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November 1, 2024 - 3:00pm
Professor John Mearsheimer has predicted that Americans would fight a war with China if the latter country invades Taiwan.
In a new interview with UnHerd, the international relations scholar reiterated his concerns about escalating tensions between China and the US, as well as America’s strategic interest in preventing Chinese hegemony in East Asia. “I think that [Americans] would fight and die to defend Taiwan,” he said. “And I hope it doesn’t come to that, but I think it is important for the United States to make sure that China does not acquire Taiwan.”
Mearsheimer later dismissed concerns that there would be no public support for American boots on the ground. “The US government will go to great lengths to manipulate the discourse on what is going on in ways that present China as a mortal threat,” he said, adding that he would also support the US militarily defending Taiwan in the event of a Chinese invasion.
In his 2001 book The Tragedy of Great Power Politics, Mearsheimer critiqued the US policy of engagement with China. He argued that the country’s economic rise would greatly enhance its military might, which it would then use to dominate northeast Asia, resulting in an adversarial relationship between China and the US.
During the interview with UnHerd‘s Freddie Sayers, Mearsheimer revisited those predictions, concluding that the liberal conventional wisdom at the beginning of the millennium, which he calls the “unipolar moment”, was essentially wrong. “The United States was pursuing a policy of engagement toward China, which was designed to help China grow economically,” he said. “My argument at the time was that if China grew economically, it would translate that economic might into military might, and it would try to dominate East Asia.”
Mearsheimer is best known for his theory of offensive realism, which asserts that relations between states are anarchic and driven primarily by power, not morality. He has previously opposed American military interventions, including the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and more recently US support for Ukraine and Israel. However, he views China as a greater threat to US power and is therefore more hawkish toward the country.
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SubscribeI think Mearsheimer is right about a lot of things. I certainly believed that China would become more liberal if we opened up trade – the whole idea that countries with McDonald’s restaurants would not go to war with each other. That is pretty naive in retrospect.
But the idea of boots on the ground in Taiwan is horrifying. There would be zero support for this. It’s also important to remember that a large segment of Taiwanese people – maybe even 40% – are in favour of rejoining China.
In some ways, we simply need to outlast all these warhawks. It seems to me that a lot of these guys are really frickin old. Xi Jinping is 71 years old, Putin is 78, Biden is 102.
I’m not sure Xi Jinping is a warhawk. He has built a strong military, that’s true, and we should be wary of him. People with strong militaries tend to use them. (As we saw with the United States under George W. Bush.)
But I think John Mearsheimer is a false prophet, preaching things as though they are the word of God when they are merely one man’s musings. Better to treat his warnings as possible rather than a sure thing.
I too agree with Mearsheimer in the main. I also think he’s right on this.
The USA cannot allow China to take Taiwan or it is finished in the Pacific. I don’t doubt that could be sold to the US people…because it’s true.
I can’t quite see it that way. Do you think China threatens America’s allies South Korea or Japan? I don’t.
Taiwan is not like Ukraine, an independent country. The US and 190 other countries agree that Taiwan is already part of China. It’s like Hong Kong. China taking over Taiwan would change nothing in geopolitics. It’s already baked in.
I was a bit unspecific there I’m afraid. I mean if China takes Taiwan by military means.
If it was “agreed” then the USA can do nothing.
No, you were clear on your point. It seems I was unclear on mine. I am drawing a contrast between the war in Ukraine and a possible war in Taiwan. The United States has refused to fight in the war against Russia to support the independence of Ukraine. I don’t think the United States would fight in a war against China to support the independence of Taiwan.
Why? The world recognized Ukraine as a sovereign nation that Russia invaded without cause. By contrast, the world (with a few exceptions) considers Taiwan not to be a sovereign nature but to be part of “one China”. (The few exceptions are Belize, Eswatini, Guatemala, Haiti, Marshall Islands, Palau, Paraguay, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Tuvalu, and Nauru.) Even the United States and the United Nations agree that Taiwan is part of one China, and have for decades.
I can’t understand these sophists who try to argue that Taiwan is not part of the People’s Republic of China. It’s philosophically as untenable as the Doctrine of the Trinity, that there are three Gods but at the same time only one God. So if China were to invade Taiwan, I don’t think that anyone could take that as meaning that China was a threat to any other countries in the region.
Even isolating Russia and finding alternatives to most of its energy exports caused great problems. Even today Russia continues to ship out natural gas to Europe. Going to war with China and trying to find alternatives to what it provides the world would be much, much, much harder. I think the idea that the United States would defend Taiwan by sending its military to fight and die there is a fantasy, a nightmare. There is no reason for the US to do that.
A number of points…
Russia did not invade Ukraine without cause…certainly in its view. Ukraine was going to become a NATO base…missiles aimed at Russia. Think the Cuba “quarantine” during the missiles crisis…the alternative was invading…by sea.. very difficult; not so with Ukraine…so Russia did.
Ukraine isn’t isolated…it is bordered by friendly states so although they won’t get involved yet-, they may if Ukraine is to be totally overrun ( which it won’t be…Russia doesn’t want that…and can’t anyway). Taiwan is “on its own” except for the USA.
And yes Taiwan is part of China. The PRC won’t want to invade. It will want some sort of understanding of benefit to itself…and will wait but won’t tolerate effective hostile “independence”…which Taiwan won’t anyway.
So war between Taiwan and the PRC is unlikely in my view.
How do you manage to so confidently assert that Russia doesn’t want to completely take over Ukraine? They certainly invaded Kiev, and Vladimir Putin now specifically denies that the Ukrainians are a separate people.
This wide-eyed denial about Putin’s aggressive intentions by many on the Right is just rather pitiful. Russia has actually launched two separate wars against Ukraine, plus many other aggressive military moves, a lot more recently than say the Iraq war. Also, Hitler had almost exactly the same kind of grievances before the 2nd World War.
Taiwan was never a province of China. That is mere historical revisionism on Beijing’s part.
No, it’s a geopolitical reality established by longstanding agreement between Washington, Beijing and Taipei. Upset the applecart at your peril.
That’s false. Taiwan was part of China for 200 years, until the Japanese took it as a colony in 1895. After the end of the war in 1945 Taiwan became part of China again, and it still is.
There is an indigenous non Chinese Taiwanese people. It was a largely independent island, perhaps with loose suzerainty from China at different periods. It was a Dutch colony for a long period. There was also a significant period of Japanese occupation. None of these ads up to a solid claim by this Chinese totalitarian tyranny to Taiwan, certainly not as a de facto rather than loosely de jure arrangement.
Yes, the remnants of the indigenous population is still in Taiwan, much like American Indians are still in the United States. But gradually Chinese from the mainland displaced the native population and in 1683 the Qing Dynasty in China took control of the island. It has been part of China ever since, though seized by Japan in 1895 and ruled as a colony (not annexed into Japan) until Japan had to relinquish it in 1945.
Taiwan has never been an independent country. Even prior to 1683. Even after 1945.
Of course it would! High end chip manufacturer for one thing! Taiwan is a far more essential asset to the geopolitical and global economic situation than Ukraine.
I just don’t see China invading Taiwan. I guess it could happen. But an economic blockade seems more likely, if anything. A blockade could be bloodless, whereas an invasion would be bloody, and could easily spiral into a world war.
What surprises me is the American policy of strategic ambiguity. Who thought that one up? The United States has long taken the position that Taiwan is not an independent country, but a part of China. So has the rest of the world. We should honor that.
Many Great Wars had decades of build up and then some silly spark let loose the dogs.
The future of Taiwan is like the current U.S. presidential race. Best guesses aside, no one has a clue what is going on. At least in the West.
“relations between states are anarchic and driven primarily by power, not morality”
That is a new western country ideas! Not thousands year old countries!
He confuses what we think vs what others think.
China can wait like Hong Kong affair…they have long term strategy not impulsive like baby aged USA.
Indeed. China plays the long game. They don’t care if they have to wait 5, 10, 20, 50, 1009 or 500 years. Eventually Taiwan will be integrated into the PRC and there’s nothing the USA can do about it. Further, the USA would do well to concentrate its attention on the welfare of its own people rather than initiate wars in far flung places.
“I think that [Americans] would fight and die to defend Taiwan,” he said. “
Not sure about that:
https://responsiblestatecraft.org/us-military-draft-2669344498/
‘SSS is experiencing a significant decline in registrations by 18-year-old men. In 2020, the registration rate for 18-year-old men nationwide was 61.8%, today it is just 39.9%,” the agency reports.’
Taiwan is part of China, it’s absurd that the US would go to war over Taiwan. Strategic ambiguity is a leftover policy from the cold war era, and is an absurdity today. Either Taiwan is a country or it isn’t, enough of the wishy-washy and trying to have it both ways. Taiwan is a leftover from the Empire of Japan which lost WW2, and the Republic of China which lost the Chinese Civil War. Like Hong Kong, time to accept the historical facts. The Chinese century of humiliation is over. Taiwan is Chinese and not part of the west. Hopefully reason will prevail and an orderly transition will take place. Besides, Taiwan would be utterly destroyed in a war and it’s the people that will suffer.
Historically, Taiwan was never part of China.
Be that as it may, I can tell you that all of my US naturalized Chinese colleagues consider Taiwan to be Chinese. One could therefore conclude that the majority in the PRC think likewise, and clearly 40% of the Taiwanese do as well. Now combined with the fact that Taiwan is an Island miles away from the US, it follows that militarily the US would be in a very very weak position. Taiwan is not the equivalent of Kuwait or Iraq.
Taiwan was part of China from 1683 to 1895, and has been from 1945 on. From 1895 to 1945, Taiwan was a colony of Japan, not an independent country. The only argument after World War 2 was who controlled the one China, not whether there were two independent countries.
I agree with Mearsheimer in that states relate to each other by power and appeal to morality plays a role only as deception and emotional blackmail. Who really cares if a country has a “right to exist”. It will, if it has the might to exist, otherwise it won’t.
One thing about the guy though, I watched him speak a few times and he always looks at the audience with this surprised bemusement on his face, as if he were just realizing that he is talking to a bunch of imbeciles who say the stupidest things possible.
I just wrote a short blurb about Mearsheimer, within that a comment about that bemused expression on his face when he talks to people, like someone who can’t believe he has to state the obvious to a bunch of idiots. Then I see his mug on the still image linking to a video down below, that very expression on his face, and I came back excitedly to add that to my post to y’all’s edification, but it disappeared, it did not even last 10 minutes.
I’m crushed. How am I going to sleep tonight?
Mearsheimer late to the game on understanding deterrence. His failure to see how Ukraine, Middle East and the S China Sea are interlinked a massive strategic misapprehension. He somehow thinks ceding in Ukraine to Putin and in the Middle East to Iran and it’s proxies, would act as a deterrent to Xi. Complete opposite.
Xi has told his military to be ready for war by 2027. He’s made promises. Is his rhetoric solely intimidatory ? This is an Autocrat. He won’t be having many advisers tell him invasion a mistake will he. Mearsheimer may have been right about China admission to WTO etc in previous decades but his conclusion on the importance of deterrence now too narrow.
What is useful about his stated Taiwan position is he does grasp the idea one can just let Xi take it, not much else in the world order then changes and we all settle down an utter fairy-tale. Everything changes and for the worse for the West.
Jake Sullivan wouldn’t go all the way with Mearsheimer here. While there may well be those in Washington who would even provoke war with China by goading them to invade Taiwan, that would be a long way from creating the ‘Pearl Harbour effect’ Sullivan believes necessary to mobilise the American people for such a war.
The invasion of Ukraine only won qualified assent for actions against Russia because it was Ukrainians doing the fighting and Europeans principally taking the hit from sanctions. War with China would have more direct consequences for Americans, much too difficult to manage militarily, economically and politically at home or abroad.
His faith in the American public supporting new doses of liberal interventionism – the bridesmaid to neoconservatism – is about as dubious as his anti-Zionism in relation to the unending Middle East quagmire propped up by Democrat appeasement of Iran.
Mearsheimer has a better understanding of geopolitics than military logistics. Taiwan is 100 miles from China and 5,000 miles from Hawaii (6,500 from California), which means China would be fighting virtually in situ while every U.S. bullet, food ration, and gallon of gas would have to be hauled across the Pacific. China has a merchant marine comprised of 7,000 vessels; the U.S. merchant fleet is about 200. Plus, the U.S. would be hampered by contested logistics, which it has not faced since WW II’s German U-boats. In Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan the U.S. moved supplies at will without risk. Not so with China, which would prioritize destroying very vulnerable cargo ships and aircraft. In the run-up to both Gulf Wars the U.S. spent months transporting military hardware and supplies to forward staging areas before ever invading. A Taiwan conflict would not provide that luxury as the Chinese would be in control of the timing of conflict initiation; the U.S. is spread too thinly around the world to pre-position a sufficient force in immediate proximity to Taiwan; and the very act of moving such a massive arsenal that close to China would in itself precipitate an aggressive Chinese response of some sort. It would be comparable to China moving a force into Mexico sufficient to credibly challenge the U.S.
A recent Wall Street Journal article outlines the realities of a military conflict over Taiwan quoted a 2022 Pentagon assessment regarding potential conflict with China as concluding that U.S. logistics resources are “inadequate to support operations in a contested environment.”
https://www.wsj.com/politics/national-security/why-the-u-s-military-has-to-hitch-a-ride-on-commercial-ships-58d0ece9
A true face-off over Taiwan would probably end as the Cuban Missile Crisis between the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. ended in the 1960s. The Soviets knew that they could never prevail in a conventional war against the U.S. fought on an island, Cuba, 100 miles from Florida. The only alternative to backing down for them was nuclear war. The U.S. would face the same reckoning vis a vis Taiwan.
Well stated.
And what would we gain from defending Taiwan? The benefits are too nebulous and abstract to justify the fight. Instead of Nancy Pelosi going to Taiwan to proclaim its independence (in contradiction of long-standing US policy), we ought to be pushing for the status quo to continue. It’s been working pretty well for Taiwan. We’re rocking the boat and are likely to cause a spill.
The US supports a One China policy so will not interfere militarily to prevent a Chinese takeover of Taiwan. In any event, China might not intervene militarily but might wait for events to move in its direction. The US’ debt problems will, in the coming years (unless the next President gets to grips with the debt situation and successfully takes on the military industrial complex), force the Pentagon to close down hundreds of its overseas military bases. Once that begins to happen (even at relatively slow pace), the nature of US power will change dramatically.
What I never really understood is WHY America would want to protect Taiwan, at all costs. I understand that it wants to contain potential Chinese expansion in the Pacific, but couldn’t is still do that via its bases and allies in the region? Japan, Korea, Philippines, etc.