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 think a rational decision in any realm of geopolitics is one in which your side gets more from the actions it takes than it loses.
From the perspective of the USA and the West in general, the big issue isn’t Taiwan as Taiwan, but acces to the chip industry it houses. Other than that, it’s not important as a political entity. If Taiwan didn’t house the chip industry, it’s just another small country in Asia, perhaps a free market powerhouse economy (like Hong Kong was) but not special enough to warrant blood and treasure to safeguard it. As far as geography, I think defending it would be almost impossible. It’s too close to China to keep navy ships close enough to Taiwan to plausibly protect it from China without being close enough to China to be provocative. Which brings up another problem— you’d have to either fully commit to going to war over Taiwan before the invasion starts or you’re going to be too slow to respond to do anything about it.
From the perspective of Taiwan, it’s only really got two options. First, be valuable enough to the West that the West is willing to commit to war for their freedom, or slowly negotiate a peaceful resolution ceding control back to China. As an island, even if it’s plausible to hold off an invasion proper for a time, the ability of China to keep supplies from reaching Taiwan would mean this simply delays the conquest and prolongs suffering. So, more than likely the best option for a free Taiwan is in keeping the chips being made exclusively in Taiwan. Allowing manufacturing of Taiwanese chips outside of Taiwan erodes the only strategic advantage they have — being a supplier of chips the West cannot do without and doesn’t want China to have.
From the pov of China, there are two reasons to want Taiwan. First, it’s really close to the mainland and friendly with Western countries, making it a potential problem for Chinese trade and territorial ambitions. It would be like Cuba was to the Americans in the Cold War — a place that could easily be used as a forward base if their rivals wanted to invade or attack (Taiwan is closer than Cuba). The chip manufacturing is also important to China as it could then control even more global commerce via chips that are used in almost everything from pcs to washing machines and even military equipment. Third, it’s a public relations tool to reunite all Chinese people under CCP control as a happy family. The Chinese have always considered Taiwan a province of China. Making that real would be a major feather in the cap.
what’s interesting here is that the Taiwanese and the West are somewhat at odds over the chips. It is in Taiwan’s interest to keep everything in Taiwan because that’s the thing that’s going to make the West care enough to risk lives and treasure fighting against China — and it’s probably going to be a much steeper cost than anything we’ve done in the last 30 years. China has a modern military, modern equipment, and millions of soldiers. This isn’t Iraq. And if they do go to war, there’s another problem in that a lot of our goods, from clothing to manufactured products are made in China. Which means that a lot of consumer goods will be embargoed if we do go to war. This loss might make it difficult to fight the war and will almost certainly erode support for the war. For the West, getting manufacturing of those chips outside of Taiwan eliminates a problem of having to go to war with the country that makes most of the world’s manufactured goods.
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