The war in Ukraine seen from Taiwan

For those concerned about peace in the Asia-Pacific region, Ukraine is not, as the comment in a Japanese newspaper puts it, “a fire on a distant shore”. Not secondary, even in Asia a small democracy faces a great oppressive power. China has long claimed Taiwan as its own, uses its military to intimidate it, and reserves the right to invade it.

The Japanese Prime Minister, Kishida Fumio, recently warned: “If we tolerate the use of force to change the status quo, it will also have an impact on Asia.” By this he meant that Russian President Vladimir Putin’s aggression against Ukraine could encourage his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping, to do the same with Taiwan. Comments from the Chinese media do little to allay this concern.

In response to a call from the G7 to uphold Ukraine’s territorial integrity, the Global Times, a state-owned tabloid, mockingly tweeted: “Even when China takes action to eradicate Taiwan’s breakaway regime, you must give China unshakable support. “.

Illuminating differences
In fact, far from sanctioning the wisdom of Xi’s foreign policy, the war in Ukraine exposes its limits. Meanwhile, the differences between Ukraine and Taiwan are more illuminating than the similarities, starting with the levels of support from the United States. Most US citizens are unable to locate Ukraine, their country’s seventy-seventh largest trading partner on a geographic map.

Taiwan, by contrast, is the United States‘ ninth largest trading partner, as well as a superpower of the semiconductors that are at the heart of global supply chains. The fact that it is a Chinese-speaking democracy, emphasizes Bonnie Glaser of the US German Marshall Fund, has allowed Taiwan to be seen by the United States as an alternative political model to the mainland state run by communists. Between Washington and Taipei there is the Taiwan relations act, a cooperation treaty signed in 1979, under which the United States pledged to supply arms and reject attempts to forcibly change the island’s independent status. Taiwan is also at the center of the Western Pacific’s “first island chain” and, through friendly management, provides a key buffer to Japan, Washington’s main ally in the region, from Chinese threats.

Hence, the credibility of the United States is much more at stake in Asia regarding Taiwan than in Europe regarding Ukraine. Losing Taiwan would mean the end of a military order in the region that the United States led after World War II, as well as cede the role of the region’s undisputed power to China.

It is not surprising, then, that Taiwan’s president Tsai Ing-wen and her administration are keen to point out the differences between their country and Ukraine. Xi Jinping, they argue, knows that the United States would respond strongly to any attack. The most immediate concern, according to Lo Chih-cheng, head of the ruling party’s foreign affairs division, is that Ukraine will divert U.S. attention by allowing China to take some military action, such as testing Taiwan’s commitment to defend its peripheral islets.

Andrew Yang, a former Taiwanese defense minister, expects China to step up disinformation actions and cyberattacks designed to sow doubts about Washington’s commitments, and reinforce views of the inevitability of Chinese rule. In this sense, there is a link with Ukraine, according to Glaser. China is closely watching how Russia organizes its hybrid war in Ukraine, with the idea of ​​drawing lessons from it to use against Taiwan.

The dispute with Japan
Finally, Russia itself is an Asian power. Before he began preparing for war against Ukraine, his military activities in the Russian Far East were becoming not only more vigorous, but also more hostile to the United States and its allies. Russia uses the Okhotsk Sea, north of Japan, as a redoubt for its nuclear-armed submarines (designed to attack the United States in case of dire need). It conducted joint naval exercises with China, an increasingly close military partner, in the Sea of ​​Japan.

Meanwhile, Japan is the only member of the G7 with whom Russia has a direct territorial dispute: Stalin seized four northern islands in the last days of World War II. Japan’s hopes of their return had led to years of rapprochement efforts with Russia, in which Japan was concerned that it would not be seen as part of a group of anti-Russian countries. But this week Japan condemned Russia’s aggression and joined Western sanctions against Moscow.

This is despite the unusually massive Russian exercises in waters near Japan in recent weeks, intended, military analysts say, to dissuade Tokyo from siding with the United States and Europe. The heightened tension between Russia and Japan looks set to become the norm. The fires of Ukraine are already burning on the Asian side.

(Translation by Federico Ferrone)