China-U.S. relations are entering potentially the most dangerous period in decades — going even as far back as their bloody confrontation in the Korean War.
An increasingly unsettled Xi Jinping may decide that the remaining month before the presidential transition is his last opportunity to take advantage of an extremely risk-averse Biden administration and make a military move against Taiwan. Despite his public declarations that he would intervene militarily to defend Taiwan, Biden is likely to decide that the question of war and peace should now be left to his successor.
Chinese action against Taiwan would also present the incoming Trump administration with a fait accompli and a strategic dilemma — especially if Beijing eschews a full-scale invasion and goes with a blockade or seizes Kinmen (Quemoy) or another Taiwanese island. Xi may calculate that a returning President Trump will be reluctant to start his second term fighting to reverse “moderate” Chinese aggression, just as Biden was willing to accept “a limited incursion” of Ukraine in 2022. In his first term, Trump failed even to try to unwind Vladimir Putin’s 2014 annexation of Crimea and Eastern Ukraine, which the Obama-Biden administration had meekly accepted — perhaps fulfilling Obama’s 2012 promise to Putin of post-reelection “flexibility.”
The prospects of Xi acting precipitously against Taiwan have increased as a result of recent developments in China. After Xi spent more than a decade of ostensible anti-corruption purges placing Xi loyalists in key positions throughout the Chinese Communist political and military establishment, he continues to unearth officials he deems incompetent, corrupt or personally disloyal to him. The two latest to fall are his minister of Defense, Dong Jun, and Admiral Miao Hua.
Some respected Western scholars believe the high-level personnel disruptions are raising doubts about the reliability of China’s military and its ability to pull off a successful Taiwan operation. But Washington cannot afford complacency, given the critical role of deception and surprise in Chinese strategy. The fact that conventional wisdom sees a diminished prospect of action against Taiwan makes it precisely the propitious time for a preemptive Chinese strike.
Presenting the world with fait accompli is what Beijing successfully did in the Korean War, Tibet, East Turkestan, Vietnam, India, Tiananmen Square, Hong Kong and the South China Sea. It includes the myriad incremental offenses against Taiwan’s sovereignty and international law, such as closing off the international waters of the Taiwan Strait to every country’s aircraft carriers except China’s.
Each Chinese action created a new version of the status quo, placing the onus of disturbing it on the U.S. and others in the West. This is not unlike the predicament of the football or soccer player who retaliates against an egregious but unseen offense and then alone absorbs the penalty.
It is a burden Western governments are congenitally reluctant to bear because of an exaggerated fear of escalation. The paralyzing inhibition inevitably leaves the initiative with the aggressors. Their psychological warfare manages to convince Westerners that Beijing, Moscow, Pyongyang and Tehran do not fear a major war, when it actually would end several, if not all, of their regimes.
Biden and Trump have a historically unique opportunity to upend and reverse that destructive dynamic. They could declare jointly that any Chinese aggression against Taiwan, whether under a waning Biden administration or an incoming second Trump term, will bring a decisive kinetic response by either Biden or Trump, strongly and publicly supported by the other. This would reflect a united America.
The time for a credible U.S. warning to Beijing is now, not after hostilities have begun. China has long been preparing for an overt move against Taiwan and is presently conducting extensive new military exercises around the island. Taiwan’s Defense Ministry reports China is massing the largest number of warships since Taiwan’s first direct presidential election in 1996 when, according to a traumatized Clinton administration, China and the U.S. almost came to blows.
President Clinton had sent the USS Nimitz and USS Independence carrier battle groups toward the Taiwan Strait but abruptly turned them away when Beijing threatened a “sea of fire” if they entered. Kurt Campbell, then-assistant Defense secretary, has repeatedly called the episode “Our own Cuban missile crisis. …We had stared into the abyss.” Now deputy secretary of State, he and other Clinton and Obama veterans are unlikely to endorse the kind of robust Biden-Trump collaboration suggested here as the most effective deterrent against Chinese adventurism.
Biden should repeat, strongly and clearly, that his administration will intervene militarily if China attacks or blockades any part of Taiwan — this time without any diluting “clarification” from his administration. Trump should endorse the statement and commit to continue the deterrent policy after Jan. 20.
Their joint warning to Xi should also include a promise to recognize Taiwan’s political and diplomatic independence if China commences hostilities. Biden and Trump should declare that war means Taiwanese independence, reversing Beijing’s perpetual threats that “independence means war.” They should remind Beijing that the Taiwan Relations Act states, “[E]stablish[ing diplomatic relations with the People’s Republic of China rests upon the expectation that the future of Taiwan will be determined by peaceful means.”
Finally, to reinforce the message, Biden or Trump should send a carrier battle group through the Taiwan Strait for the first time since 2007, which would only be the second such transit since 1995. China, which had no carriers when it blocked the U.S. in 1996, now has three, which treat the international waters of the strait like a Chinese lake.
Official reports of strait passages by smaller U.S. combatants — Freedom of Navigation Operations — seem to have fallen off in recent months. The time for realistic and credible deterrence by both Biden and Trump is at hand, before Xi concludes the presidential transition gives him a green light on Taiwan.
Joseph Bosco served as China country director for the secretary of Defense from 2005 to 2006 and as Asia-Pacific director of humanitarian assistance and disaster relief from 2009 to 2010. He is a nonresident fellow at the Institute for Corean-American Studies, a member of the advisory board of the Global Taiwan Institute and member of the advisory board of The Vandenberg Coalition.
