Blowback, Second Edition: The Costs and Consequences of American Empire

Meanwhile, America’s cold warriors continue to exacerbate tensions between the mainland and Taiwan through incessant saber rattling of various sorts. Some of this is done largely for partisan political advantage in the United States, some in hopes of selling extremely expensive if sometimes untested advanced weapons systems in the area. Some of it is instigated by paid lobbyists for Taiwan, which seeks to ensure that the United States would be drawn into any conflict in the area, even if Taiwan’s own policies provoked it. It must be stressed here that the United States has no basis in international law for intervening on Taiwan’s behalf in what is essentially a not-yet-fully-resolved civil war. Thus the tactics of American provocateurs in leaking false intelligence reports, prodding Japan into closer military cooperation with the United States, and promoting a theater missile defense (TMD) for the region are not only dangerous but potentially illegal.

On February 11, 1999, for example, American newspapers quoted unnamed sources at the Pentagon claiming that the “Chinese government has deployed more than 120 ballistic missiles, and possibly as many as 200, on its side of the Taiwan Strait. . . . Analysts said the deployment—at least a doubling of the previous number of missiles massed on China’s southern coast—is sure to fuel calls in the U.S. for including Taiwan in . . . the TMD.”¹ The following day, navy Captain Michael Doubleday, a Pentagon spokesman, publicly contradicted this by declaring that “China has not increased the number of missiles aimed at the island . . . since an early 1990s buildup.”² On February 26, Taiwan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, fearing perhaps being pressured into a major investment in an unproven, essentially nonexistent antimissile system, proclaimed its appreciation of U.S. concerns about peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait but added, “The policy of the ROC government is that cross-strait issues should be resolved with peaceful means.” On the other hand, in a statement typical of Taiwanese pressures in the area, Shaw Yu-ming, a high-ranking ROC official now affiliated with the Institute of International Relations at National Chengchi University, suggested that Taiwan might want to use the (false) Pentagon assessment as a basis to seek more arms sales from the United States.³

A missile defense system, if at all effective, would be particularly threatening from a mainland point of view. China lacks the capability to successfully invade and conquer Taiwan, but in the present highly nationalistic domestic climate, no mainland government could acquiesce in Taiwanese independence and survive. As a way to deter the island from declaring independence, China therefore threatens to respond with missiles. It does not want to do so, and it understands that Taiwan, in the face of an unprovoked attack from the mainland, would retaliate with massive force. The way to avoid conflict in the area is thus to perpetuate the status quo: continued self-government for Taiwan without a formal declaration of independence.

The American government’s attempt to promote the TMD in this context is an unwelcome provocation. Its untested technology will not, in the end, reassure the Taiwanese, while the Chinese fear it as the basis for a strengthened military alliance between Taiwan and the United States. Wang Daohan, a senior adviser to President Jiang Zemin, said to the press of a possible future deployment of the TMD in Taiwan, “It is like playing with fire. That will completely disrupt the current world situation, and instead a new Cold War will appear.”⁴

None of this is even slightly necessary. The United States needs to bring its own security apparatus under control and stop exaggerating the Chinese military threat. With regard to nuclear warheads, for example, between 1964, when China first tested a nuclear device, and 1996, when China signed the Comprehensive Test-Ban Treaty, it conducted 45 nuclear tests. The United States, in contrast, has conducted 1,030 nuclear tests, not including the actual atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Robert Walpole, the CIA’s national intelligence officer for strategic and nuclear programs, testified in September 1998 that China had at most twenty ICBMs, which were being maintained in an unfueled state and with their warheads unattached.⁵ Admiral Dennis C. Blair, commander in chief in the Pacific, testified before Congress in March 1999 that “China is not a military threat to U.S. interests. It will be many years before the People’s Liberation Army presents a major challenge to U.S. forces.”⁶ And yet, in that same month, the Senate voted 97-3 to build a “national missile defense” essentially against China and North Korea, and President Clinton endorsed spending some $10.6 billion on it over the coming five years. This is American overstretch, not a responsible national defense policy.