160], and CCP politics today reflect an increasing urgency [161] [162]. When combined with Chinese casualty tolerance and an existential stake in the outcome the PRC will have a decisive psychological advantage over the U.S. in a fight over Taiwan [163].
Fear and honor will be the PRC’s dynastic and whole of society motives [164] to fight for unification. Despite special interests at the root of U.S. motives, the PRC anticipates that honor will likewise guide U.S. decision making. Chinese culture holds fidelity as one of the highest virtues in all relations [165], and failure to act reliably on just an allusion to a TRA promise causes loss of face that is indistinguishable from cowardice [166]. Publicly, the PRC suggests that the U.S. is afraid of China [167] [168]. However, the scale of the PRC’s military modernization betrays a conviction that the U.S. will assuredly act [169] on the TRA as an honor-binding security guarantee.
History contains examples of unintended consequences of honor-based international obligation fulfillment. For example, networks of treaty-bound European adversaries unraveled into the First World War [170], that led directly to the even more disastrous Second World War [171]. The TRA and a web of allied security treaties in the Western Pacific [172] [173] [174] [175] will likely be acted upon in much the same way [176]. If the U.S. military intervenes in this internal Chinese affair the national cost of the calamity will quickly exceed the value of defending Taiwan’s ambitions.
Many familiar with the TRA will disagree, observing that the TRA’s language ambiguities have been its strengths. It has served to deter the PRC while leaving to the discretion of U.S. decision makers the form of response, whether military, soft power, or no response at all [177]. This was true throughout the many decades that the PRC was comparatively weak, but as an ever more powerful superpower China is no longer so easily intimidated.
Others will point out that Taiwan’s undetermined status makes it a mere proxy state [178] and provide Cold War examples where proxy wars did not cause nuclear-armed patrons to escalate beyond a limited threshold as resolutions were open to negotiation. But this is mistaken because for the PRC Taiwan is sovereign China.
At the other extreme, some view the TRA as an honor-binding commitment to defend Taiwan. Furthermore, if the U.S. advertises TRA ambiguity as its strength a signal of U.S. unreliability [179] is relayed to all other allies in the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command (USINDOPACOM) with whom the U.S. has actual mutual defense treaties [180]. Instead they propose that the TRA should be replaced with a legally binding security treaty that extends the U.S. nuclear umbrella to protect Taiwan, and stations U.S. forces there as a casualty tripwire to trigger U.S. escalation [181].
But the PRC’s contention that Taiwan is sovereign Chinese territory is compelling. It has in fact been a province of sovereign China since the Qing Dynasty, which ruled from 1644 to 1912. It remained sovereign China under the nationalist ROC from 1912 to the ROC’s civil war retreat to Taiwan in 1949. After 1949 the ROC continued to be recognized as One China’s legitimate representative and despite the PRC’s Mainland victory was seated as a chartered member of the UN [182] [183], until its UN expulsion and replacement by the PRC as China’s legitimate representative in 1971. In spite of periods of foreign occupation by the Dutch and Japanese, Taiwan has been a territory and province of China continuously since 1683 [184]. This fact has been documented in authoritative, historical U.S. maps (Figures 1-3), and the modern KMT and NP platforms reaffirm One China’s uninterrupted national unity.
Figure 1. Figure 2. Figure 3.
Taiwan’s secessionists therefore continue to espouse a false, revisionist history of Taiwan’s separate identity and heritage. Most UN Member states recognize the ruse, and only 14 of 193 states and the Holy See still maintain diplomatic relations with Taiwan separate from China – and that number continues to drop [188].
Some historians will counter that the Qing Dynasty ceded Formosa to Japan in 1995 in the Treaty of Shimonoseki [189]. Staunch independence advocates contend that occupation signaled the birth of Taiwan’s nation-like status separate from China [190]. But a coercive foreign occupation is a temporary artificial identity and separation, not independence. For example, the Communist German Democratic Republic was always a weak artificial identity forcibly created under Soviet occupation [191]. Following Germany’s reunification in 1989 East Germans had not ceased to be Germans any more than Taiwanese had ceased to be Chinese when Taiwan was reunited with the Republic of China in 1945. Taiwan’s artificial identity would never have taken root were it not for DPP secessionist confidence in U.S. military support under the TRA [192].
And a nation’s self-narrative of sovereignty is the most important factor in predicting real behaviors, not legal opinions. The ruthless U.S. response to the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor included the firebombing of Tokyo and the first employment of nuclear weapons and exemplified the emotional power and violence [193] generated when a nation’s deep-seated self-narrative perceives a sovereignty violation. The legality of China’s claim to Taiwan, and the U.S.’ claim to Hawaii – which is questionable [194] [195] – are immaterial from the perspective of identity and realpolitik [196] and its outcomes.
Ever since the ROC withdrew to Taiwan following its tactical defeat in 1949 there has been a pause in fighting, but the bitter contest remains unresolved [197]. Civil wars are particularly brutal [198], as demonstrated in China as well as in Korea and Vietnam – together the three deadliest civil wars in modern history [199]. The U.S. had its own experience with the attempted secession of renegade territories – such as the PRC regards Taiwan today. The determined Union waged the American Civil War to prevent the Confederacy from seceding in the deadliest war in U.S. history [200].
Many will counter that our civil war is a bad analogy, insisting that Taiwan only became associated with Chinese national identity following the 20th Century establishment of Chiang Kai Shek’s totalitarian ROC aboard Taiwan [201]. But as noted earlier, Taiwan has been de facto sovereign Chinese territory for centuries. Han Chinese from the Fujian Province across the Taiwan Strait established a presence aboard Taiwan before the 1700s. This was reinforced by a larger Han migration under the Qing Dynasty during the 1700s, and another in the 20th Century by the Chinese nationalists. Temporary occupations of Formosa (a.k.a. Taiwan) during periods of imperial weakness caused interruptions to provincial governance, but never One China’s integrity. Today, between one and three million Taiwanese reside on the Mainland [202], many managing businesses and creating One China economic interdependencies. Han racial majorities on both sides of the strait, deep cross-strait familial ties with Fujian Province, Mandarin as the common language, and the shared traditional foundations of Confucianism and Chinese history cement the reality that Taiwan is an organic component of China.
Some will object that these are merely PRC talking points. But a separate Taiwanese identity divorced from China is secessionist propaganda that lacks any factual foundation, as the material, ethnic and historical realities stand by themselves.
Others will counter that CCP special interests are the only motives that drive the PRC’s hardening position on Taiwan. These include a PLA hungry for combat experience [203], the CCP’s determination to maintain legitimacy, and Secretary Xi’s own impatience. But independent of those interests the totalitarian CCP has a key advantage. Through centralized messaging [204] it animates two-million-plus active duty PLA and the nation’s 1.4 billion citizens with the unifying, nationalistic conviction that Taiwan is sovereign China – a whole of society fear and honor motivating power [205] that the U.S. lacks.
As for the Marine Corps and all Services, honor as a powerful motive can always be assumed [206], and sustaining casualties is the cost of patriotically fulfilling duties. But in our democratic U.S. mobilization for strategic victory in a major war that will certainly call for universal conscription requires unified, whole of society support to endure the sustained sacrifices. Motivating intelligent Americans that are well-aware of past 20th and 21st Century U.S. expeditionary debacles [207] [208] to perceive Taiwan’s differences with China as a threat to the U.S. worth risking total, even nuclear war guarantees U.S. public skepticism, not animation.
Some will insist on a U.S. moral obligation to Taiwan. But morality is a weak cause in practice, and the U.S. has frequently refrained from military action, despite observing behaviors that were universally recognized as immoral. These include America’s delayed entrance to WWII in Europe [209], U.S. evacuation of South Vietnam in 1975 [210], and decisions not to intervene in genocides in Africa [211] [212] and Cambodia [213]. In each case the U.S. weighed courses of action and came to reasoned conclusions that military intervention was not in the national self-interest.
Alternatively, U.S. military interventions when the national self-interest was lacking have led to national regret. As examples, U.S. humanitarian-based interventions in Lebanon [214] and Somalia [215] ended disastrously when the loss of U.S. warfighters compelled U.S. withdrawal. Core national security-based motives were absent, and moral outrage was an insufficient motive to stay. The concerns of prosperous, capitalist Taiwanese and HK citizens losing liberal freedoms when absorbed within One China [216] are trivial compared to the crimes and moral tragedies recalled above. But U.S. intervention in Taiwan promises a similarly bad ending, with the price being paid by forward-deployed Marines and Sailors [217].
Many disagree, arguing that to lose Taiwan is to cede American influence in the Western Pacific [218]. Taiwan is sighted as one of the Four Asian Tigers [219], a free enterprise jewel whose mere existence accelerates the de-legitimization of the CCP and tyranny everywhere, while serving as a model for China’s eventual democratization. They will also point to Taiwan’s manufacturing of critical electronics technologies such as semi-conductors [220]. Finally, Taiwan’s advocates will dismiss PRC assertions and point out the U.S.’ inherent obligation to protect the free citizens of any allied nation.
Ironically, the devastation of any China-Taiwan conflict will be [221] magnified many times when U.S. military intervention escalates to total war. Recognizing this inevitability, U.S. compassion for the Taiwanese people [222] should encourage a formally codified denouncement of any support for secession in advance of a war. Taiwanese secessionists previously emboldened by U.S. military assurances would fall silent, returning One China unification to a peaceful process. Also, the absorption of Taiwan, together with restive HK could over the longer term transform the PRC from within [223]. U.S. recognition that Taiwan’s status is strictly China’s internal affair would be consistent with the U.S.’ wise lack of military intervention in other restive Chinese territories such as Tibet [224], Xinjiang [225], Inner Mongolia [226] and HK [227]. The same logic must apply to Taiwan.
Finally, if the Taiwanese commitment to independence is as strong as claimed by its advocates, its citizenry will not kowtow to a PRC occupier or flee the island. Instead, a prolonged insurgency could lead to the demise of communism in China [228], just as adventurism in Afghanistan contributed to the fall of the Soviet Union [229].
But a Taiwan policy revision is unlikely due to powerful elite self-interests in the U.S. that sustain the TRA. Leading this cause are PRC-averse U.S. and Taiwanese lobbyists [230] [231], politicians, journalists [232] [233], authors [234], think tanks [235] [236], and defense industry lobbyists [237] [238] who benefit politically and financially from the TRA’s existence. Elite interest messaging encourages the Taiwanese to parse their identity away from China’s [239]. This has served to manipulate politicians and allowed cooperative media to subtly equate the TRA with an obligatory defense guarantee [240] [241] [242], perhaps even tempting a U.S. President to justify a diversionary war to distract from contentious domestic politics [243].
For example, in an effort to whip up national security hysteria some have suggested the PRC deliberately employed COVID-19 as a biological weapon [244] [245] [246]. This included alleged PRC suppression of information to permit the virus to first spread to adversaries [247], while employing it as a coercive tool to gain leverage over Taiwan [248]. The media has also reported that some special interests may be materially incentivized to attack the PRC [249].
Some recent pandemic-focused othering [250] of Chinese is reminiscent of WWI [251], WWII [252] and Cold War propaganda [253], in its reinforcement of negative ethnic stereotypes [254]. Historically, othering has served as a conditioning mechanism to dehumanize adversaries in the eyes of warfighters, preparing them to act with less discrimination and greater brutality in conflict [255]. Assaults on Chinese and Asians in the U.S. have also increased because of pandemic stigmatization [256] [257]. Special interest othering of the PRC is juxtaposed against U.S. Government fawning admiration of Taiwan that appears covetous, providing fuel to CCP propaganda that conjures imagery of China’s Century of Humiliation [258], which included Taiwan’s occupation.
In the U.S. Congress the TRA provides the influential 163-member, bipartisan, bicameral House and Senate Taiwan Caucus [259] a cause and platform to chastise the PRC and claim U.S. ideological superiority [260] in foreign relations. For the U.S. defense industry Taiwan has been and remains a major market for foreign military sales and security assistance, with weapons sales between 1980 and 2020 totaling more than 82 billion dollars [261]. Taiwan also has an outsized impact on the overall U.S. defense budget [262] considering the DoD’s pivot towards USINDOPACOM [263]. The reciprocal relationship between defense contractors, lobbyists, their respective contributions, and a Member of Congress’ re-electability is well documented [264]. When the linkages between Congress, Taiwan and the U.S. defense industry [265] are considered, the consistent Congressional voting support for robust arms sales to Taiwan is predictable, even when not in the interests of the U.S. or the warfighters who pay for bad policy with their lives.
One pre-crisis alternative could be a Presidential Directive supplementing the TRA [266] that prohibits any agency within the national defense community from taking any action if it relates to Taiwan’s secession ambitions. This includes U.S. inaction in the face of the PRC’s employment of non-peaceful means to preempt secession, and a requirement to end arms sales to Taiwan [267], a TRA-enabled practice that is incendiary to U.S.-China-Taiwan relations. Once the global community and Taiwan recognize that the U.S. unambiguously opposes an independent nation of Taiwan, DPP secessionist rhetoric would cease [268], removing the most explosive flash point in U.S.-China relations.
A direct benefit would be a redirection of China’s regional focus. For a personified China [269] [270] diplomatic, economic, territorial and security difficulties with its fair-weather partners [271] [272] [273] would be exposed [274]. China’s pains with the DPRK [275], Russia [276] [277], Iran [278] [279] and India [280] [281] would be unmasked, diverting PRC attention in a way that depressurizes U.S.-China relations.
Military conflicts with China in the USINDOPACOM are still possible. They include the U.S. enforcing UN-verified Japanese [282] and Philippine [283] claims to natural islands and resources in the South and East China Seas [284], and neutralizing PRC-armed artificial islands [285] that threaten freedom of navigation in international waters. Such limited objectives are militarily relevant [286] [287] and will not necessarily escalate into major conflict. Alternatively, if the PRC threatens U.S. territory and our way of life, achieving a whole of society commitment to defeat China in total war is guaranteed [288], as we experienced in mobilizing to defeat Imperial Japan, a cause for which every American sacrifice was worthy.
However, if the U.S. permits the unamended TRA to persist we will sleep-walk [289] into a catastrophic total war with China [290] lacking both a compelling cause and whole-of-society buy-in. The FMF mission in the Western Pacific assures that Marines will bear the brunt of a collision between PRC existential fear and U.S. special interests in Taiwan. Instead, the U.S. should amend the TRA and preserve FMF strength in preparation for war with the PRC or others motivated only by our core national security interests.
(2015) and Wolf Warrior 2
(2017). WWII became the highest-grossing film in China. See Wikipedia for Wolf Warrior and WW II. Especially read this insightful review by Helen Raleigh at National Review. To see how China sees America, read about this important speech by Major General Qiao Liang of the PLA.
Franz Gayl serves as a civilian science and technology adviser at HQ Marine Corps in the Pentagon. He enlisted in USMC In 1974, and retired as a Major in 2002. During these years he served as an infantry officer, operational test officer, and as a space plans officer. As a civilian he has served as the USMC representative to the high energy laser Joint Technology Office, as a DARPA intern, as the science adviser for the First Marine Expeditionary Force in Iraq, and as the S&T advisor within Naval Special Warfare Development Group X-Squadron.
I received a BA in PoliSci from the Univ. of MN, an MS in Space Systems Operations from the Naval Postgraduate School, and an MS in National Resource Strategy from National Defense University. He has two patents as sole inventor, with a 3rd pending.
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