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Chinese military exercises near Taiwan
China goes ballistic at Taiwan
China fired on Thursday multiple conventional ballistic missiles near Taiwan for the first time since 1996.
The launch was part of the largest-ever live-fire drills by the Chinese military in the area in response to US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's visit to the self-governing island earlier this week. Beijing says the missiles hit their targets inside the "exclusion zones" the People's Liberation Army set up in waters surrounding Taiwan after Pelosi confirmed her trip.
The Taiwanese military activated its missile defense systems and scrambled fighter jets. Taipei also claims that Chinese fighter jets and warships briefly crossed the Taiwan Strait demarcation line into its airspace and territorial waters, and that several government websites have suffered cyberattacks. Many international flights in and out of the island have been cancelled.
Meanwhile, the US Navy confirmed that an aircraft carrier and strike group are already near the area, conducting a regular patrol mission in the Philippine Sea.
The last time China fired missiles at Taiwan — to intimidate voters ahead of the island's first fully democratic presidential election — President Bill Clinton responded by ordering two US aircraft carriers into the Taiwan Strait. Beijing ultimately backed down.But that was more than 26 years ago, when the Chinese military was much weaker.
Will Joe Biden deliver on his recent gaffes/promises and risk war with China to defend Taiwan? Or will he stick to the "strategic ambiguity" of the 1979 Taiwan Relations Act, in which America commits to helping Taiwan defend itself? Perhaps time for Biden to try to calm things down with Xi Jinping on another Zoom call.
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US and China's changing status quo on Taiwan
Ian Bremmer's Quick Take:
Happy Monday, everybody. And a Quick Take for you. I wanted to talk a bit about Taiwan. I'll tell you, I've talked about it in the media over the last couple of weeks and almost every questioner has been trying to prod me towards, "are we heading to war?" Then I was with some friends at the Trilateral Commission on Friday. I like that group a lot. It's one of these groups that a lot of conspiracy theorists pretend secretly run the world, like the Bilderbergers and the Council on Foreign Relations. Now having attended all three, I can tell you, if they do run the world, they are not inviting me into the rooms where they're making those decisions. If they are doing that, they're also doing a lousy job of it.
Nonetheless, it was fun until I was on stage and the first question I got was about, "Hey, so the Chinese are changing the status quo. Do you think that means we're heading towards war?" I just want to say that, first of all, I am clearly less concerned about the imminence of confrontation and military conflict between the United States and China than almost anybody out there. Accidents are certainly possible, but particularly around Taiwan, where both sides know the stakes and have made them abundantly clear for decades now, and everyone involved gets it I think it's much less likely.
I also think that the American and Western perspective on the Chinese are escalating is obviously only a piece of the story. I understand that, as Americans, if there's going to be a confrontation, we want to win it. But that doesn't mean that you only look at one side of the argument because then you tend to make mistakes. If we want to be honest around who is changing the status quo, there are very strong arguments to be made on both sides of the equation. Certainly, the big headlines over the last couple of weeks with the record number of Chinese military incursions through the Taiwanese Air Defense Identifications Zone, a couple weeks ago, they had several days, record numbers of incursions. Before that, probably the single event that most people pointed to was Hong Kong and the unilateral Chinese decision to aggregate the agreement of the political autonomy and rule of law that Hong Kong enjoys until the expiree of that agreement. They essentially ripped up the deal and decided for their own national security purposes that they would govern it immediately.
Then, finally, after the debacle and the Afghanistan withdrawal and the chaos that ensued on the ground, there were a number of both Chinese high-level state media organs, the editor-in-chief of the People's Daily, for example, some major opinion writers, as well as some Chinese officials, the lower-level, that were basically threatening Taiwan say, "You see, you can't count on the Americans to defend you. Look what just happened to Afghanistan. Don't pretend that you would be able to resist the Chinese incursion."
If you only focus on those things, certainly it looks pretty belligerent. It looks like the Chinese are getting more aggressive. They're changing the rules. But of course, it's not just that. The United States has changed the status quo as well. There's been the secret training of special forces of the United States on the ground of the Taiwanese military for at least a year now. There's been the creation of new status quo architecture in the region, whether it is the QUAD, which they never talk about China, but it's obviously oriented towards China. A new diplomatic agreement that's become quite robust and meeting regularly by Zoom on a whole host of different security-related issues between the United States, Japan, India, and Australia. You've got the new AUKUS defense pact. You've got Build Back Better World, which not much money has gone into it yet, but it's all oriented towards Asia encountering One Belt One Road.
Then, probably most significantly, if the Hong Kong move is the most significant move by China, the most significant move by the United States is on semiconductors and restrictions that make it very difficult for China's most important technology company, Huawei, to continue to operate in a globally competitive way, and also an effort to bring Taiwan's lead semiconductor company, which is responsible for 80% of all semiconductor exports globally, to become a trusted partner of the US. If that happens, they become part of the US military-industrial complex.
That was probably the single biggest potential change to the status quo that either side is talking about right now. Yes, the Chinese officials have said a whole bunch of things, though not Xi Jinping himself whose statements are very similar to what they've been historically. Biden's statements have been very similar to what they've been historically, but there've been crazy people among US policymakers, too.
I saw Madison Cawthorn the other day, who's a member of Congress in good standing, who said that all Chinese assets should be seized as down payments on reparations for the enslavement of Black people. No, that's not what he said. For COVID damages on the United States, which is a literally insane thing to say. If you were in the Chinese government looking at American leaders and American media and cherry-picking the most ridiculous stuff, you would have reason to believe that the Americans are preparing a radical change in the status quo.
The reality on the part of the policymakers that know better who are responsible for foreign policy on both sides is that these are testing moves to ensure the continued strong posture of the other side. When something is that important to you, you don't just want to make sure that you're defending, but you want to make sure that the other side is equally committed. All of that has been happening. It's been happening from Washington. It's been happening from Beijing.
If you ask me who has changed the status quo to a greater degree in the last year, it's probably more the United States than China. It's the United States primarily through a national security lens, broadly defined. It's China primarily through an economic and industrial lens, broadly defined. That should surprise no one because America's power in Asia is principally articulated through the military where China's is principally articulated through the economy. But in reality, all of that is to say there is less to worry about than the inbound questions that I've been getting.
That's it for me. Quick Take to make you a little bit less concerned to kick off this gorgeous week here in New York. It's beautiful. I'm about to get on a plane heading over to the Milken Conference, and I'm sure I'll be sending some stuff from there. Be good. I'll talk to everyone real soon.
China agitating Taiwan to demonstrate power, not start WWIII
Ian Bremmer shares his insights on global politics this week with a look at Chinese warplanes, the Pandora Papers, and Facebook's major outage.
What is China signaling by sending warplanes into Taiwan's air defense identification zone?
Well, it's not their airspace. They've done this before. They do it a lot. In fact, on some days, a year ago, in the past, they've had over 20 incursions on a day. Over the last few days, it has been record levels, so clearly, they're agitated. They want to show that they're strong and assertive. Having said that, we are not on the brink of World War III. There is a greater chance of accidents happening, and that would be a really bad thing, but on balance, this doesn't cross any red lines between the two countries. I think the headlines are a little breathless on it.
What are the Pandora Papers?
It is yet one more, even larger dump of information about a whole bunch of former and standing world leaders and the wealthy people near them who are trying to obscure their wealth, frequently ill-gotten, through offshore accounts and usually buying a bunch of real estate in other countries. Some leaders that are trying to show themselves as reformers are going to get caught up and really embarrassed by that. In particular, some of the ministers around Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan, President Lasso in Ecuador. There are, I would say King Abdullah in Jordan, certainly, but for people like Putin, of course, complete impunity, no shame, because they have thorough control of their system, their media. It's an authoritarian state, full on.
What's happening with Facebook?
Well, it looks like it was an own goal, of big engineering mistake. The fact that you can take half of the planet down in terms of an app that they use, so easily, it's a lot more dangerous than, say, just-in-time supply chain and what we learned about not having redundancy and resilience in our system after the pandemic. This, on the digital side, even more dangerous. Imagine if it had been something where companies use it fundamentally to work, like for example Amazon or Microsoft. I mean, this was a significant inconvenience, most importantly for small enterprises that use Facebook for their businesses. Six hours down. Big embarrassment for Facebook. Question is whether or not it makes any of us think differently about the need for redundancy and resilience on digital sites. They are so, of course, concentrated. We'll see what happens on the regulatory side. So far, there's been very little.
Is the US military investing in the wrong kinds of weapons?
In comparing the American military defense spending to China's, former US admiral and best-selling author James Stavridis is concerned that the US is too focused on legacy systems. In a conversation with Ian Bremmer on GZERO World, he discusses the role of the private sector in the development of US defense capabilities and the need to move towards higher end technologies, which he says China has already done. "They get to make decisions and move out with big land armies, tanks, aircraft carriers in ways we are retarded from doing by the messiness, as wonderful as it is, of our democratic system," Stavridis points out.
Watch the episode: What could spark a US-China war?
Will China become the world’s dominant military power?
America's chief adversary on the global stage is no longer Russia. It's China—a country that has experienced astronomical growth in the last few decades, with an economy that's expanded by $12 trillion dollars in the last fifteen years alone. Much of that economic growth is going straight into military spending, with a defense budget that's seen a nearly seven-fold increase over the past twenty years. And yet, its military spending still pales in comparison to that of the United States. But despite all the money that both nations have pumped into fancy new battleships and armored tanks, they also understand that a key paradigm shift in 21st century warfare is already well underway: The decisive battles of the future will largely be fought—and won or lost—in cyberspace. Ian Bremmer explains where the US stands in this competition.
Watch the GZERO World episode: What could spark a US-China war?
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How China plans to achieve global military dominance
The US still enjoys military superiority over China, but for how long? Retired admiral James Stavridis believes it's important to understand how determined China is to establish global dominance. The Chinese defense budget is focused on strategic initiatives including offensive cyber, militarizing space and quantum computing. Furthermore, China's approach to education is intended to secure an advantage. "They're pumping out huge numbers of people with advanced degrees. They're investing government resources into the kind of R&D that we should be doing more of here in the United States," Stavridis tells Ian Bremmer in a GZERO World interview.
Watch the episode: What could spark a US-China war?
Is the US military’s reliance on technology a vulnerability?
What happens to US defense systems in case of a cyber attack? "The American military needs a Plan B, because these exquisite systems upon which we have come to rely so deeply, because they were invulnerable fighting the Taliban, or fighting Al-Qaeda, they're not invulnerable anymore," argues Admiral James Stavridis (Ret.), who also served as NATO Supreme Allied Commander. He discusses the benefit of having analog alternatives for US military operations in a discussion with Ian Bremmer on GZERO World.
Watch the episode: What could spark a US-China war?
What could spark a US-China war?
Ask national security experts how they view China today and they'll likely the use a term like "adversary" or "economic competitor." But what about "enemy?" How close is the world to all-out-war breaking out between United States and China? According to US Admiral James Stavridis (Ret.), who served as Supreme Allied Commander to NATO, those odds are higher than many would like to admit. In fact, Stavridis says, the US risks losing its military dominance in the coming years to China. And if push comes to shove in a military conflict, it's not entirely clear who would prevail. Admiral Stavridis speaks with Ian Bremmer on GZERO World and makes the case for why the fictional depiction in his bestselling new military thriller 2034 of a US-China war could easily become reality.
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