By Donald Kirk
China's claims to Taiwan bear a disturbing resemblance to Russia's war with Ukraine. You just cannot ignore the similarities and parallels despite the geographic differences.
Sure, Ukraine is right next to Russia, and Taiwan is about 100 miles from the Chinese mainland. Still, Russia's President Vladimir Putin and China's President Xi Jinping are soulmates in their drive to recover territory that they're convinced, historically, is theirs.
In each case, chances for their success depend partly on the willingness of the United States and some of its allies to rush to the defense of the beleaguered land.
In Ukraine, the U.S. and its NATO allies have pumped in billions of dollars' worth of weaponry but are not willing to risk their own war with Russia by imposing a "no fly zone" where they would inevitably clash with Russian planes. From there, the war could escalate into the bombing of Russian air fields and Russian attacks on NATO bases, some of them American.
Taiwan is a little different. The Chinese have yet to attack the independent island state. So far, they've just shown what they might do by staging exercises around the island, at sea and in the air, and also on the mainland, from which they would launch an attack. Life in Taiwan goes on free from war, just the fear that someday China may decide to recover the island by force.
It's tempting to hold the American congresswoman, Nancy Pelosi, speaker of the House of Representatives and second in line for the presidency, responsible for exacerbating tensions by insisting on going there.
All her trip really did, however, was expose China's seriousness about taking over the island. In turn, China's dramatic response should impel Taiwan to vastly improve its defenses. The United States, adhering to its "one China" policy, has no troops or even advisers on the island, but the Americans are pumping in hundreds of millions of dollars' worth of arms.
Japan is also all for defending Taiwan, but the Japanese are inhibited by Article 9 of their postwar "Peace Constitution" that bars Japan from waging war for any purpose other than self-defense of its own homeland ― hence the euphemistic name "Self-Defense Forces" for Japan's army, navy and air force.
The Chinese, calculating the possible response to an invasion of Taiwan, would have to consider the chances of Japan's highly conservative leadership ramming through a constitutional revision that would enable Japan to support Taiwan militarily.
It was not until Pelosi got to South Korea that South Korea's view of the defense of Taiwan became quite plain. She must have gotten a sense of the South Korean mood when she and her entourage, five other members of Congress, etc., landed at Osan Air Base after their long day in Taipei.
It was night, and she might say, politely, that she didn't want to keep any South Koreans up so late just to greet her, but she was said later to be quite offended that no South Korean officials were on hand.
And then, what was she to make of the refusal of the conservative President Yoon Suk-yeol, alone among the leaders of the five capitals she visited, to make time to see her. Nobody believed the excuse that Yoon was on vacation.
Finally, avoiding a total snub, the president talked to her and her congressional colleagues for 40 minutes on the phone after she and they had had a long conversation and then luncheon with the speaker of South Korea's National Assembly, Kim Jin-pyo.
Interestingly, he's a member of the Democratic Party of Korea (DPK), which has the majority in the Assembly. Pelosi, as a dynamic force in America's Democratic Party, no doubt enjoyed exchanging views with him.
One topic they did not discuss, at least to judge from their brief statements, was Taiwan. Nor did they talk much, if at all, about China. Pelosi had to have been advised, indeed told, not to mention Taiwan, and the less said about China, the better. The reason obviously is that South Korea has to remain on good terms with both China, its biggest trading partner, and the U.S., bound to the South in a long-standing alliance.
Pelosi no doubt found common ground with Yoon on "deterrence" against North Korea. On a quick trip to the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) between the two Koreas, she stared across the line at North Korea and met the American commander in South Korea, General Paul LaCamera.
There was no media coverage while she was up there. She resumed talking about Taiwan in Japan. If her stopover in South Korea revealed anything, it was that the U.S. and South Korea don't see eye to eye on Taiwan.
Donald Kirk (www.donaldkirk.com) has been covering the confrontation of forces in Asia for decades.
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Sure, Ukraine is right next to Russia, and Taiwan is about 100 miles from the Chinese mainland. Still, Russia's President Vladimir Putin and China's President Xi Jinping are soulmates in their drive to recover territory that they're convinced, historically, is theirs.
In each case, chances for their success depend partly on the willingness of the United States and some of its allies to rush to the defense of the beleaguered land.
In Ukraine, the U.S. and its NATO allies have pumped in billions of dollars' worth of weaponry but are not willing to risk their own war with Russia by imposing a "no fly zone" where they would inevitably clash with Russian planes. From there, the war could escalate into the bombing of Russian air fields and Russian attacks on NATO bases, some of them American.
Taiwan is a little different. The Chinese have yet to attack the independent island state. So far, they've just shown what they might do by staging exercises around the island, at sea and in the air, and also on the mainland, from which they would launch an attack. Life in Taiwan goes on free from war, just the fear that someday China may decide to recover the island by force.
It's tempting to hold the American congresswoman, Nancy Pelosi, speaker of the House of Representatives and second in line for the presidency, responsible for exacerbating tensions by insisting on going there.
All her trip really did, however, was expose China's seriousness about taking over the island. In turn, China's dramatic response should impel Taiwan to vastly improve its defenses. The United States, adhering to its "one China" policy, has no troops or even advisers on the island, but the Americans are pumping in hundreds of millions of dollars' worth of arms.
Japan is also all for defending Taiwan, but the Japanese are inhibited by Article 9 of their postwar "Peace Constitution" that bars Japan from waging war for any purpose other than self-defense of its own homeland ― hence the euphemistic name "Self-Defense Forces" for Japan's army, navy and air force.
The Chinese, calculating the possible response to an invasion of Taiwan, would have to consider the chances of Japan's highly conservative leadership ramming through a constitutional revision that would enable Japan to support Taiwan militarily.
It was not until Pelosi got to South Korea that South Korea's view of the defense of Taiwan became quite plain. She must have gotten a sense of the South Korean mood when she and her entourage, five other members of Congress, etc., landed at Osan Air Base after their long day in Taipei.
It was night, and she might say, politely, that she didn't want to keep any South Koreans up so late just to greet her, but she was said later to be quite offended that no South Korean officials were on hand.
And then, what was she to make of the refusal of the conservative President Yoon Suk-yeol, alone among the leaders of the five capitals she visited, to make time to see her. Nobody believed the excuse that Yoon was on vacation.
Finally, avoiding a total snub, the president talked to her and her congressional colleagues for 40 minutes on the phone after she and they had had a long conversation and then luncheon with the speaker of South Korea's National Assembly, Kim Jin-pyo.
Interestingly, he's a member of the Democratic Party of Korea (DPK), which has the majority in the Assembly. Pelosi, as a dynamic force in America's Democratic Party, no doubt enjoyed exchanging views with him.
One topic they did not discuss, at least to judge from their brief statements, was Taiwan. Nor did they talk much, if at all, about China. Pelosi had to have been advised, indeed told, not to mention Taiwan, and the less said about China, the better. The reason obviously is that South Korea has to remain on good terms with both China, its biggest trading partner, and the U.S., bound to the South in a long-standing alliance.
Pelosi no doubt found common ground with Yoon on "deterrence" against North Korea. On a quick trip to the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) between the two Koreas, she stared across the line at North Korea and met the American commander in South Korea, General Paul LaCamera.
There was no media coverage while she was up there. She resumed talking about Taiwan in Japan. If her stopover in South Korea revealed anything, it was that the U.S. and South Korea don't see eye to eye on Taiwan.
Donald Kirk (www.donaldkirk.com) has been covering the confrontation of forces in Asia for decades.
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