While ISIS, Tehran, and the Ukraine do their bit to focus our attention, trouble is brewing between the CCP and its democratic neighbors.
The Defense Intelligence Agency’s Worldwide Threat Assessment has some of the details, via the Taipei Times.
“China views these to include Taiwan, and other contested claims to land and water,” it said. “They are also augmenting more than 1,200 conventional short-range ballistic missiles deployed opposite Taiwan with a limited, but growing number of conventionally armed, medium-range ballistic missiles, including the DF-16, which will improve China’s ability to strike regional targets.”
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The assessment said that the South China Sea remains a potential flashpoint and that large-scale Chinese construction there had increased tensions.
China also twice deployed submarines to the Indian Ocean last year, it said.
Of course, “China” refers to the Chinese Communist Party – which imprisoned and impoverished the Chinese people for three decades before dropping the latter and focusing on the former over the last third of a century. That was enough to impress a good deal of the planet, but the bloom is definitely falling off that rose (for more on this, see the Epoch Times’ interview with Fraser Howie on how malinvestment and Keynesian accounting have seriously over-measured prosperity in China, and the same paper’s story on how Made-in-China products leave much to be desired – among the Chinese).
Since the Tiananmen massacre, however, the CCP has also used radical nationalism to justify its existence – and that would be the only card left to play as the economic continues to sour.
This is where the democracies of the region – and the United States – come in.
First on the CCP’s list of geopolitical goals is “reunification” with Taiwan – never mind that the Communists never actually reached Taiwan, and that the island democracy was politically separated from the mainland for all but four years over the last 120. The regime likely had high hopes for current Taiwanese President Ma Ying-jeou (of the CCP-friendly Kuomintang Party), but Ma has less than 18 months in power left, and all indications are that the people of Taiwan will elect a more anti-Communist successor is coming next year (Taipei Times).
Of course, the CCP endured Chen Shui-bian, Ma’s predecessor from the Democratic Progressive Party (full disclosure: I supported Chen in 2000 and 2004, and backed the DPP’s nominees in 2008 and 2012), but the residents of Zhongnanhai (Beijing’s version of the Kremlin) had the confidence of a (supposedly) booming economy, a strengthening military force, and Taiwan’s bitter political divisions.
All they have now is the military strength, and the realization that the Taiwanese people are moving away from them. This could be a recipe for trouble, especially if Washington stays silent.
No one expects an American military deployment in Taiwan, but there are plenty of options between “boots on the ground” and doing nothing. The Taiwanese people, and our democratic allies in eastern and southern Asia, will be watching to see if we’re willing to support them or leave the region to a desperate clique of kleptocrats looking for land and sea grabs abroad to distract from growing unrest and economic stagnation at home.
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