Strategic Trust-Building

On March 18, 2016, EWI Perot Fellow and Vice President David Firestein appeared on Focus Talk, a Voice of America Mandarin Service current affairs program, to speak about the 2016 U.S. presidential primary campaign. Commenting in Mandarin, Firestein addressed the ongoing U.S. primary election process, the impact of the March 15 "Super Tuesday 2" contests on the race overall and Republican candidate Donald Trump's prospects for winning his party's nomination in spite of resistance from the Republican Party elite. 

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Go here and here for some of Firestein's other media appearances on this topic.

Early in March, North Korea announced that it had finished work on miniaturizing a nuclear warhead that, if accurate, would enable nuclear blackmail of the U.S., South Korea and Japan. The veracity of Pyongyang's claim is questionable, but the larger threat posed by the North to Japan—and the region more broadly—should not be questioned. North Korea's string of recent provocations—highlighted by its fourth nuclear test and a subsequent missile test—reinforces the need to enhance Japan's security and intelligence capabilities.

Aside from the sustained threat from North Korea, there are other evolving security challenges facing Japan. The most pressing of these is rapid military modernization in China, coupled with Beijing's assertiveness in the maritime domain. This is most acutely threatening to Japan's interests in the East China Sea, where Chinese vessels are constantly entering Japan's territorial waters around the disputed Senkaku islands, which China calls the Diaoyu islands. Of secondary, but not insignificant, importance are Chinese efforts to change the status quo in the South China Sea through land reclamation and gradual militarization of its alleged sovereign territory.

In addition to regional concerns, there are transnational threats that should capture Tokyo's attention. In four years, Japan will be in the final stages of its multi-faceted preparations to host the Tokyo Olympic Games in 2020. In addition to the pomp and ceremony and the diplomatic prestige that the Games bring, there will also be significant pressure on Japan's police, immigration, security and emergency management bodies to fend off potential threats and acts of terrorism and ensure the protection of its critical infrastructure and "soft targets" such as public places and malls.

These concerns also transcend targets within Japan, as Japanese companies and expatriates continue to operate and live overseas—sometimes in unstable environments with rapidly evolving security situations. A key area of concern here remains the Middle East and North Africa, where Japanese companies remain engaged and continue to seek greater market share—especially in the natural resource sector. The hostage-taking—and eventual deaths—in January 2013 of several Japanese nationals working for a gas plant in Algeria is a prime example of these threats.

Since his election in late 2012, Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has expended a large amount of political time and capital on security and defense reforms. Some of the key changes during Abe's tenure include last year's passage of legislation on the reinterpretation of Japan's right to collective self-defense and reforms to the ability of its Self Defense Forces to assist Japanese nationals in danger overseas. Other key changes include the establishment of Japan's first ever national security strategy, the creation of a National Security Council, new legislation on the security of classified information, revised national defense program guidelines and changes to development and arms exports policies.

Underpinning all these changes is a strengthening of Japan's alliance with the United States through revised bilateral defense guidelines agreed last year. The new guidelines not only serve to strengthen the mutual commitment to the defense of Japan—including the Senkaku islands—but also give teeth to a "seamless" and coordinated approach to evolving security challenges in Tokyo's neighborhood.

Click here to read the full article on Nikkei Asian Review.

On March 9, 2016, EWI's Perot Fellow and Vice President David Firestein appeared on a Shanghai Media Group broadcast to comment on recent trends in China's foreign policy and U.S.-China relations. Firestein addressed international perceptions of China's approach to the South China Sea and the overall continuity of China's foreign policy, and also assessed the impact of the U.S.-China agreement on cybersecurity reached at Chinese President Xi Jinping's state visit to the United States in September 2015.

Click here to watch the video. 

Last December, the Obama Administration notified the United States Congress of its intent to make available to Taiwan an arms package valued at $1.83 billion. It was the first notification to Congress of a planned U.S. arms sale to Taiwan since 2011, ending the longest gap between such notifications since the United States switched diplomatic recognition from Taiwan (the Republic of China) to the People’s Republic of China on the mainland in 1979.

Many observers were surprised that the announced package wasn’t larger, given the length of time it had been since the United States had last announced such a sale. The smaller-than-expected scale of the package, coupled with the timing of the announcement—a decent interval after the state visit of President Xi Jinping to Washington, a month before presidential elections in Taiwan in which the KMT was clearly sputtering, and, perhaps most importantly, in the relatively quiet news week before Christmas—suggested to some that the United States was making an effort to limit the negative impact of the announcement on U.S.-China relations. And in fact, China’s reaction to the news was unusually subdued. The episode blew over quickly, with the U.S.-China relationship evidently no worse for the wear.

At face value, the fairly quiet way in which the matter was handled suggests that U.S. arms sales to Taiwan, long an irritant in the U.S.-China relationship and a major bilateral trust-drainer from the Chinese point of view, are now a thoroughly manageable issue. But the low-key tone around this latest announcement masks a more fundamental, if perhaps less immediately perceptible, truth about the overall cross-Strait equation: namely, that the status quo is, for different reasons, sub-optimal from the standpoint of Taiwan, mainland China and the United States; or to put it another way: that current policies, taken as a whole, are actually failing all three stakeholders.

This is easiest to see when looking at the matter from the perspective of Taiwan. In 1979, Taiwan was widely viewed as having the capacity to defend itself effectively, and over a long period of time, in the event of a conventional attack from the Chinese mainland. The general assessment was that Taiwan possessed a military capability sufficiently robust to repel an amphibious assault, defeat China or at least fight it to a draw in the air, and ensure Taiwan’s continued survival and way of life for a protracted and perhaps indefinite period of time. But today, after some 37 years—and after about as many billions of dollars’ worth of Taiwan arms purchases from the United States during that period—the virtually unanimous assessment is very different:  the cross-Strait balance of power has shifted so dramatically in favor of the mainland that, for the first time in its history, Taiwan is now vulnerable to existential military defeat at the hands of the mainland.

Making this point more emphatically than perhaps any other expert on record, cross-Strait military analyst Mark Stokes told a key U.S. Congressional commission in 2010, “every citizen on Taiwan lives within seven minutes of destruction” (principally via China’s massive and growing arsenal of ballistic missiles opposite Taiwan), something that indisputably was not true in 1979 (when China lacked a ballistic missile capability altogether). So much for the idea that U.S. arms sales are helping Taiwan maintain its self-defense capacity; and so much for the idea that status quo policies are benefitting Taiwan.

Given the sharp deterioration in Taiwan’s net security position relative to the mainland, one might conclude that things are at least going well for the mainland. But in fact, that is not the case, either. Mainland China’s ultimate objective regarding Taiwan is reunification—essentially, by any means necessary, but with a stated preference for a political solution rather than a military one. With this ultimate objective in mind, China has deployed a massive ballistic missile arsenal in southeastern China, the primary purpose of which would appear to be to coerce Taiwan. Judging the cross-Strait picture against the mainland’s goal of reunification, it is fair to say that China is further from the attainment of that goal today than at any time since 1949. That may sound counterintuitive to those who view the closer economic and cultural integration of the mainland and Taiwan in recent years as evidence of an inexorable trend toward convergence and ultimately unification, presumably on terms defined by the more powerful mainland. But the reality is, pro-(re)unification sentiment is close to an all-time low, as evidenced by any number of recent public opinion polls.

Meanwhile, the independence-sympathetic Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) is just coming off its most decisive electoral victory in history—a landslide triumph by Tsai Ing-wen in the presidential balloting and an equally monumental win in the Legislative Yuan, where the DPP now commands a majority for the first time ever. Indeed, based on the results of Taiwan’s last six presidential elections, the trend line is unmistakable: the DPP is generally gaining voter share, moving from relative marginality (just 21% of the popular vote) in 1996 to electoral dominance (over 56% of the popular vote) just twenty years later. And the hard demographic reality is that those in Taiwan with the strongest personal, familial and historical links to the mainland are dying off with each passing year and decade; and a very vibrant and distinct sense of uniquely Taiwanese identity has concomitantly blossomed in place of those disintegrating links. When it comes to the issue of reunification, time is clearly not on the mainland’s side. And thus, it is evident that the status quo isn’t any more advantageous to mainland China than it is to Taiwan.

Nor is the status quo serving the United States well. The stated purpose of U.S. arms sales to Taiwan, which are mandated by the Taiwan Relations Act of 1979, is “to enable Taiwan to maintain a sufficient self-defense capability”; though it is not articulated explicitly, that envisaged self-defense capability is clearly understood to be relative to the mainland, which has always been seen in the United States (and Taiwan) as constituting the only credible military threat to Taiwan. A corollary of this basic policy purpose is that the United States wants to minimize the likelihood that it will have to become involved in a cross-Strait conflict that would potentially pit the United States against China in a hot war an ocean away from the U.S. mainland. This is why the United States, for decades, has articulated an enduring interest in the cross-Strait issue being resolved peacefully and in accordance with the will of people on both sides of the Strait. But what has happened in recent decades? The balance of power, as noted above, has shifted sharply in favor of the mainland, Taiwan is less secure relative to the mainland than at any time in the island’s history, the costs to the mainland of a possible campaign against Taiwan have decreased, and, as a result, the likelihood of a cross-Strait conflict has actually increased on the aggregate. In 1979, China would not have felt a conventional war with Taiwan was necessary (given the high level of support for the “one-China” construct that existed in Taiwan at that time) or winnable; today, the available evidence suggests that China believes such a war might be more necessary—and more winnable. And thus, the likelihood of conflict is greater, even if marginally; and concomitantly, the likelihood of the United States becoming embroiled in a cross-Strait conflict has likewise increased, even if marginally.  In short, the status quo around the cross-Strait issue is failing the United States, even as it is failing Taiwan and mainland China.

The issue of Taiwan is unlikely to devolve into a conflict in the immediate future.  But the issue is also less settled and benign than commonly thought. Current assessments of the cross-Strait situation are predicated on the notion that the status quo, however delicate, is the optimal state of affairs—basically, the “least-worst” scenario that is actually practicable. But this is not the case. Though the situation could be worse, it could also be better; smarter policies are available, achievable and necessary. (See here for one set of concrete policy recommendations put forward by the EastWest Institute.) Looking for the potential hot spots in the world or in East Asia, Taiwan does not typically rise to the fore. Going a little deeper, however, and applying the criteria of one new theory of major international conflict, it is clear that the China-Taiwan dynamic includes all the key ingredients for conflagration:  at least one state actor, at least one non-democracy, at least one non-nuclear power, the implication of at least one existential or identity-related national interest, and a healthy dose of exceptionalist thinking (in this case, on both sides). Reducing the threat of a cross-Strait flare-up will require vision, wisdom and skill. But above all, it will require the realization that, in fact, there can be a better status quo for all.

Click here to read this article on The Diplomat.

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Last week, North Korea delivered another shock to the international community with its release of photographs, through its state-run Rodong Sinmun newspaper, claiming that it has perfected the process of miniaturising nuclear warheads to be placed on its ballistic missiles.

If accurate, such claims would effectively provide the North with short to medium-range capabilities to deliver a nuclear strike aimed at either South Korea or Japan. Pyongyang has long maintained the capability to strike Japan conventionally with its missiles, but these new developments would prove to be a game changer—not only for Tokyo but for the region more broadly.

North Korea's somewhat predictable cycle of provocations—underscored by its announcement of miniaturisation, along with its recent nuclear and missile tests—has jolted the United States, South Korea and Japan to look at ways to bolster their deterrent to further aggression from Pyongyang.

Earlier this month, the United Nations Security Council—under heavy pressure from Washington, Seoul and Tokyo—unanimously adopted the toughest set of sanctions against the North in years.

There is also renewed talk of potentially deploying a more sophisticated—and controversial—anti-ballistic missile system to the Korean peninsula to deter Pyongyang from attempting to leverage its technological advances for "nuclear blackmail".

But while the North's isolation—both regional and international—continues, there is another glaring defeat for the administration of Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.

Since his election in late 2012, Abe has stressed the importance of resolving the long-running unresolved saga of kidnapped Japanese nationals brought to North Korea. During the 1970s and 1980s, several Japanese nationals were abducted from coastal areas of Japan and other parts of the world.

As tensions continue to increase on the Korean peninsula, it is time now for Abe to cut his losses and maintain a united front alongside the U.S. and South Korea in deterring the Kim Jong-un regime.

Despite repeated efforts to resolve the matter, Tokyo has been unable to achieve much traction. The closest Japan has come to closure on the matter was the return of five children from the abductees, which followed former Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's landmark meeting with Kim Jong-il in 2002.

To read the entire article on Al Jazeera, click here. 

In an article published on March 11, 2016, Firestein said the Chinese commitment was perhaps expressed clearly by President Xi Jinping during his state visit to Washington last September.

"The seriousness with which China seems to be taking this whole process had made an impression on the U.S. policymakers," said Firestein, as quoted in the article. Firestein was talking about the process of providing more substantial evidence to American authorities when dealing with extradition of corruption fugitives. 

Firestein, who speaks near native-level Chinese, concluded that such commitment would help U.S. officials make decisions that were well-informed and would likely lead to more repatriations of convicted or alleged criminals.

To read the full article, click here.