This week China announce that the reason it had turned away US naval vessels from Hong Kong was in retaliation for sales of Patriot Missile system upgrades to Taiwan. What is interesting about this is that the Patriot is an inherently defensive weapon system. It is used to strike at incoming missiles and attacking aircraft. Essentially, China is protesting the fact that they will have a reduced capacity to initiate an attack against Taiwan.
If there were any realistic threat that the Taiwanese could or would initiate an attack against China, then the Chinese protest could be considered reasonable. After all, the US and the Soviet Union (later Russia) had an agreement in place that allowed only an extremely limited defensive capability until the US abrogated in 2001. This treaty, the Anti-Balistic Missile Defense [ABM] Treaty, was an important part of the strategic calculus of the Cold War. The idea was that by preserving each side’s ability to engage in a massively destructive retailatory action, neither side had an incentive to strike first. This idea of Mutually Assured Destruction, while much maligned through such outlets as the movie Dr. Strangelove, seemed to serve the world well for a few decades.
What is different here is that it seems unlikely that anyone believes that Taiwan would instigate an attack against the Chinese. What the Chinese seem to be indicating is that they want to be able to preserve their view that Taiwan is part of China through the threat of force. In other words, as long as they can rain down hot death on the Taiwanese, they can be confident of keeping the “I”-word [independence] off the lips of the Taiwanese President.
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March 2, 2008 at 6:34 am
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