Paul Hill: The implications of the War in Ukraine for the Taiwan Strait

Paul Hill, a former US intelligence officer, recently wrote on the "National Interest" website that the cause of the Crisis in Ukraine was that the United States ignored Russia's long-standing security concerns and warned the United States that it should learn a lesson and not repeat the same mistakes in the Taiwan region.

【Text/Paul Hill Translation/Observer Network by Guan Qun】

Over the past few weeks, many commentators have speculated about how the war in Ukraine would affect Taiwan. Washington's decision to support Ukraine through indirect military intervention and the U.S. focusing all of its attention on the Ukraine crisis could be interpreted by Beijing as the green light for an attack on Taiwan. Analysts have made many comparisons between Ukraine and Taiwan, most of which are invalid, mainly because Ukraine is a sovereign state and Taiwan is not recognized by most countries in the world.

Yes, Kiev's plight should remind Taipei of the need to strengthen its self-defence capabilities. But Beijing will not take advantage of this opportunity to attack Taiwan, mainly because it has not been looking for an opportunity to attack Taiwan( the region), but is looking for reasons not to attack Taiwan. In fact, as far as the Taiwan issue is concerned, the most important lessons from the Ukrainian crisis are not for Beijing or Taipei, but for Washington. This lesson involves ignoring history and shirking accusations.

One of the reasons President Vladimir Putin attacked Ukraine is his belief that over the past two decades the United States and its European allies have ignored Russia's security concerns and threat mentality, particularly on the eastward expansion of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). Many experts are rejecting this view, denying that the United States made assurances in the 1990s that NATO would not expand, and, more precisely, refuting Putin's claims that Ukraine or NATO's eastward expansion could pose a threat to Russia. Experts believe that other factors that drive Putin to commit such acts are more decisive, including contempt for democracy and Russia's tradition of revanchist. Today, the attack on Ukraine has made these views irrelevant. The problem of NATO's eastward expansion is no longer as simple as covering the water and making it difficult to recover.

Map of the nato-Russia standoff

The scholar Stephen Walter wrote last week, "One can believe that Russia's current actions are completely illegal, and one can also believe that the United States would have reduced the likelihood that such an act would have occurred if it had adopted a completely different set of policies over the past few decades." ”

Indeed, U.S. diplomat George Kennan — a prominent Russia expert and father of "containment" policies — famously predicted in 1997 that NATO expansion "would be America's deadliest mistake in the entire post-Cold War era" because it could "ignite a wave of nationalism, anti-Westernism, and militarism in Russian public opinion... Bring East-West engagement back into the Cold War atmosphere and push Russian foreign policy in a direction we absolutely do not like. (Note that this prediction was made long before Putin became Russia's leader.) And what is happening now confirms his prediction.

Washington is reluctant to admit, however, that it has supported NATO expansion over the past 25 years that has created the situation we face today. Instead, it attributes Putin's decision to invade Ukraine entirely to Russia's inherent imperialist and expansionist tendencies and/or Putin's inherent traits. Under this explanation, Washington's actions neither fueled nor discouraged Moscow's determined determination to reclaim Ukraine and make it part of Russia's sphere of influence, if not its annexation.

The possibility arose that Moscow and even Putin himself might be willing to accept a sovereign independent Ukraine indefinitely, as long as the West did not draw Ukraine into the U.S.-led sphere of influence. But as time went on, NATO's expansion gradually proceeded, the question of Ukraine's possible inclusion in NATO surfaced, and Putin's uneasiness and hostility grew.

The ouster of a pro-Russian Ukrainian president in 2014 fueled Putin's unease and prompted him to annex Ukraine's Crimea. Ultimately, Putin was not satisfied with the claim that Ukraine was not yet eligible for NATO and might not be considered eligible for a few years. In his view, only ensuring that Ukraine will never become a nato member will be enough to alleviate his fears that Ukraine may join hostile blocs and bring NATO to Russia's borders.

In the long run, even if Ukraine remains neutral, it may not be acceptable to Russia, and Russia will inevitably act to bring Ukraine into Moscow's sphere of influence. But what is certain is that even if Russia makes such a move, part of the reason will come from how it interprets the U.S. and NATO policy toward Ukraine, especially moscow's suspicion that Washington is determined to prevent Kiev from falling completely into Russian hands.

All this corresponds to the situation in Taiwan (region).

From Beijing's perspective, Washington's support for NATO expansion in Europe corresponds to its increased support for Taipei almost simultaneously. Ukraine gained independence and developed a democratic system after the collapse of the Soviet Union, which coincided with the democratization of Taiwan and the "rise" of China.

Over time, this has led to a shift in tactics and rhetoric in Washington's "one China" policy. For example, U.S. policy toward Taiwan began to incorporate the idea that any solution to the island's future must be agreed to by the people of Taiwan. This is similar to the situation in Ukraine, where Beijing, like Moscow, sees (Western-style) "democracy" as a potential threat to its strategic leanings.

Washington has also gradually upgraded the nature and scope of the "unofficial" relationship between the United States and Taiwan, and promoted Taiwan's participation in multilateral organizations and global affairs. This process is as gradual as NATO's gradual eastward expansion. NATO expansion is moving in the direction of bringing Ukraine into the U.S. sphere of influence, while U.S.-Taiwan relations are gradually moving toward "strategic alignment" under the premise of Beijing's damage. In fact, a senior biden administration official confirmed this in recent testimony before Congress. He described Taiwan as a strategic asset of the United States and "vital to defending U.S. Indo-Pacific interests." And the U.S. Congress is increasingly endorsing this view.

Beijing argues that this is a gradual U.S. occupation of an area vital to China, geographically close to it, and of strategic importance since ancient times — just as Moscow views Ukraine. Chinese leaders often complain to Washington and warn of the possible consequences of this trend, just as Putin has warned of the consequences of NATO's eastward expansion in Washington for decades.

Washington, however, has often denied any substantive changes to its "one-China" policy, instead attributing tensions in the Taiwan Strait solely to Beijing's "coercion" and uncompromising, expansionist ambitions, and/or the personal desire of the country's leaders to achieve reunification. Under this explanation, neither Washington nor Taipei has changed the status quo or abandoned its previous commitment to adhere to the "one China" policy.

But just as NATO's eastward expansion has gradually changed Russia's strategic environment in Europe, Washington and Taipei have fundamentally changed the status quo in the Taiwan Strait — Taipei is withdrawing from the "one-China" framework, and Washington is secretly supporting Taipei's withdrawal. Just as Moscow tolerated Ukraine's 30 years of independence because Ukraine was not included in the US/NATO sphere of influence to fight Russia, Beijing tolerated the separation of Taiwan from the mainland for 40 years because Washington recognized Beijing as "China's sole legitimate government" and denied that it had any intention of implementing a "one-china-one-Taiwan" policy. However, Beijing now believes that Washington has been moving in the direction of actually implementing this policy. Thus undermining China's security interests and sovereignty claims – just as NATO's eastward expansion has exacerbated Russia's security concerns.

One paradox here is that NATO's eastward expansion has fueled Russia's sense of threat, prompting Moscow to consider a robust response, which in turn seems to have exacerbated the threat it was supposed to guard against in part. Similarly, the "one-China" framework was designed to some extent to deny or prevent Taiwan's independence, and the United States' strengthening of its ties with Taiwan undermined Beijing's confidence in the "one-China" framework and spurred it to consider military action to ensure that the framework remained unchanged, thereby increasing the threat to Taiwan.

In fact, some observers seem to believe that it is precisely because Ukraine does not have western security guarantees that prompted Putin to decide to launch an attack, so Washington should preemptively give Taiwan a clear security guarantee - shelving the long-standing "strategic ambiguity" policy pursued by the United States and adopting a "strategic clarity" policy. But if it is precisely because NATO is likely to give Ukraine security guarantees that Putin invaded Ukraine, then the United States' declaration of protection of Taiwan is more likely to trigger a Chinese attack on Taiwan than to prevent such an attack.

The long-term impact of all this should be self-evident. Whatever the extent of Putin's attack on Ukraine is because Washington ignores Russia's concerns about NATO's eastward expansion, it is not hard to imagine that if Washington continues to ignore China's fears of erosion of the "one-China" framework and denies any responsibility for cross-strait tensions, Beijing could also be forced to use force against Taiwan at some unexpected time.

If Putin violently attacks Ukraine after concluding that Moscow's strategic interests are not taken care of, Beijing is likely to lash out at Taiwan if Beijing ultimately concludes that her previous agreement with Washington on Taiwan is no longer valid. If that happens, just as the United States is shocked and angry at Moscow today, it could also be shocked and angry at Beijing at that time. But this should have been expected. If Washington wants to avoid a crisis in the Taiwan Strait, it should consider how to prevent Beijing from thinking that "only force can solve the problem."

(Observer.com translated by Guan Qun from the U.S. "National Interest" website)

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