As the US Congress works to finish its annual defence authorisation bill, with new measures aimed at countering China’s influence, a report released Wednesday argues that Washington would be better served by toning down rhetoric about Taiwan and reducing defence investments premised on a looming mainland Chinese attack there.
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Beijing is “highly unlikely” to attack Taiwan, with its chances of success increasingly improbable, authors of the Stimson Centre report, “Rethinking the Threat”, said.
The authors, Dan Grazier, MacKenna Rawlins, and James Siebens – all researchers at the Washington-based think tank – contend that strategic, political, economic and practical military reasons all argue against it, laying out one of the more comprehensive cases to challenge what they call Washington’s “threat inflation”.
Beijing sees Taiwan as part of China to be reunited by force if necessary. Most countries, including the US, do not recognise Taiwan as an independent state, but Washington is opposed to any attempt to take the self-governed island by force and is committed to supplying it with weapons.
In recent years, Washington has grown increasingly anxious about a mainland takeover of Taiwan. Some warn that Chinese President Xi Jinping might use an attack to divert attention from domestic economic troubles, while others view the People’s Liberation Army’s increasingly frequent crossings of the Taiwan Strait’s median line as signs of growing aggression. These anxieties surfaced in popular culture with last month’s debut of Zero Day Attack, a Taiwanese drama about a fictional PLA assault.
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“It’s public that Xi has ordered his military to be capable of invading Taiwan by 2027. The PLA is building the military needed to do it. Training for it every day. And rehearsing for the real deal,” Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth said at the Shangri-La Dialogue in May.