True, the US Will Not Enter a War for Taiwan

 True, the US Will Not Enter a War for Taiwan

United Daily News Editorial (Taipei, Taiwan)

May 19, 2019

 Translation of an Excerpt

Wang Yang, chairman of the Mainland’s Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference National Committee, recently talked to guests from Taiwan on two successive occasions, pointing out directly that "the US will not fight a war with China for Taiwan"; to Tsai Ing-wen, who has hoped that the United States will guarantee Taiwan's security, the sense of warning was very intense. Whether or not the United States would send troops to protect Taiwan is a very serious issue in Taiwan, which we could not ponder with a foolhardy emotional posture.

After Wang Yang told Taiwan media outlets on the 10^th that the United States would not fight a war with China for Taiwan, on May 16^th, he again pointed out to members of the 15th National Federation of Taiwan Business Associations on the Mainland that "even the man in the street knows that the United States only uses Taiwan as a chess piece; it would be extremely difficult to imagine that the United States would fight a war for Taiwan."

In fact, though it is worrisome that Trump wants to use Taiwan as a chess piece, it is even more horrible that Tsai Ing-wen has always wanted to be a chess game player. It is true that the two big powers, the US and China, are fiercely competing in a multiple of areas, from economics and trade, geopolitics to ideologies, all wanting to gain the upper hand; however, China’s military strength has been rising, while the US has many battlefronts, plus the fact that the effect of the nuclear threat, the US still has to consider the various possible consequences of an eventual full-scale conflict with China, thus it has been conservative so far.

Richard Bush, director of the Northeast Asian Studies at the Brookings Institution in Washington, DC, pointed out that Trump had asked his national security staff, “What good would there be for the US to support Taiwan?" After his national security staff indicated the pros and cons, Trump set his sights on Mainland China, where the US could get more benefits.

For small states, sandwiched between the two big powers, the US and China, their considerations will not be so well-rounded as the two big powers. Some small states may deliberately incite contradictions or conflicts between the two big powers because of ideology, national interests, personal political ideas, or personal political interests, eventually leading to war, ending in a lose-lose situation. The 2020 election campaign has been heating up, and the electoral prospects do not look good for the DPP; this is probably something that the Blue, the White, as well as the US and China need to take to heart.

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