Taiwan and the Thucydides Trap
With the tide of history turning, Xi has no need for a strategic error (Updated)
By: B A Hamzah
The accelerating pace of US and allied encirclement of China is generating debate among policymakers in Washington and Tokyo over whether a surrounded Beijing might be considering an invasion of Taiwan before its options are proscribed altogether. Beijing might be paranoid, as the saying goes, but it has plenty to be paranoid about.
The US and its allies have established the AUKUS treaty between Australia, the US and the UK as well as reviving the once-moribund Quadrilateral Security Dialogue which includes Australia, India and a rearming Japan. The recent normalization of relations between South Korea and Japan can only be seen as a strengthened alliance against Beijing. Trade policies imposed on China including a ban on IT technology seem an unnecessary bludgeon far in excess of limiting Chinese access to military technology.
The US Seventh Fleet is aggressively continuing its freedom of navigation sorties – one last week in the Paracels – across a sea China regards as its own and could well regard as unfair, given the US’s equal claim of the Caribbean as its own through the imposition of the 200-year-old Monroe Doctrine in 1823. The American military bases in Korea and Japan which China claim are aimed at containing them are the legacy of the Cold War. These are not new bases. But new bases and facilities are being prepared in the Philippines, Singapore and Australia…