Lethe
Captain
I think White's comments about cultural adaptation contain both descriptive and prescriptive elements, i.e. what he thinks is happening and predicts to happen, but also what he thinks should happen. I'd like to think that he's right, that our European attachments will gradually be attenuated to form merely part of a more complex national identity that is more capable of, amongst other things, regarding the rise of non-Anglo powers with greater equanimity and less visceral alarm, i.e. to treat the rise of China more like most of our regional neighbours appear to do. I'd like to think that's what will happen across the decades and generations to come. But I'm also reminded that great changes bring about great resistance that can manifest in spectacular and perhaps even disastrous forms. To take a relatively benign example, Hugo Young wrote the following in 1998:
"This is the story of fifty years in which Britain struggled to reconcile the past she could not forget with the future she could not avoid. A story of an attitude to history itself and to a question: could Britain accept that her modern destiny was to be a European country?"
In 2016, the vote came in.
White certainly takes the prospect of war over Taiwan very seriously. He believes that conflict between the United States and China over Taiwan is entirely plausible, and that it could well escalate to the nuclear dimension. He believes that any such conflict would destroy America's strategic position in Asia, either because Washington ultimately chooses not to fight, or because they do fight -- and lose. This leads to his prescriptions for Australia, which are (1) that we should stay out any such conflict and (2) that we should attempt to persuade Washington to adopt a more sustainable posture that reduces the chance of catastrophic conflict, including by clarifying to Washington in advance that we will not join them in war over Taiwan.
I think it's fair to say that White views the Taiwan issue in large part as the lynchpin of a broader strategic contest between the USA and China. It may be that he doesn't grasp the full range of history and sentiment behind the Taiwan issue, specifically. But nor is he entirely ignorant on the subject. Those who believe that Australia should join the United States in a conflict over Taiwan often assert the latter as the first domino in an eventual Chinese conquest of the Pacific, i.e. Imperial Japan 2.0. White rejects this argument, noting that Taiwan is a unique case grounded in specific historical circumstances, such that the threatened or actual annexation of Taiwan does not presage further territorial ambitions over e.g. Australia. Note that above is merely my own understanding of White's positions and should not be taken as definitive.
On the substance of the comments that you quoted, Beijing may well be prepared to go to war over Taiwan, but they would almost certainly prefer to achieve a satisfactory resolution to that issue through means short of war, because war entails serious costs and risks. The prospects for achieving this inherently depend upon understanding how other parties are likely to react in particular circumstances, which in turn depends upon how those other parties perceive the balance of power, the interests they have at stake, and the likely consequences of certain courses of action. This interplay of signals and perceptions, and potential miscalculations, is where White's analogy becomes relevant. To take a more contemporary example, Russia was evidently prepared to go to war over the strategic dispensation of Ukraine. Russia also clearly preferred to achieve its objectives in Ukraine through means short of war; ultimately, the war that Russia has found itself in clearly differs considerably from that which Moscow originally envisioned. Conversely, it's clear that many European nations misjudged both the depth of Russia's commitment to preventing Ukraine from acceding to NATO or otherwise emerging as a strategic threat, and also Russia's willingness and capacity to pursue that objective even at great cost.
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