The Foreign Service Journal, June 2023

THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL | JUNE 2023 21 SPEAKING OUT Standing by Taiwan and Its Democracy Why Statecraft Is Not Just About Avoiding Conflict BY ROBERT S . WANG Robert S. Wang, a retired Foreign Service officer, is a senior associate with the Center for Strategic and International Studies and an adjunct professor at Georgetown University’s Walsh School of Foreign Service. During a 32-year career with the Department of State, Mr. Wang served overseas in Tokyo, Hong Kong, Shanghai, Singapore, Taiwan, and Beijing, where he was deputy chief of mission from 2011 to 2013. He served as the U.S. senior official for Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (2013-2015) and retired in 2016. A ccording to the Taiwan Min- istry of National Defense, China’s warplane incursions into Taiwan’s air defense identification zone (ADIZ) nearly doubled in 2022, with a surge in fighter jet and bomber sorties, and China launching the largest war games in decades after a visit by United States House Speaker Nancy Pelosi in August. China sent 1,727 planes into Taiwan’s ADIZ in 2022, compared with around 960 incursions in 2021 and 380 in 2020. Last year also witnessed China’s first use of drones, with all 71 reported by Taiwan’s military coming after Pelosi’s visit. Going into 2023, Taiwan reported that 57 Chinese aircraft and four warships were detected near Taiwan on January 9 as part of joint combat training exercises. It said 28 of the aircraft either crossed the median line of the Taiwan Strait or breached the southwestern perimeter of Taiwan’s ADIZ. This was the second round of mili- tary exercises conducted by the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) around Taiwan over two weeks since President Joe Biden had signed the 2023 National Defense Authorization Act into law on Dec. 23, authorizing $10 billion in loans to Taiwan to buy weapons from the United States over the next five years. Since then, Taiwan has reported that the PLA now conducts military aircraft incursions across the median line on an almost daily basis and continues to send squadrons of fighter jets into Taiwan’s ADIZ. Heightened Concerns China’s rapid escalation of military threats against Taiwan has prompted a sharp increase in concerns about an imminent outbreak of a cross-Strait conflict, and many analysts are now urg- ing the United States to take steps to ease tensions and avoid conflict across the Taiwan Strait. For instance, in an October 2022 For- eign Affairs article, former Deputy Assis- tant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific AffairsThomas J. Christensen and a task force of U.S.-China experts argued that while the United States needs to adapt and strengthen defense preparations to deter the PRC, it must also provide assur- ances to Beijing that the United States will not take actions to support Taiwan independence. They recommended the United States maintain “strategic ambigu- ity” and “avoid symbolic political gestures that needlessly aggravate Beijing.” In another, more recent Foreign Affairs (January-February 2023) article, U.S. ana- lysts Jude Blanchette and Ryan Hass went further, recommending the United States not focus narrowly on military solutions that escalate tensions with China and stoke fear in Taiwan. The United States must not back Chinese leader Xi Jinping into a corner. “The sole metric on which U.S. policy should be judged is whether it helps preserve peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait—not whether it solves the ques- tion of Taiwan once and for all or keeps Taiwan permanently in the United States’ camp,” they stated. The United States, they said, needs to understand China’s anxiet- ies and convince Beijing that unification belongs to a distant future. Finally, Blanchette and Hass argued, the United States should resist casting the Taiwan problem as a contest between authoritarianism and democracy, Beijing’s ultimate goal is to create uncer- tainty about U.S. commitments in order to erode the confidence of the Taiwan people.