China is prepared to use nuclear weapons against the United States in the event of a conflict over Taiwan, Western newspapers quoted a senior Chinese military officer as saying Thursday. Stressing that he was giving his personal views, not official policy, Gen. Zhu Chenghu said that "if the Americans are determined to interfere ... we will be determined to respond." Zhu said China would prepare itself for the destruction of all of its cities east of Xian - a city in central China - while "the Americans will have to be prepared that hundreds ... of cities will be destroyed by the Chinese." His comments, delivered at a briefing arranged by a Hong Kong foundation, were reported by the Asian Wall Street Journal, Financial Times and International Herald Tribune. Zhu, who also teaches at China's National Defense University, is reputed to be a "hawk," the papers said, calling his warning the most specific by a senior Chinese official in nearly a decade. They also quoted Zhu as saying he did not anticipate war with the U.S. China carried out its first successful nuclear weapons test in 1964 and, according to the Nuclear Threat Initiative, is estimated to have some 400 strategic and tactical nuclear weapons, as well as stocks of fissile material sufficient to produce many more. The Pentagon is due next week to provide Congress with its annual assessment of China's military power, a requirement of the National Defense Authorization Act. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said during a conference in Singapore last month that China's military buildup and defense spending was threatening the military balance in Asia. "China appears to be expanding its missile forces, allowing them to reach targets in many areas of the world, not just the Pacific region, while also expanding its missile capabilities within this region," Rumsfeld said. "China also is improving its ability to project power, and developing advanced systems of military technology." Earlier this year, the Chinese government enacted a law providing for the use of "non-peaceful" means to prevent the formal breakaway of Taiwan, an island of 22 million people which Beijing claims as part of China. The U.S. is committed by law to help Taiwan defend itself against unprovoked aggression, and is also its primary weapons supplier. Learner
Yeah, yeah. Nothing new here. I wouldn't worry about it. The Red Chinese can detonate nuclear weapons; whether they can deliver them is another story. Even if they COULD, they wouldn't. Their government is a cold blooded vicious brutal violent dictatorship but they aren't that stupid. A first strike against the U.S. would leave the China as a smoking, radioactive ruin for the next 1,000 years. Unlike the Muslim terrorists, they don't even have the excuse that God wants them to destroy us.
The US is dismissing this as the private opinion of one Chinese general. But Chinese generals aren't loose cannons and they don't make provocative remarks unless they are cleared to do so. So I think that this came direct from the Chinese politburo. The Chinese have a habit of sending messges this way, through articles in military and foreign affairs journals. It gives them plausible deniability, but it gets the message across. The message here is that China is indeed planning to take military action against Taiwan, and that the United States is warned not to intervene. The nuclear reference is meant to communicate that the Chinese government intends that message to be taken with utmost seriousness. My guess is that China won't try to invade Taiwan directly. I don't think that China has the amphibious warfare capability to land a force large enough to prevail. It would have to be a huge Normandy-style operation. What I predict is an attempt to set up an air and sea blockade. They will try to choke off Taiwanese commerce with the rest of the world. They will cut Taiwan off and then wait for the island to surrender to Beijing's hegemony. If that happens, the US military might act to assist Taiwan and break the blockade. So China sends its warning. By doing so they are testing the waters, hoping to gauge the American temperature. What the US needs to immediately do is send Beijing essentially the same message in reply. We need to communicate the same seriousness that NATO communicated to the Warsaw Pact: Cross the line and it's war, and any war would probably go nuclear in very short order. That might seem needlessly aggressive, but it's actually the reverse. The Chinese clearly want to do this. If they believe that there's little standing in their way, then they will. The only way to keep peace is to communicate that there is a major obstacle in their way and that the cost of their proposed military adventure will be extremely high. We also should tell the Chinese that we won't stand in the way of China-Taiwan unification, but only if the Taiwanese people freely agree to it without coercion. That means that China has to sweeten the offer, and it might even imply that they will have to end the communist party's monopoly on power in Beijing. Personally, I think that this looming Taiwan war is probably the biggest conventional (as opposed to terrorism) military threat that the US faces right now.
I find your analysis quite pursuasive. This raises a nice question in international law. The Red Chinese claim that Taiwan is a "renegade province" and that its ongoing dispute is strictly an internal matter. Thus, the rest of the world has no right to interefere. Until Nixon, the U.S. recognized the Taipei government as being the legitimate sovereign over ALL of China. If Taipei asked us for help, which they did, we could place the Seventh Fleet in the strait to deter a Communist attack, which we did. Post Nixon, we recognized the Red Chinese government and withdrew recognition from Taipei. We then arranged a sort of modus vivendi, a kind of international "don't ask don't tell" regarding the status of Taiwan. But if Bejing really holds our feet to the fire, I think we'd have to stay out of it. Aiding a rebellion is an act of war.
Does Taiwan still produce 90% of the world's RAM? I know that was the case a few years ago. If so, a blockade or invasion would be very economically disruptive. -=Steve=-
Funny enough, but our biggest problem may well be avoiding loss of "face". If the Red Chinese place their blockade around the island, we will either have to sulk in a corner or use military force to break the blockade, which would be a pretty clear violation of international law and an act of war. Best guess is, we'll offer to mediate and assist the parties to arrive at a "one state two systems" solution which, after the rape is over, the Red Chinese will then disregard and undermine as they are presently doing in Hong Kong. We would avoid a military confrontation without appearing to desert a friend (though of course that's exactly what we WOULD be doing). I am unsure as to what the Communists would gain from allowing us to participate in a strictly (in their view) internal matter. I admit that if I were President, I'd be VERY tempted to adopt a contingency plan something like this: -take no initiative and convince Taipei also to remain passive; -if the Communists resort to force or serious imminent threat of force, invite Taipei to declare Taiwan an independent republic; -grant immediate recognition to the Tiawanese government; -inform the Communist thugs in Bejing that the U.S. would view with very great seriousness any infringement on the rights of the merchant vessels of all nations to traverse the high seas and territorial waters of the newly recognized state; -hint that U.S. sanctions might include immediate cessation of all commerical intercourse between the thugs and ourselves, and -see what develops.
Very simple solution. Withdraw recognition from those godless Communists. Resume recognition of the Nationalists. Let it be known that in the event of any aggressive act by the Commies we WILL nuke Peking off the map and restore the Nationalists as legitimate rulers of ALL China.
Actually, three things here. (1) If Red China "blockades" Taiwan, then Red China is recognizing Taiwan as a sovereign nation. If Red China doesn't want to be seen as recognizing Taiwan, then Red China had better simply "close ports." (2) A blockade has to be effective in order for neutrals to be required to respect it under international law. (3) You're worried about breaking a blockade being an act of war when those little twits just threatened to nuke the USA! I say the Statue of Liberty is shaking her fist and we ought to respond to such a sucker-punch comin' in from somewhere in the back by sticking a boot up their ass.
Those are the advantages of the "Nosborne Plan". It's not correct to say that the bloodstained thugs misgoverning China in Bejing would be "recognizing" Taiwan by attempting to blockade her. Internal affairs is internal affairs, you see. Now, treating with the Taipei government could indeed be viewed as "recognition". The best modern example would be the American Civil War. No nation accused President Lincoln of "recognizing" the Confederacy when he imposed his blockade but he did refuse to meet with or negotiate with the Confederate government for that exact reason. It's also not correct IN THIS CASE to say that a neutral country could ignore a Red Chinese blockade if it isn't effective. The Bejing regime claims sovereignty over Taiwan. Anyone who feels physically unequipped to challenge that claim, which would be most of the world, would be thereby barred from entering Taiwanese coastal waters. My plan, however, has some otherwise useful effects: -merely recognizing the Taipei government could hardly be termed an "act of war" against the thugs in Bejing because as a matter of international law, Taipei functions as, and is able to meet its international obligations as, a sovereign state. That's the basic test for recognition. -keeping international sea lanes open is a Naval function. The thugs in Bejing have created an enormous Army, to be sure, but they have not created much of a Navy. Under my plan, we would be requiring them to fight on a field of OUR choosing where WE have all the advantages. -We could probably expect significant support from the Japanese IDF naval force. I've seen these guys work. They're good. Japan has a nice long seafaring tradition (like the British and for similar reasons) and they have the second most powerful Navy in the world, after the U.S. (Powerful in terms of capability not size; the rusting Russian fleet is bigger but almost completely moribund.
I'm an absolute layman concerning this stuff, but my impression is that Taiwan's status is ambiguous under international law. The Treaty of Shimonoseki in 1895, signed by the Ching Empire, ceded 'Formosa and the Pescadores' to the Empire of Japan in perpetuity. The question is what happened to that soverignty subsequently. After the atomic bombs were dropped on Japan and that country surrendered, Douglas MacArthur requested Chiang Kai-shek's government to take the surrender of Japanese forces on Taiwan, which they did in October 1945. The San Francisco Peace Treaty with Japan didn't take effect until 1952, which was subsequent to the Chinese communist takeover of the mainland. Japan renounced all claims to Taiwan, but the treaty doesn't state precisely who the soverignty is transferred to. But the Nationalists already controlled the island and enjoyed implicit cession by conquest. American decisions govern who we are going to recognize, how, and under what conditions. But I don't think that the American president ever had the power to determine Taiwanese soverignty over the heads of the island's people. Besides, war is just military violence. So any decision by either side to engage the other is an act of war. Maybe not de-jure, but certainly de-facto.
It's come to my attention that there was also a separate China-Japan Peace Treaty, which also went into effect in 1952. In it Japan repeats the San Francisco Treaty provisions re Taiwan. Given that this treaty was being signed with a Chinese government that was resident in Taipei, the question who the island's soverignty was being formally ceded to seems to be answered. So it appears that the government in Taiwan enjoyed both cession by conquest and subsequent cession by treaty. That represents a pretty good case in my entirely layman's opinion.
Quemoy and Matsu. I like globalsecurity.org but I've read that John Pike is another who has embellished his credentials. Don't recall the details. BTW - Military or past military folk (or anyone, actually) can search the name of a unit on that site to get a summary history of that unit
TH: Lincoln talked of blockade not closing ports and he certainly didn't recognize the Confederate government. BillDayson: Sorry. My "thus" did not mean "this is objectively true". I meant only, "this is the conclusion which the Communist thugs draw." The American President does NOT have the ability to decide for Taiwan or anyone else who their government will be (except maybe in Iraq and Afghanistan where President Bush has made it clear that he will not put his "thumb on the scales".) However, recognition has meaning only where the government to be recognized already has established its domestic authority. But once our government recognizes another government, international law places an almost perfect bar to our interefering in that country's internal affairs. The current question is whether the Bush Doctrine of pre emptive invasion represents a genuine departure from this principal or whether, as I suspect, it will prove to be an anomoly. Remember, please, that there is no World Government with the power to enforce international law. Enforcement looks a lot more like vigilantism than anything else. (Indeed, some jurisprudence scholars maintain that there IS no international law, that the whole thing is a web of unenforceable agreements that will hold together exactly so long as it is in the parties' self interest to keep them. I don't agree.) All: My reference to the Japanese was not meant to impy that Japan maintains any claim to Taiwan (Formosa to them). What I meant was that the Japanese are rightly not happy with the growing military and economic power of what they rightly view as a dangerous, aggressive, criminal dictatorship. That is why I think they'd help us.
He's still wrong. And I'm not sure why neither Nosborne nor Lincoln, being lawyers, are/were aware of this. But check out James M. McPherson, _Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era_ (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988), p. 388, wherein it discusses the fact that Queen Victoria declared her neutrality, which automatically recognized the Confederacy as a belligerent power. When the North protested, it was pointed out that their protests were on weak legal grounds, since the blockade was a virtual recognition of Southern belligerency. Again, you blockade a foreign country but close ports in your own country.
The communists have never exercised any kind of real (as opposed to claimed) authority over Taiwan. That's why Taiwan has been able to function as kind of a haven and repository for many aspects of ancient Chinese culture that have been violently suppressed on the mainland. For that reason alone, the survival of Taiwan has world cultural importance. So if we agree on limitations for Washington's ability to decide matters of soverignty for other nations simply by American fiat, then this starts to sound like an internal issue for the United States. It's the question of what laws, treaties and undertakings should govern and bind future American actions with regards to Taiwan. The most obvious authority is the Taiwan Relations Act. In particular: (3) to make clear that the United States decision to establish diplomatic relations with the People's Republic of China rests upon the expectation that the future of Taiwan will be determined by peaceful means; (4) to consider any effort to determine the future of Taiwan by other than peaceful means, including by boycotts or embargoes, a threat to the peace and security of the Western Pacific area and of grave concern to the United States; (5) to provide Taiwan with arms of a defensive character; and (6) to maintain the capacity of the United States to resist any resort to force or other forms of coercion that would jeopardize the security, or the social or economic system, of the people on Taiwan. Apparently the position being presented here is an argument that American recognition of Beijing, properly interpreted by international law, contradicts, takes legal precedence over, and invalidates the Taiwan Relations Act. Of course, if the act were invalidated, then presumably Beijing could claim all Taiwanese assets in the United States as illegal Chinese assets, they could demand that all trade with Taiwan proceed through Chinese customs and so on. So repudiating the act would have major economic and trade repurcussions extending well beyond the military. I don't know the history of these American recognition decisions. But my impression is that in the 1970's there were two competing governments, both claiming to be the one legitimate government of all of China. (That was just about the only thing that they did agree on.) The population under the control of Beijing was about 60 times larger than the population controlled by Taipei. So if both agreed that there was only one government of China, we opted to recognize the government that exercised actual power over most of China. I suppose that we could have recognized Taiwan at that time as a separate Chinese state, like East and West Germany, but the Koumintang (and also the communists) would have no part of that. So we recognized Beijing and passed the Taiwan Relations Act, formalizing Taiwan's ambiguous status with regards to the US. Today, Taiwan no longer claims to be the rightful government of the mainland. That's why it's leaning more and more towards asserting its formal independence. (It's already de-facto independent.) But Beijing has announced that any independence declaration would be taken as an act of war. So everyone from wealthy Taiwan industrialists to the US government counsel the Taiwanese president to cool it and to maintain the status quo. I do expect that any Chinese military adventure intended to bring the island to heel would bring about an immediate formal Taiwanese independence declaration, since ambiguity would obviously no longer represent peace. And if the US military is already engaged with the Chinese armed forces under the terms of the Taiwan Relations Act, popular pressure here in the US would make our recognition of Taiwan a formality. I really wonder about Beijing. They have been sending war messages for years now. I can only assume that they are serious. But China is rapidly industrializing and its party cadres are getting rich and driving fast cars. So... are the communist mandarins really prepared to embark on an adventurist course that could see all those fancy gleaming office towers in Shanghai go up in a mushroom cloud? They will if they think that they can just intimidate the barbarians into submission.
Actually, I have a copy of "Battle Cry" and agree that it is an excellent single volume history. Don't confuse things, here. The British accorded the Confederacy something called "belligerant status" which was SOME recognition but not FULL recognition. Failure to receive full recognition was the single most important defeat for Southern diplomacy. Lincoln might, or might not, have agreed with the technical argument made by the British government (I forget, was it Palmerston?) but he was unwilling to to pay much attention to it. You will recall the Trent Affair? Lincoln said, quietly, "One war at a time." It is also useful to remember that international law is largely a compilation of what countries DO, HAVE DONE and ARE EXPECTED TO DO, limited, of course, by WHAT THEY CAN GET AWAY WITH. If Lincoln called it a blockade but still refused to recognize the Confederate government, then the British had to accept his position unless they were willing to contest it. They DID contest it to a limited (but not insignificant) extent but in the end allowed Lincoln to do as he would. My point is that there is a fluidity in international law that makes absolute statements dangerous. Now, a broader concern is that ALL of these "law of war" terms are in theory meaningless since the establishment of the United Nations Charter. There is, in theory, neither a concept of belligerant nor a concept of neutral. No country has a right to make war without the approval of the U.N. What vitalizes this discussion is the emergant "Bush Doctrine" which, if it does develop into a permanent part of the Law of Nations, brings these archaic 19th century ideas back to life!
BillDayson, Thanks for the Taiwan Relations Act reference. Providing Taiwan with arms of ANY sort would usually have been seen as an act of war against the Bejing regime were it not for the facts that, up until now, Bejing has been in no position to challenge us and that we extended recognition to Bejing, something they urgently desired and for which they were prepared to ignore a good deal. I am surprised to learn that we ever recognized the German Democratic Republic. Did we do so as part of the 1972 agreement? The "ambiguity" to which you refer is what I meant when I spoke of a "don't ask/don't tell" policy. It should, I suppose, be pointed out that except for the last couple of decades or so, the Taiwanese government itself has won no human rights prizes. Nevertheless, there is no doubt in my mind in which country I'd be more willing to live.
