Author: Andrew Scobell
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521525855
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 324
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Book Description
In this unique study of China s militarism, Andrew Scobell examines the use of military force abroad - as in Korea (1950), Vietnam (1979), and the Taiwan Strait (1995 1996) - and domestically, as during the Cultural Revolution of the late 1960s and in the 1989 military crackdown in Tiananmen Square. Debunking the view that China has become increasingly belligerent in recent years because of the growing influence of soldiers, Scobell concludes that China s strategic culture has remained unchanged for decades. Nevertheless, the author uncovers the existence of a Cult of Defense in Chinese strategic culture. The author warns that this Cult of Defense disposes Chinese leaders to rationalize all military deployment as defensive, while changes in the People s Liberation Army s doctrine and capabilities over the past two decades suggest that China s twenty-first century leaders may use military force more readily than their predecessors.
Author: Brendan Taylor
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000760693
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 133
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Book Description
Taiwan’s position looks increasingly precarious, and tensions threaten to grow into a major strategic crisis. Chinese President Xi Jinping has made reunification with Taiwan a central pillar of his vision for China, and has ramped up diplomatic and economic pressure on Taiwan. Its inhabitants are increasingly estranged from the mainland, and Tsai Ing-wen’s administration refuses to conduct relations with China on Beijing’s terms. Taiwan could take on renewed strategic significance amid the backdrop of the deepening rivalry between China and the United States, and find itself at the centre of a Cold War-style superpower confrontation. Ble Washington’s support and military power has historically guaranteed Taiwan’s security, this is no longer a certainty. This Adelphi book argues that China’s military modernisation has changed the cross-strait military balance, and the ability of the US to prevail in a conflict over Taiwan may have evaporated by 2030. As China feels increasingly empowered to retake Taiwan, there is significant potential for escalation, particularly given the ambiguity of Beijing’s ‘red lines’ on Taiwan. Neither Beijing, Taipei nor Washington want such a conflict, but each is challenging the uneasy status quo. Taylor calls for the introduction of a narrower set of formal crisis-management mechanisms designed to navigate a major Taiwan crisis.
Author: Nancy Bernkopf Tucker
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674060520
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 409
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Book Description
Relations among the United States, Taiwan, and China challenge policymakers, international relations specialists, and a concerned public to examine their assumptions about security, sovereignty, and peace. Only a Taiwan Straits conflict could plunge Americans into war with a nuclear-armed great power. In a timely and deeply informed book, Nancy Bernkopf Tucker traces the thorny relationship between the United States and Taiwan as both watch ChinaÕs power grow. Although TaiwanÐU.S. security has been intertwined since the 1950s, neither Taipei nor Washington ever fully embraced the other. Differences in priorities and perspectives repeatedly raised questions about the wisdom of the alignment. Tucker discusses the nature of U.S. commitments to Taiwan; the intricacies of policy decisions; the intentions of critical actors; the impact of TaiwanÕs democratization; the role of lobbying; and the accelerating difficulty of balancing Taiwan against China. In particular, she examines the destructive mistrust that undermines U.S. cooperation with Taiwan, stymieing efforts to resolve cross-Strait tensions. Strait Talk offers valuable historical context for understanding U.S.ÐTaiwan ties and is essential reading for anyone interested in international relations and security issues today.
Author: Robert Blackwill
Publisher: Council on Foreign Relations Press
ISBN: 9780876092835
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 102
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Book Description
Taiwan "is becoming the most dangerous flash point in the world for a possible war that involves the United States, China, and probably other major powers," warn Robert D. Blackwill, Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) Henry A. Kissinger senior fellow for U.S. foreign policy, and Philip Zelikow, University of Virginia White Burkett Miller professor of history. In a new Council Special Report, The United States, China, and Taiwan: A Strategy to Prevent War, the authors argue that the United States should change and clarify its strategy to prevent war over Taiwan. "The U.S. strategic objective regarding Taiwan should be to preserve its political and economic autonomy, its dynamism as a free society, and U.S.-allied deterrence-without triggering a Chinese attack on Taiwan." "We do not think it is politically or militarily realistic to count on a U.S. military defeat of various kinds of Chinese assaults on Taiwan, uncoordinated with allies. Nor is it realistic to presume that, after such a frustrating clash, the United States would or should simply escalate to some sort of wide-scale war against China with comprehensive blockades or strikes against targets on the Chinese mainland." "If U.S. campaign plans postulate such unrealistic scenarios," the authors add, "they will likely be rejected by an American president and by the U.S. Congress." But, they observe, "the resulting U.S. paralysis would not be the result of presidential weakness or timidity. It might arise because the most powerful country in the world did not have credible options prepared for the most dangerous military crisis looming in front of it." Proposing "a realistic strategic objective for Taiwan, and the associated policy prescriptions, to sustain the political balance that has kept the peace for the last fifty years," the authors urge the Joe Biden administration to affirm that it is not trying to change Taiwan's status; work with its allies, especially Japan, to prepare new plans that could challenge Chinese military moves against Taiwan and help Taiwan defend itself, yet put the burden of widening a war on China; and visibly plan, beforehand, for the disruption and mobilization that could follow a wider war, but without assuming that such a war would or should escalate to the Chinese, Japanese, or American homelands. "The horrendous global consequences of a war between the United States and China, most likely over Taiwan, should preoccupy the Biden team, beginning with the president," the authors conclude.
Author: John W. Garver
Publisher: University of Washington Press
ISBN: 0295800356
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 209
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Book Description
Taiwan's first presidential election, in 1996, sparked a Sino-U.S. military showdown that resulted in the biggest show of U.S. naval force in East Asia since the Vietnam War. This book is the first to explore the origins and triangular dynamics of that historic confrontation. Analyzing the key decisions and misperceptions that led to the Taiwan Strait crisis, Garver warns that it may usher in a more confrontational era of Sino-U.S. relations. China is already emerging as an economic powerhouse and fears of its becoming an expansionist military power have grown in recent years as China has rapidly built up its armed forces since 1989. It has also adopted a more assertive stance in several territorial disputes with its neighbors, arousing new security concerns for Asia as a whole. When China tried to intimidate Taiwan's voters by firing missiles and conducting large-scale military exercises off its coasts in the period preceding the 1996 election, the U.S. dispatched two aircraft carrier battle groups to Taiwan. The prestige of all sides was fully engaged as powerful do domestic interests demanded an assertive posture. Eventually, China adopted a more cautious stance and the crisis passed. But it marked the first instance of Chinese nuclear coercion of the U.S. and gave the "China threat" new credence in the U.S. and elsewhere in Asia. The author has studied the Taiwan question for more than 30 years and has witnessed first-hand the growth and culmination of Taiwan's democratization. This sober, mature reflection of decades of thought is certain to inform the debate on the "China threat" and the future of Sino-U.S. relations.
Author: Robert Accinelli
Publisher: UNC Press Books
ISBN: 0807872911
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 384
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Book Description
This analytical study examines in comprehensive detail the making of the American military and political commitment to Taiwan during the first half of the 1950s. Starting with President Truman's declaration in January 1950 that the United States would not militarily assist Taiwan's Nationalist Chinese government, Robert Accinelli shows why Washington subsequently reversed this position and ultimately chose to embrace Taiwan as a highly valued ally. Accinelli analyzes this critical reversal within the context of shifting international circumstances and domestic developments such as McCarthyism and the Truman-MacArthur controversy. In addition to describing the growth of a close but uneasy relationship between the United States and the Nationalist regime, he focuses on the importance of the Taiwan issue in America's relations with the People's Republic of China and Great Britain. He concludes his study with an analysis of the 1954-55 confrontation between the United States and China over Quemoy and Matsu and other Nationalist-held offshore islands. According to Accinelli, neither the Korean War nor the Indochina War divided the United States and China more fundamentally during this period than did the issue of U.S.-Taiwanese relations. Originally published in 1996. A UNC Press Enduring Edition -- UNC Press Enduring Editions use the latest in digital technology to make available again books from our distinguished backlist that were previously out of print. These editions are published unaltered from the original, and are presented in affordable paperback formats, bringing readers both historical and cultural value.
Author: Michael D. Swaine
Publisher: Carnegie Endowment
ISBN: 9780870032288
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 518
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Book Description
"Sensitivities and suspicions between Washington and Beijing have heightened as China's global power and influence have grown. Chinese and American officials and participants in past confrontations, and scholars from both countries explore the changing features of crisis behavior and their implications for defusing future encounters"--Provided by publisher.
Author: Lowell Dittmer
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520295986
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 320
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Book Description
At publication date, a free ebook version of this title will be available through Luminos, University of California Press’s Open Access publishing program. Visit www.luminosoa.org to learn more. China’s relation to Taiwan has been in constant contention since the founding of the People’s Republic of China in October 1949 and the creation of the defeated Kuomintang (KMT) exile regime on the island two months later. The island’s autonomous sovereignty has continually been challenged, initially because of the KMT’s insistence that it continue to represent not just Taiwan but all of China—and later because Taiwan refused to cede sovereignty to the then-dominant power that had arisen on the other side of the Taiwan Strait. One thing that makes Taiwan so politically difficult and yet so intellectually fascinating is that it is not merely a security problem, but a ganglion of interrelated puzzles. The optimistic hope of the Ma Ying-jeou administration for a new era of peace and cooperation foundered on a landslide victory by the Democratic Progressive Party, which has made clear its intent to distance Taiwan from China’s political embrace. The Taiwanese are now waiting with bated breath as the relationship tautens. Why did détente fail, and what chance does Taiwan have without it? Contributors to this volume focus on three aspects of the evolving quandary: nationalistic identity, social economy, and political strategy.
Author: Ted Galen Carpenter
Publisher: Macmillan + ORM
ISBN: 146689301X
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 322
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Book Description
One issue could lead to a disastrous war between the United States and China: Taiwan. A growing number of Taiwanese want independence for their island and regard mainland China as an alien nation. Mainland Chinese consider Taiwan a province that was stolen from China more than a century ago, and their patience about getting it back is wearing thin. Washington officially endorses a "one China" policy but also sells arms to Taiwan and maintains an implicit pledge to defend it from attack. That vague, muddled policy invites miscalculation by Taiwan or China or both. The three parties are on a collision course, and unless something dramatic changes, an armed conflict is virtually inevitable within a decade. Although there is still time to avert a calamity, time is running out. In this book, Carpenter tells the reader what the U.S. must do quickly to avoid being dragged into war.
Author: Shu Guang Zhang
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 1501738135
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 328
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Book Description
Does strategic thinking on the question of deterrence vary between cultures? Should practitioners assume a common understanding of deterrence regardless of national and cultural differences? Shu Guang Zhang takes on these questions by exploring Sino-American confrontations between 1949 and 1958. Zhang draws on recently declassified U.S. documents and previously inaccessible Chinese Communist Party records to demonstrate that the Chinese and the Americans had vastly different assessments of each other's intentions, interests, threats, strengths, and policies during this period.
