BY
DAVID
AIKMAN
Taipei Ximen street Shi-men Ting, Taiwan Photo by TommyIn this issue of GODSPEED Magazine, we draw attention to how some events can be pivotal in the lives of nations. For example, the November 3 election in the United States is going to be pivotal one way or another depending on who wins.

China expert Gordon Chang, who has spoken to GODSPEED Magazine on different matters relating to China, recently had a phone conversation with Editor in Chief David Aikman.

The Chinese Communist Party recently issued a harsh warning to the  United States which said China would be morally justified in killing Americans if they assisted in any move making it easier for Taiwan to declare independence from the mainland.

“We should take such threats very seriously, “ Gordon said. “Don’t forget that in 2018 PLA soldiers temporarily blinded the crew of an American C-130 transport plane base close to a Chinese base in East Africa. Had the pilots not been able to recover the plane, it would’ve crashed, and the pilots would have been killed.”
MAKING IT CLEARTO THE PEOPLE’S REPUBLIC OF CHINA Gordon believes that although the Communists have said they are willing to invade Taiwan within a matter of years if Taiwan declares independence, it is more likely that they will first assault the two offshore islands of Quemoy Kuai and Matsu just a couple of miles from the mainland.

If that should happen Gordon says the United States would not necessarily have to do anything militarily. It could make China experience difficulties economically in America.

Interestingly, however, the issue of the offshore islands became a feature of the 1960 presidential debate six decades ago between Vice President Richard Nixon and the Democratic contender John F. Kennedy.

Kennedy won the election and the offshore islands disappeared from American political discourse. Gordon believes, however, that the United States should make it clear to the PRC that it is very serious about preserving Taiwan’s ability to defend itself.

The Taiwan Relations act of 1979 made it legal for the United States to sell self-defensive weaponry to the Taiwan government, called The Republic of China.
The Trump administration has moved much closer to the Taiwan government in recent months, and Beijing is trying hard to ensure that Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden becomes the next president.

Gordon, interestingly, reminds readers of what happened between Iraq and the United States just before the Gulf War in 1980. The U.S. ambassador to Iraq was April Glaspie. On instructions from the U.S. State Department, she told Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein that the United States did not take positions on bilateral disputes between two foreign countries.

At the time, Iraq and Kuwait had a dispute about the location of their mutual border. But at the moment of the interview, Saddam was massing his troops close to the Kuwaiti border.

WITHIN A FEW DAYS,
THEY HAD INVADED
 AND OCCUPIED
KUWAIT, TRIGGERING A
WAR TO LIBERATE
KUWAIT IN WHICH
HUNDREDS OF
AMERICAN LIVES AND
THOUSANDS OF IRAQI
 LIVES WERE LOST.
GORDON REMINDED ME
THAT WASHINGTON DESCRBIES
ITS CURRENT POLICY
REGARDING TAIWAN
AND THE PRC
AS
"STRATEGIC AMBIGUITY"GOD HELPYOUR WATCHMENBut even though China-Taiwan relations have not come up in the presidential debates, as they did six decades ago, China’s increasing hostility toward both Taiwan and the United States is dangerously volatile.

Nobody wants to see a war between China and the United States, but one has to wonder how “strategic” the ambiguity is if China gambles on the United States remaining absolutely inactive if hostilities actually broke out on the Taiwan Straits. Yet another pivotal issue.