Japanese Defense Report: Russian Offensive In Ukraine Will Embolden China To Invade Taiwan
Japan’s Ministry of Defense: “If Russia’s aggression is tolerated, it may give the wrong impression that unilateral changes in the status quo are allowed in other regions, including Asia.”
The Russian military offensive against Ukraine will embolden China to invade Taiwan, Japanese military planners fear. “If Russia’s aggression is tolerated, it may give the wrong impression that unilateral changes in the status quo are allowed in other regions, including Asia,” the annual white paper published on Friday by the Japanese Ministry of Defense warned.
“Japan warned in the annual paper earlier on Friday of escalating national security threats, including repercussions from Russia’s war with Ukraine, China’s intimidation of Taiwan, and vulnerable technology supply chains,” the Japanese business daily Nikkei reported.
“Japan’s paper described Russia’s attack on Ukraine as a “serious violation of international law” and raises concerns that its use of force to resolve a dispute established a precedent that threatens the security of neighboring Taiwan, which Beijing views as its own territory,” the newspaper added. (Read the summary of the 500-page Japan’s minister of defense white paper here.)
The German public broadcaster Deutsche Welle reported the details of the Japanese defense assessment:
Japan has warned that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine could set a precedent for China’s ambitions in Taiwan, which Beijing views as a renegade province to be rejoined with the mainland.
In its annual defense report released on Friday, the Japanese government called Russia’s war a “serious violation of international law” that has wide-reaching ramifications.
“The political, economic and military rivalries between nations is clear, and the challenge posed to the international order is a global issue,” a white paper of the report said. The paper identified Russia as one of the key threats to the international order, alongside China and North Korea.
It said Russia’s invasion of Ukraine risks sending the message to other countries “that an attempt to unilaterally change the status quo by force is acceptable.”
It also warned that Russia could increasingly lean on its nuclear capacity as a deterrent, which could in turn mean an uptick in activity around Japan, where Russian nuclear submarines are routinely active.
The report comes as China steps up its military aggression toward Taiwan, repeatedly sending fighters and nuclear-capable bombers to violate the island nation’s air defense zone. China’s President Xi Jinping has pledged to ‘re-unite’ Taiwan with the mainland, in line with the long-standing policy of the Chinese Communist Party.
Japan, which has territorial disputes with both China and Russia, is watching the unfolding military conflict in Ukraine very closely. In the run-up to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the Kremlin forged close military ties with China. In November 2021, the Chinese and Russian defense chiefs signed a series of agreements creating a “de-facto” military alliance between the two powers.
This emerging military alliance is particularly threatening to Japan. “China and Russia have conducted joint nuclear bomber exercises over the Sea of Japan each year since 2019,” the London-based Financial Times noted on Friday.
With U.S. President Joe Biden visibly asleep at the wheel, Japan is ramping up its military to counter emerging external threats. Last month, Japan’s Prime Minister Fumio Kishida vowed to “fundamentally reinforce Japan’s defense capabilities within the next five years.”
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Comments
I don’t know if the Russian adventure will embolden them or not, but I doubt much of anything is deterring them at the moment beyond the tactical difficulty of invading a heavily armed island, heavily populated and thoroughly hostile island.
1. China’s President Xi Jinping has pledged to ‘re-unite’ Taiwan with the mainland,
2. China steps up its military aggression toward Taiwan.
3.Taiwan Fears China Could Take Over Islands
4.
I wonder what step 4 will be.
Biden declares that the US has no strategic reason to defend Okinawa.
Taiwan gets a say in what happens.
They aren’t emboldened by the Russian offensive.
They’re emboldened by the utter cowardice of NATO and the drooling dementia patient. They reacted to Russian attack by whining about it and laundering money through their cronies.
And exactly as I predicted months ago, they think it means that they can invade Taiwan and the drooling moron and the diversity cowards Austin and Milley will do absolutely nothing about it.
Remind me, does the USA have a treaty obligation to defend Taiwan or Ukraine?
Admittedly an attack on Taiwan by China would not be in the National Security interests of the USA so an argument can be made about how to respond. Yet there is no treaty agreement to do so despite much more valid concerns in Taiwan.
Why is that? Simple, our political and establishment class long ago decided to strengthen China by enriching it at the expense of our own middle-class and our Asian allies. Both parties supported this through successive Presidential Admins and through back and forth changes in political control of Congress. Now here we are unable to dismount Kipling’s Tiger.
We had a direct and specific one (the Sino-American Mutual Defense Treaty signed in 1954) until the Carter administration unilaterally annulled it in 1980. The effect of that annulment was somewhat lessened by the ‘Taiwan Relations Act’ passed in 1979
While the Taiwan Relations Act does not guarantee the U.S. will intervene militarily if the PRC attacks Taiwan it also does not prevent the U.S. from doing so.
The act states that “the United States will make available to Taiwan such defense articles and defense services in such quantity as may be necessary to enable Taiwan to maintain a sufficient self-defense capabilities”, and “shall maintain the capacity of the United States to resist any resort to force or other forms of coercion that would jeopardize the security, or social or economic system, of the people of Taiwan”.
So yes and no,
The answer is no we don’t have any treaty obligation to Taiwan. Most people are aware of the items you mention. Certainly the Govt of China is and all those items definitely signal an intent on the part of the USA but not an obligation.
Money talks and BS walks. The establishment leadership both political and corporate decided to sell out Taiwan in favor of closer economic ties to China. In doing so they sold out much of the manufacturing base of the USA and the middle class.
If I were in Taiwan I would be observing how the establishment of the USA placed the interests of their own people and economic independence secondary to investment politically and economically in China and draw some very negative conclusions as to whether the USA was truly committed in a confrontation with China.
Chinese offensive in Tibet, India, etc. will embolden China to take affirmative action. That they exercise liberal license to indulge diversity [dogma] (e.g. racism), labor (e.g. practical and actual slavery) and environmental (e.g. Green blight) arbitrage, subscribe to the Pro-Choice ethical religion (e.g. human rites), only exacerbates their progress.
SARS-CoV-2, too. But Kiev is similarly implicated in illicit operation of biohazardous labs.
Gee,
Ya think?
It is hard for me to believe that they haven’t yet taken the opportunity.
Seems like we could get ahead of this by promoting our own manufacturing of various tech components.
What kind of crazy world do we live in where we intentionally make a critical industry so vulnerable? Hell, don’t we have an official “one China” policy?
See also: uranium and energy from Russia and rare earths from China. And that’s really only the tip of the iceberg.
Yep. Instead of corporate giveaway to build domestic semiconductor plants how about simply require that X percent of products bought by the federal govt be 100% manufactured in the USA?
Start with DoD computers and cell phones. Then DoJ and so on. Then write that requirement into federal grant and federal funding for Universities. Expand as needed.
That’s a huge market that would easily support increased domestic manufacturing. No direct subsidies needed. Then consumers would have the ability to purchase off the shelf a computer or phone or whatever 100% manufactured in the USA.
Raise your hand if you didn’t see this coming, like the day Sundowner was installed
One reason that Japan is so concerned about Chinese imperialism involves the Senkaku Islands. The Senkakus are an uninhabited island group about 100 miles NE of Taiwan annexed by the Japanese during the First Sino-Japanese War in 1895. Since 1949 the PRC has disputed that ownership, carrying out a cold-war sort of continuing confrontation involving fishing boats and coast guard vessels.
PRC invasion of Taiwan could easily include the Senkakus as they would provide strategic depth from Japanese or U.S. response originating in mainland Japan or Okinawa. Any PRC move against the Senkakus could bring the U.S. to Japan’s aid as they share a very strong defense treaty.
The Japanese, among others, are also deeply concerned about the S. China Sea.
The chinese are not going to invade Taiwan anytime soon because –
They have no ability to just “take over”. They cannot move an Army anywhere off the mainland. They can destroy Taiwan with nukes, but why?
The price to be paid will be way too high. Because the china military is a police force for mainland china, they have no real capability of invading Taiwan.