Background: https://www.cnbc.com/2023/03/07/chinas-new-foreign-minister-qin-gang-holds-first-press-briefing.html
What is the rational course for US foreign policy regarding e.g. the Taiwan problem? What is China's? What is Taiwan's? Are the US, China, and Taiwan currently acting in rational ways in regards to this geopolitical issue? If not, why? If every actor was acting rationally, would this result in the possibility of cooperation to solve the problem peacefully? Or does at least one actor's rational course of action necessarily put them on a 'collision course' with the others? Or, worse, for this situation, is it possible that it is in every actors' most rational course of action to desire the same peaceful resolution/treaty, but some type of tragic coordination problem renders this impossible?
To avoid this being a culture war topic, let's avoid talking about what type of resolution would be best in the sense of most moral, just, etc. Let's only discuss what would be the most rational course of action for every party involved, whatever that may mean.
Of course there have been many attempts to solve geopolitics in the past (see: the various schools of international relations theory). Even still, I'd hope that this wouldn't prevent us from having a discussion of our own about this. Most schools of IR theory attempt to explain why nations do what they do, and some schools ascribe this to possibly non-rational reasons e.g. social constructivism which says that sometimes culture of a nation might explain that nation's actions, and of course often times cultures can hold irrational beliefs or encourage irrational actions. Other schools e.g. realism attempt to explain international relations by stating that nations are rational actors at least as wealth/power-maximizers, but this is obviously contentions, and even if true it could be said that nations that always act as wealth/power-maximizers are not acting rationally, etc.
I'll start the discussion by giving an example of what I consider to be an extreme version of an irrational geopolitical actor, and one for whose actual historical actions have well-understood explanations other than rational behavior: the Empire of Japan after the Meiji restoration. At a certain point it became clear to many Japanese elites that their country was on an undesirable path, one that put them on a collision course with the United States. This war was correctly predicted by many Japanese leaders to be an un-winnable war, if not at least a highly undesirable one. With this in mind, it would probably have been 'most rational' for Japan to abandon their colonial possessions in Manchuria and Korea in the interwar period in order to avoid war with the US, rather than starting a new and more ambitious war with China to try and expand their empire to acquire the natural resources required to prop up those colonies, instead. However, due to ideological sentiment, any Japanese leader against the expansion of empire was essentially selected against by a series of ultranationalist assassins, leaving only irrationally hawkish leaders to direct their country in terms of foreign policy. Thus, Japan irrationally went to war in China, which eventually brought them into war with the US which was disastrous for them.
And, I will provide examples of what I consider to be rational geopolitical actors, as well: both the US and the Soviet Union during the Cuban missile crisis. The Soviet Union initially began to emplace nukes in cuba for a variety of reasons, but for one because they correctly determined that they were at a disadvantage in terms of MAD and putting nukes in cuba could bring more core American territory into range, in order to better ensure their deterrence against a US first strike. Ensuring national security against that of e.g. nuclear destruction, for example, seems to me like a rational goal. The US felt rationally quite threatened by the development, and as well felt their global political situation was threatened unless the responded properly, and so there was a crisis. The US considered doing nothing, which is a rational thing to at least consider, but correctly concluded that a better outcome for their own self-interest could be reached by brinksmanship. The US (namely, Kennedy) also rationally decided against a full scale invasion of cuba despite the unanimous advice of the joint chiefs, probably correct in his assumption that an escalation such as that would have been beyond the pale, and would probably be matched by a soviet invasion of at least west berlin, etc, which would necessitate further escalation, and so reasoned again that a better resolution could be reached through diplomacy. Eventually, the crisis was resolved through a decently clever compromise, with the nuclear disarmament of cuba in exchange for the secret nuclear disarmament of turkey -- a resolution which involved both actors properly considering the others' positions and being willing to make concessions in order to accommodate for the other's circumstances, rather than being driven by ideology, pride, etc. at least in and of themselves. Khrushchev is considered to have lost face from this outcome, and it perhaps seriously contributed to his eventual ousting two years later, but considering the alternative was potentially nuclear armageddon, (i.e. a situation which would have greatly harmed the Soviet Union) it seems notably rational to have leaders at the helm of your nation willing to lose face/sacrifice their own personal career in order to achieve better outcomes for the nation as a whole such as not having it destroyed by nuclear bombs. If any actor can be said to be irrational in this situation, it might be the United States considering that there is an argument to be made that nukes in cuba wouldn't have seriously worsened the soviet nuclear threat and that Kennedy/US was more beheld to the irrational whims of the US public, and that they should have been the ones to rationally decide to take the PR hit by 'losing' the crisis in order to avert even the risk of extremely negative outcomes posed by engaging in brinksmanship. However, I think both the US and the USSR acted rationally enough on balance, at least to demonstrate enough individual examples of rational international relations behavior over the course of the historical anecdote, for the example of them as 'rational' to be sufficient.
With this in mind, how should we describe the geopolitical courses of China, the US, and Taiwan regarding the problem of Taiwanese sovereignty? Are any, or perhaps multiple of the involved actors making decisions meaningfully similar to imperial Japan on the leadup to war with the US i.e. irrationally? If so, why? Or are any or perhaps multiple of the involved actors acting more like the US/USSR during the cuban missile crisis, i.e. acting rationally -- but perhaps still on a collision course, even possibly on a collision course with other rational actors?
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Notes -
I'll also start by answering the question first: it seems to me like it might be most rational for the US to concede Taiwan to China. Overall, cooperation with China in a broad range of other areas such as economy seems ideal if possible, and excepting that, at least avoiding war or any significant possibility of it. In order to avoid being enemies and thus able to cooperate, at least one side ceding, or at least, accepting something other than their ideal outcome re: Taiwan seems necessary. Additionally, despite many arguments I've heard to the contrary, I haven't been convinced that Taiwan is of significant geopolitical importance to the US in the grand scheme of things, at least enough to justify large risks like nuclear war or even large opportunity costs like not being able to cooperate with China. The biggest obstacles for the US to simply concede Taiwan to China seem to me to be 1. doing so publicly would damage US credibility with its allies 2. control of semiconductor production and 3. ideology/public opinion/feelings. Of these, only 1. and 2. are really rational reasons to attempt to prevent Chinese absorption of Taiwan. It seems to me that if the US could construct conditions where Taiwan actually became willing to join China i.e. anything from encouraging cross strait relations to conducting psy-ops intended to influence Taiwanese public opinion towards reunification, then obstacles 1. and 3. could be abrogated. Obstacle 2. could be abrogated simply by constructing alternative equally-advanced semiconductor plants in places fully within US control. Thus, it seems to me that the most rational course of US action regarding Taiwan might be to construct alternative semiconductor plants, influence public opinion in Taiwan toward reunification, and then permit as much with China. At least, this seems rational in a situation where one expects China not to themselves be willing to cede Taiwan, or continue to be satisfied with the currently-acceptable status-quo for much longer, at least not without the US having to resort to unacceptably-risky brinksmanship or war, or even at the price of significant economic opportunity cost such as fully decoupling the two economies.
Have you heard about how big a deal the First Island Chain is strategically? I discuss it above.
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Only if by "rational" you mean "optimizing utility on the shortest timeframe possible". I don't think people failing the marshmallow test are considered irrational, but I think it's commonly understood they are less successful at achieving their goals in the long run, and lose competitively to people that pass the test. On the shortest timeframe, it always "rational" to surrender, because surrendering ensures short-term survival, while fighting is inherently risky. On the longer timeframe, always choosing surrender leads to being a lowest-rank individual, which provides poor access to resources and opportunities, and ultimately leads to extinction of the associated gene line.
Also, considering public opinion is not "irrational". The public opinion mechanisms (treating it expansively, not just as responding to the polls) is why people form societies and not just live in a landscape of wild roaming sub-Dunbar bands. Dismissing it means dismissing a key mechanism driving the whole societies. Even a totalitarian society has to account for the existence of public opinion (even though it exists in significantly different form than in a democracy) but it a democratic society, not accounting for it is plain silly.
If you just proven it's rational to let Taiwan be taken rather than go to war and break profitable economic ties - why China shouldn't be expected to be rational too and arrive to the same conclusion? Yet, you seem to expect the opposite to happen, and treat is as an obviously the only possible conclusion. Do you think China is inherently irrational, or somehow same things are rational for China but not for other countries?
I have to say, arguments for conceding territories to rising powers/superpowers, for whatever reason, reminds me of the Biblical story of Esau selling his birthright for some lentil stew--and I don't consider myself particularly religious. Who's to say that a Taiwan concession would not indeed be a birthright sale? A seemingly harmless trade to avoid immediate calamity in the short term might well prove disastrous long-term.
Except that it isn't even "seemingly harmless" - we already know, both on historical examples and current analysis, that there will be huge downsides and costs. We're just postponing dealing with those costs until later - and somehow hope it'll be ok, because we want to avoid immediate costs. I'm not sure my definition of "rational" includes such behavior, unless we somehow are restricted to a very short time horizon - like we know for sure The Sweet Meteor Of Death is coming in five years, so we want at least live out these years calmly and happily.
Which btw reminds me that we're probably not doing ourselves a very good service electing 80-year old people to be our leaders...
If you think AI timelines are short and that a Taiwan war would increase P(Doom) (e.g. literal Skynets get deployed and normalised), then the argument mostly writes itself.
(I am not at all convinced that it would increase P(Doom); I would be very surprised if it had no effect, but one can definitely tell a story where it's decreased instead - e.g. it goes nuclear quickly and the US destroys China, thus mostly ending the great-power competition that makes Skynet systems attractive.)
We are vey far from skynets now, and there seems to be no desire from the military to grab it and run with it (if anything, US military is more occupied by getting woke than by anything else). Even if China somehow makes breakthrough and develops a skynet, not sure how it'd help them in taking Taiwan - they don't lack anything for it that would be helped by having a skynet. So I don't see how gifting Taiwan to China changes anything - if Chinese have the capability to develop a skynet (which I don't think they do), and would think it would be beneficial to them, then they would develop it anyway. I think unless you deny agency to every nation in the world besides the US - which some people who are automatically attribute all problems in the world to "US meddling" clearly do - there's no scenario in which "China + Taiwan" is less dangerous than just China. Especially given that controlling Taiwan means controlling large amount of electronic manufacturing - which, guess what, would be necessary for making a skynet. Unless, of course, the end goal of the scenario is crippling US AI capabilities, as the only nation capable of developing a skynet, and assuming no other nation would be able to do it.
The scenario I'm positing (which, again, I am highly sceptical of; I was steelmanning) looks something like "maybe we could have agreed to not make nukes if they'd been invented in peacetime, but they were invented in wartime, they were used because you can't negotiate arms control in the middle of a war, and then that set the precedent". There's evidence currently that drone swarms are very potent, and using AI to control the whole swarm (i.e. a Skynet) is an obvious further force multiplier. The questions are whether hammering out a "drone swarms are warcrimes" treaty is possible to begin with*, whether it's plausible it'd be followed in case of a later hot war (although preventing stockpiling in peacetime is itself good, just less good), and whether it's plausible a Taiwan war would go on conventionally long enough for drone swarms to be a big thing (as opposed to a quick peace, or escalation into a nuclear exchange which would end the war and greatly ease tensions).
*The historical record isn't very reassuring here, but on the other hand note that if we can't co-ordinate to ban actual Skynets then we're probably doomed anyway.
I think you overestimate the value of negotiating. Things like chemical weapons weren't largely phased out because they were effective but high-minded people managed to convince the generals not to use them. They were phased out because generals discovered dumping explosives on the enemy is much more efficient, and the fact that for some reason high-minded people hate them less for it is just a pleasant bonus. So if the generals find out AI-controlled drone swarms are effective, they start using it, and no negotiation will help any, because the defectors would just smash the opposition with their hordes of AI-controlled drones and laugh at all the signed treaties. Negotiations hold when the BATNA is bad. If you have a functioning army of AI-controlled drones, and your opponents don't, you BATNA doesn't look that bad.
The only alternative is that some superpower for some reason would threaten to smash anyone who uses the drones by other, no less effective, means and nobody would be able to withstand their might, but for some reason that superpower is reluctant to use AI-powered drones. That requires single pre-established superpower that has near-religious superstitions against the AI. It could happen that the US (or, if US keeps electing nonagenarians and obsessing about pronouns in the military, China) would take on itself such a role, but so far I don't see any signs of it happening. The US is not nearly powerful enough to pull off such things, and doesn't seem to want to be - half of the US wants to sit on their backyard and grill, and another half wants to destroy the Western civilization to atone for the sins of centuries past.
Giving up Taiwan would certainly prove once and for all that US is not that power. And would eliminate any reason to negotiate with the US - if we don't, what they'd do? Put a hashtag out on Twitter? Which would put the pressure on the US to develop their own drone swarms, because clearly all the bad guys aren't afraid of anything anymore and they are doing it, so we must too, or our grilling would be threatened, and that's unacceptable. Summarily, I don't see any scenario where US giving up does not raise the probability of any arms race. I can't think of any example where unilateral disarmament made the opponent more peaceful and less willing to develop and deploy new weaponry.
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