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If China takes serious military action against Taiwan, and the United States does nothing, will that hurt the credibility of America’s commitment to other countries, like Japan?
This is the question Schar School of Policy and Government associate professor Michael Hunzeker addresses in his forthcoming book, America’s Taiwan Dilemma: Allies' Reactions and the Stakes for U.S. Reputation, co-written with Mark A. Christopher and published by Cambria Press. Whereas many observers of China and Taiwan would intuitively say “yes” to Hunzeker’s research question, his findings contradict this intuition. And because their findings were so unexpected, Hunzeker and his colleague knew they needed to publish their book as quickly as possible. Because when it comes to Taiwan, time is everything.
Hunzeker first became involved in “the Taiwan issue” in 2005 while serving as an officer in the U.S. Marine Corps, where he trained Taiwanese marines both in Taiwan and the United States. Since then, Hunzeker has become one of the country’s foremost scholars regarding Taiwanese security and its implications for the United States. In recent months, he has published several op-eds on the topic in publications such as Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, and Nikkei Asia, as well as the influential security studies blog War on the Rocks. He has also been quoted on the topic in the Washington Post and the Financial Times.
Hunzeker says the question had not given him much thought since the role of reputation in ensuring the credibility of international commitments is well understood in the field. If the United States makes a promise but fails to follow through, then other countries might decide that the promises made by the United States are hollow, especially if these promises are similar to the ones it broke. Countries that rely on America’s promises of security might be attacked—or, more likely, they might stop cooperating with the United States and align with another country, such as China.
Taiwan is the frontline of the geopolitical rivalry between the United States and China. China regards Taiwan as a rogue province, and its government has vowed to unify the island with China by 2050—by force if necessary. Due to America’s historic relationship with Taiwan, it is usually assumed that the United States would intervene to preserve the island’s autonomy if China opted to use force. Technically, the United States doesn’t have a treaty obligation to defend Taiwan. It abrogated its mutual defense treaty with Taiwan’s government in 1979 to establish formal relations with China. Despite this, most commentators have assumed that the United States would still defend Taiwan as though it never ended its treaty with the island’s government. After all, terminating the treaty was essentially a formality aimed at appeasing China, which insists that Taiwan is not, in fact, its own country.
However, while working on a series of simulations that explored the implications of a Chinese invasion of Taiwan, Hunzeker noticed something counterintuitive. In comparing scenarios where the United States successfully defended Taiwan with scenarios where the United States did nothing to defend Taiwan, the reactions of U.S. allies like Japan and Australia “didn’t really differ in either scenario.”
This observation led to a three-year study that involved “more than 100 virtual and in-person interviews with Australian, Japanese, and South Korean experts, policymakers, and former military officials.” During these interviews, Hunzeker and his colleague asked their interlocutors what they would do in a world where the United States didn’t intervene to defend Taiwan from China.
“To our surprise, we found that reputation matters less to our allies than what I think is the common understanding in Washington,” he said.
“Would Japan, South Korea, and Japan prefer that nothing happen to Taiwan? One hundred percent,” said Hunzeker. “Would they prefer that the United States intervene? Yes, with the caveat that the United States win decisively, quickly, and without dragging them in. But in a world where the United States cannot win quickly, or they would be dragged into the conflict, all three countries—Australia, Japan, and South Korea —are clear that they would prefer the United States to remain on the sidelines. Although they care about reputation, what they don’t want is a 'dead’ or destroyed patron, even one that wins a pyrrhic victory. A ’dead’ patron is not useful to them.”
In other words, the underlying imbalance of power between China and U.S. allies that drives them to align with the United States, would still exist even if the United States declined to defend Taiwan. The United States would remain their only option for balancing against the People’s Republic. According to Hunzeker, one former high-ranking Japanese official put it this way: “If you abandon Taiwan, we would not be happy, but we would have no other date to the dance.”
“It’s not that there wouldn’t be reputational damage,” said Hunzeker. “It's that damage to reliability would be even worse.”
If the fight with China isn’t quick and decisive, and the United States “gets its teeth kicked in,” its ability to make good on those security commitments would take an even worse hit than its reputation in a world where the United States does not act. According to Hunzeker, America’s allies know this.
“It's not that the reputational story is entirely wrong,” said Hunzeker. “It's that it simplifies and doesn’t fully capture the way that U.S. allies understand it.”
This isn’t to say that the United States “can abandon Taiwan with impunity,” cautioned Hunzeker. If the United States “wants the option to intervene, you had better make sure the United States has the military advantage necessary to win, and swiftly. If the goal is not to abandon every ally in the region, then you can’t wait until the last minute to decide to wait on the sidelines; you need to take steps to credibly reassure our allies that we are going to defend them. This means not merely maintaining a presence in East Asia but also increasing the amount of military equipment positioned in the region.”