Chinese ruler Xi Jinping is not going to be deterred by the prospect of losing TSMC [semiconductor company] or, for that matter, all of Taiwan's semiconductor industry. He will take the island even if he has to make it a radioactive slab uninhabitable for a thousand years.
"China wanted Taiwan long before TSMC was churning out chips, and would want it even if TSMC had never existed.... It wants Taiwan because, like Nazi Germany, it is an expansionist power...." — Michael Turton, columnist, Taipei Times, January 10, 2022.
China's regime is extraordinarily casualty-adverse.... McKinney and Harris, therefore, totally miss the mark when they argue that an arms race with China would be counterproductive. Xi knows that an invasion of the island would be unpopular among most Chinese citizens if their sons or daughter were killed or maimed in the effort..., he is not about to do anything that could lead to the end of Communist Party rule.
Richard Fisher, a China military analyst with the International Assessment and Strategy Center, tells Gatestone that it is possible for the United States to win such a contest with China. Fisher is correct. The Chinese military is arms-racing not just with the United States but with much of the region, especially Japan and Australia.
[A]t a time when China's Communist Party is attacking democracies, Washington cannot allow Beijing to absorb any one of them, even if it is not home to the world's leading chipmakers.
"Destroying Taiwan's democracy is essential to giving China's Communist Party license to destroy all other democracies." — Richard Fisher to Gatestone, January 2022.
If America came to the rescue of Taiwan, it would not be defending just the island; America would be defending itself.
Chinese ruler Xi Jinping is not going to be deterred from invading Taiwan by the prospect of losing its semiconductor industry. He will take the island even if he has to make it a radioactive slab uninhabitable for a thousand years. (Image source: iStock)
America can save Taiwan from Chinese invasion by promising to destroy it, or at least its chipmaking capability, argues an article in Parameters, the U.S. Army War College's quarterly. In "Broken Nest: Deterring China from Invading Taiwan," Air University's Jared McKinney and Colorado State University's Peter Harris say that Taipei and Washington should make the island "unwantable."
"The United States and Taiwan should lay plans for a targeted scorched-earth strategy that would render Taiwan not just unattractive if ever seized by force, but positively costly to maintain," they write in the U.S. Army War College's most-downloaded paper of 2021. "This could be done most effectively by threatening to destroy facilities belonging to the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, the most important chipmaker in the world and China's most important supplier."
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