Can America and China Escape Thucydides's Trap?

“The U.S. commitment to Taiwan has grown verbally stronger even as it has become militarily weaker.” https://t.co/fyPDshpjL1

— Jason Willick (@jawillick) March 22, 2021

As Harvard University’s Graham Allison argued in his hugely influential book, “Destined for War: Can America and China Escape Thucydides's Trap?”, China’s economic rise — which was at first welcomed by American policymakers — was bound eventually to look like a threat to the U.S.

Nixon went to China as planned, Taiwan was booted out of the U.N. and, under President Jimmy Carter, the U.S. abrogated its 1954 mutual defense treaty with Taiwan. 

  “Taiwan is like two feet from China,” Trump told one Republican senator. “We are 8,000 miles away. If they invade, there isn’t a f***ing thing we can do about it.”

This argument took concrete form last week, when Campbell told the Sydney Morning Herald that the U.S. was “not going to leave Australia alone on the field” if Beijing continued its current economic squeeze on Canberra (retaliation for the Australian government’s call for an independent inquiry into the origins of the pandemic).

As a student of history, to quote Kissinger, I see a very dangerous situation. The U.S. commitment to Taiwan has grown verbally stronger even as it has become militarily weaker. When a commitment is said to be “rock-solid” but in reality has the consistency of fine sand, there is a danger that both sides miscalculate.

 

But I have another analogy in mind. Perhaps Taiwan will turn out to be to the American empire what Suez was to the British Empire in 1956: the moment when the imperial lion is exposed as a paper tiger.

第二次中東戦争

 結局英仏はスエズ運河を失い、イギリスのイーデン首相は敗戦の責任をとらされる形で辞職した。

Yet losing — or not even fighting for — Taiwan would be seen all over Asia as the end of American predominance in the region we now call the “Indo-Pacific.” 

That big thing may be that he who rules Taiwan rules the world.

アメリカも口先だけで弱くなっているし、いざとなったら他国を捨てる。

中国は現実に脅威だし、それを煽るのはいいが、しかし、それで米国への依存を深めるとなると、かえって日本も危うい。

日本独自の防衛戦略をもつべきである。

（ちなみに、豪州を見捨てないだろう、と豪州が言っているのはやっぱ不安だからだろうな）