Bill Emmott: Show of strength by US and allies needed to keep China in check over Taiwan

By Bill Emmott, independent writer, lecturer and international affairs consultant

In hindsight, wars often look as if they were inevitable. Tensions were building up. National ambitions were clashing. Mutual fears and suspicions were growing. Historical grievances were simmering. Yet in truth they are never inevitable. They depend on decisions made by men — leaders ordering wars have almost always been men — who could have chosen to act differently.

I have been thinking about this a lot over the past year, because I have been researching and writing a new book about the risk of a war breaking out between China and the United States. The title of the book, just published in Japanese by Fusosha, is “How to Stop World War Three”, which you might think is somewhat dramatic.

Would a war between the U.S. and China really become counted as “World War Three”? And could it be stopped? The answer to the first is obvious: this would be the first war in history between two nuclear-armed superpowers, and it would be a war that would determine the nature of global leadership for decades to come. With stakes so high, we have to expect that such a conflict would widen to include other countries, including Japan, and, sadly, that it would escalate to include the use of nuclear weapons.

The answer to the second question is, however, more reassuring and takes us back to the question of inevitability. If such a war were to start, it would be the result either of a deliberate calculation made by one side about the prospects of prevailing, for example over an invasion of Taiwan; or it would be an impulsive response to an accident or incident, for example over a collision in the South China Sea, as a result of which both sides failed to understand each other’s actions or intentions.

In either case, the issue is one chiefly of psychology and of the decisions made by political and military leaders. If such a catastrophic war is to be stopped from happening, what has to be focused on is that psychology and how to alter the decisions leaders make, in order to preserve peace and avoid war.

This is one of the most important lessons to be learned from the war that Russia launched against Ukraine, first by seizing the Ukrainian province of Crimea in 2014 and then by making a full-scale invasion in February 2022. That war was inevitable only if President Vladimir Putin of Russia decided that he wanted, regardless of the costs, to try to seize back a former Russian colony that had been made independent by one of his Russian predecessors in 1991. That is what he did decide, and Ukrainians and Russians are still bearing the consequences.

Could he have been persuaded to make a different decision? Two years’ later, it looks as if two things could have altered his calculations. The first would have been if he had seen that the Ukrainian army was so well trained and equipped, and so well supported by Ukrainian society, that it would be likely to put up strong enough resistance to make his invasion highly costly and time-consuming.

This did in fact prove to be the case, which is why more than two years later he has succeeded in occupying only about 20% of Ukraine’s territory at the cost of an estimated 110,000-140,000 deaths of Russian soldiers, and a much larger number of severely wounded.

He expected Ukraine’s army to surrender easily, perhaps within a few days, so this must count as a terrible misjudgement on his part. Had he known in advance what the costs would be and how little progress the Russian military would have made two years later, it is reasonable to doubt whether he would have ordered the invasion.

The second thing that could have altered his calculations would have been a belief that American or other NATO forces would enter the war in support of Ukraine. In this case, President Joe Biden and other NATO leaders ruled out their forces’ participation right from the start, so Putin’s judgement about this was well informed. And he has used the threat of the use of nuclear weapons to make sure that NATO leaders do not change their minds.

The war in Ukraine has been a terrible tragedy and a terrible mistake on the part of Russia and, let us not forget, its “strategic partner”, China. Russia and China signed a joint statement about their aims and ambitions just three weeks before Putin ordered the full invasion of Ukraine. Yet that tragedy could yet bring some good, if its lessons can help prevent a far more catastrophic war from breaking out in the Indo-Pacific.

The crucial point is that psychology is paramount. An attempted Chinese invasion or blockade of Taiwan is inevitable only if Chinese leaders decide to do this, rather than just talking about it. As Ukraine has reminded us, that decision can be prevented in two main ways.

The biggest way is if China’s leaders can be convinced that, unlike in the case of Ukraine, American and other allied forces would come swiftly to aid Taiwan’s defence, so China would be fighting America and not just Taiwan. President Biden said on four occasions during 2021-22 that he was committed to doing this, precisely to deter a copycat invasion of Taiwan.

Whoever wins the U.S. presidential election in November should repeat this commitment at the earliest opportunity, and then repeat it again. Uncertainty about a new president’s intentions represents the biggest danger to peace, for it could tempt President Xi Jinping to follow Putin by making the wrong calculation.

That commitment needs to be accompanied by reassurance that America continues to oppose a formal declaration of independence by Taiwan, but also by sterner words warning of the danger of mutual nuclear destruction if war were to break out. The old Cold War framework of nuclear arms agreements needs to be resurrected for the U.S.-China era.

Alongside such commitments, efforts also need to be made to convince China that the defence forces in Taiwan and those surrounding it in Japan, the Philippines, U.S. bases and South Korea are strong and nimble enough to play a decisive and resilient part in the event of a conflict. If China were to conclude that an invasion would be a walkover, it would be much likelier to attempt one.

Those efforts are under way, in Japan and its allies, and the important thing is that such military build-ups continue, year after year, decade after decade. The old saying from the Roman Empire remains sadly true: If you want peace, prepare for war. The psychology of leaders and their decision-making depends on it.