Officials from Washington and Beijing are meeting in Alaska on Thursday.
When President Joe Biden’s national security team prepares to meet their Chinese counterparts at a high-stakes summit in Alaska on Thursday, one of the most urgent issues they must tackle is Beijing’s growing threat to Taipei. Top U.S. military officials are warning with increasing urgency that China could in the next few years invade Taiwan, the island nation whose disputed political status has long been a fraught subject of U.S.-China relations. It’s a timeline they say has been accelerated by the Trump administration’s repeated provocation of Beijing, China’s rapid military build-up, and recent indications that Taiwan could unilaterally declare its independence from the mainland. Such an invasion would be an explosive event that could throw the whole region into chaos and potentially culminate in a shooting war between China and the United States, which is treaty-bound to help Taiwan defend itself against Beijing. “War over Taiwan would be unthinkable,” said Eric Sayers, a visiting fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. “A major challenge Washington faces is that Taiwan has been viewed by many as a 2035 planning problem.… The [Chinese army’s] capabilities have now matured to such a degree that this is no longer a dilemma we can afford to push off.” How to prevent that scenario, though, is a question that has confounded previous U.S. administrations, as China each year appears to move one step closer to moving on Taiwan. The new Biden team must signal its willingness to go to the mat for Taiwan and help ensure the island can defend itself, but without further spooking Beijing. “If we interject ourselves, we are the reagent catalyst that will make this problem hotter,” said one senior defense official, who asked to remain anonymous to discuss sensitive operational planning. “Militarily we know that if we do too much, push too hard, China will use that optic and they will do more against Taiwan.” The warning comes after four years of mixed signals from President Donald Trump and his administration. Trump angered Beijing soon after taking office with a phone call to Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen, and his administration routinely touted big-ticket arms sales and high-profile visits. However, Trump also indicated America might not come to Taipei’s defense in the event of a Chinese invasion, reportedly telling a Republican senator in 2019 that “Taiwan is like two feet from China.… We are eight thousand miles away. If they invade, there isn’t a f—ing thing we can do about it.” The new Biden team knows the U.S. is in a competition with China, and Beijing’s coercion of Taiwan will be a major point of discussion. For now, they are keeping pressure on Beijing applied by Trump through tariffs and sanctions. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and Secretary of State Antony Blinken are in Japan for the first stop on a joint visit to Asia, where countering China’s rise will be at the top of the agenda. The two will travel next to South Korea, before Austin heads to India and Blinken to Alaska, where he will be joined by national security adviser Jake Sullivan.
