If we look at US resolve to defend Taiwan, I think what happens in Ukraine could be very relevant.
From declassified historical documents from the Gorbachev days, we can see the Soviets were given multiple written assurances that there would be no NATO expansion eastwards. Yet NATO has ignored these pledges and Russia's protests on expansion into the former Soviet Bloc. After all, Russia was too weak to respond.
And put it this way, would the Soviets have contemplated withdrawing from Eastern Europe if they thought for a moment that NATO (their mortal enemy) was going to move in?
If you listen to Putin in recent interviews, Putin may have decided that NATO will just continue expanding into Ukraine unless something is done, and that this literally is a last stand to prevent a hostile military alliance establishing a firm base right next to Russia's core economic and industrial Motherland.
We also have Biden publicly saying that the US military will not intervene in Ukraine.
So at this point, it may well be that the only thing which will persuade Russia not to invade is a very public repudiation that NATO will ever expand in Ukraine. But that is simply bowing to the reality that allowing Ukraine to join NATO means that NATO now has an active war with Russia.
What happens next will have many lessons for overall Chinese strategy on Taiwan.
No, no, no.
Holy cow, trying to use the US policy to Russia-Ukraine as a bellwether or proxy or gauge for how US policy to China-Taiwan is at best msiguided, at worst it is dangerous.
For the US, the differences between RUS-UKR and CN-TW are so many, these are just the ones from the top of my head:
- The US has made it repeatedly clear that the pacific is its primary theater of interest, while other theaters (including Europe) are secondary, which is a recognition that China presents the most capable medium and long term geopolitical competitor to US power as a whole. Russia lacks such long term potential, and a Russian attack or invasion of Ukraine would not greatly change Russia's long term capability to challenge the US. Additionally, if the US intervenes in a Russian conflict, it would adversely affect their ability to focus on China and the pacific.
- RUS-UKR is largely a land war on a territory that has massive land borders with Russia, in a part of the world where the US has minimal pre-positioned land forces of its own, and in a recent historical context where the US despises to do overseas campaigns that rely heavily on "boots on the ground". CN-TW would largely be an air and naval war around an island where China shares no land border with Taiwan island and requires sealift and airlift to conduct an invasion, both of which in turn are much more vulnerable to even temporary moments of naval and air action to interdict them.
- Value of acquiring Ukraine vs value of acquiring Taiwan. Simply put, if Russia is able to say, successfully invade and annex the eastern 2/3rds of Ukraine (or even let's say the entirety of Ukraine), the change in Russia's long term geostrategic prospects does not get greatly altered. Yes, Russia now acquires a larger buffer for its western territories, but in the scale of the size of central and western Europe as a theater, such a buffer is relatively small. The value of Taiwan OTOH is much larger -- if China is able to successfully invade and reunify with Taiwan, not only does China now have direct access to the central pacific, but they now are also able to much more easily project power to the South China Sea and East China Sea, and in turn to more easily control the SLOCs of the western pacific at large, in turn having consequences of course for regional power dynamics.
- Nukes. At the moment, Russia's nuclear deterrence is simply much more capable than China's is, which places significantly more caution and pause in US willingness to outright directly get involved in conventional military conflict with.
Which is to say:
1. The US has much more reason and incentive to fight China over Taiwan, relative to reasons and incentives to fight Russia over Ukraine, due to not only the much greater long term geopolitical potential of China, but also the much greater geostrategic value of China successfully invading and reunifying Taiwan.
2. The US is much less deterred to avoid fighting China over Taiwan, relative to how deterred they are to fight Russia over Ukraine, due to a CN-TW conflict being largely air-naval in nature and thus playing much more to US strengths (than RUS-UKR which would be a largely land war), and also of course because of Russia's much more capable and devastating nuclear deterrent force.
It is important to see how the US reacts over Ukraine, but trying to apply US resolve, rationale and motivations over Ukraine to see how they might fit a Taiwan contingency must be absolutely treated with massive caution and careful limits.
I don't want this thread to become about Ukraine, but I think it is important to avoid generalizations when they're flawed.
