In Geopolitics Today - Tuesday, July 20th
The Prudence of US Strategic Ambiguity Over Taiwan and Learning from the War in Afghanistan
The Prudence of Strategic Ambiguity Over Taiwan
As China grows, there are some in the United States who argue that the US should abandon its longstanding policy of strategic ambiguity toward Taiwan. The argument goes that the only way to deter any potential Chinese “aggression” toward Taiwan is for the United States to set clear red lines to Beijing.
Such a policy would aim to ‘win without fighting’ by making it clear to Beijing what consequences would follow any drastic Chinese action toward Taiwan, thereby shaping the costs associated with any such move to Chinese policymakers.
But there are some who disagree. Proponents of continued strategic ambiguity toward Taiwan say that the policy acts as a stabilizing force in US-China relations. Adherents of this view believe that the policy places the onus on China to upend the status quo, thereby minimising risks for the US. They see China’s leaders as rational actors who understand that aggressively overturning the status quo in Taiwan would be a costly endeavour for Beijing.
The danger of abandoning the present state of affairs regarding Taiwan — according to advocates of strategic ambiguity — is that a formal defence commitment between the US and Taiwan would alter Chinese policy calculations and lead to further insecurity. It would further enflame tensions in an already tense international environment if the United States were to enter into a defensive pact with Taiwan, considered a province by Beijing.
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Learning from the War in Afghanistan
Anthony H. Cordesman expects one residual effect of the US withdrawal from Afghanistan to be visible domestically. He foresees a fierce partisan political debate brewing which he believes will predictably focus on blaming the opposing party for America’s failures in Afghanistan, with neither party likely to delve into the specifics of the defeat.
But in the midst of this potential “who lost the war” debate playing out publicly before the mid-term election, Cordesman stresses the serious need to draw lessons for the United States and its allies from their experience in Afghanistan.
Cordesman, in writing a report for CSIS, seeks to do that just as he examines the range of civil and military lessons to be learned from the entire history of the war. His report finds that the US military had been tasked with trying to uphold a failed system of governance that didn’t support — and even often abused — a large part of the population. Other damning findings note that the US nation-building efforts constantly bred new insurgencies, impacting the surging civil and military costs of the mission.
The report concludes by raising the point of the cost of the war, particularly in relation to the lack of any clear or consistent strategic rationale for continual deployment. Cordesman’s findings raise questions as to whether the US should ever have committed the resources to the conflict in the first place. In the future, he notes the United States needs to be more careful in deciding if a conflict is worth fighting at all, and if so, whether or not to continue to do so is worth the costs.
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