China is now more than ever emboldened to take over Taiwan following President Donald Trump’s betrayal of Ukraine and his war on Iran.
The US war on Iran resulted in a military success and a strategic disaster. Despite curtailing Iran’s nuclear and ballistic missile capabilities, the US has to keep a force of more than 40,000 personnel in the Persian Gulf to ensure the security of the Strait of Hormuz, and yet even this is not enough. At least 12 vessels passing through the Strait of Hormuz were struck by the IRGC in the past week alone.
The Iranian regime has successfully turned the strait into a source of strategic leverage, especially by impacting oil prices. Saudi Arabia offset this impact with the Yanbu (East-West) pipeline, which was eventually struck by the Houthis. Inflicting economic pain with high oil prices has made Trump’s war on Iran unpopular back home and the Iranian regime is trying to exploit this weakness as much as they can.
Unfortunately, it is not Iran which has been handed its biggest strategic source of leverage as a result of the US war. China now knows that knees of the West would tremble if it closes the Strait of Taiwan and disrupts global shipping.
The Strait of Taiwan is not as important as the Strait of Hormuz for energy, but it is more important for trade. It is one of the biggest trade chokepoints with up to 240 vessel passing from it every day. As china re-asserts its illegal dominance over the maritime territory of the Philippines, China would basically have an over-sized control and influence over shipping in east Asia.
Japan knows this and this is why it has declared very clearly that the Taiwan issue is at the heart of its national security. With Trump’s betrayal of Ukraine, Japan remains the last power which Taiwan can trust to come to its aid if it is invaded by China.
With Trump’s betrayal of Ukraine, there is now more confidence in Beijing that the US would not come to Taiwan’s aid, irrespective what Trump may have told Xi Jinping in his meeting with him in Beijing in May. China sees the glaring weakness of the White House as US foreign policy bends in response to economic pain, noting that this pain is so intolerable that Washington is willing to sacrifice its allies to avoid it.
The conclusive analysis of the US intelligence community is that China prefers to take over Taiwan peacefully in a similar way it took over Hong Kong after breaking its pro-democracy movement. China is trying to subvert Taiwan from within by fostering and promoting pro-Chinese sentiment. It uses propaganda, subversion and openly supports its political proxies. It’s policy of political subversion is yielding results after having bagged the support of the Taiwanese Opposition.
It is highly likely though that Taiwan won’t yield so easily to Chinese propaganda and use of force would have to be necessary for its takeover of the democratic island-nation. At this very moment, only Japan stands in China’s way to Taiwan.
Xi Jinping’s upcoming annual reminder during his new year’s speech that Taiwan belongs to China will be more forceful.
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Historian and Publisher
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