I can’t say I’m entirely happy with my newfound role of defender of Donald Trump. But while I’m certainly not going to attribute it to any change in character or fundamental goodwill on his part, he does seem to have had a recent run of relative good sense. Batting down the Epstein conspiracy theorists was one example; this week’s tough talk on Russia was another. And now there’s Taiwan.
The analogy between Ukraine and Taiwan has been common currency for the last few years. And just as Trump’s return to power produced fears that he would sell out Ukraine in a deal with Vladimir Putin, there were also worries that he would sell out Taiwan for the sake of a deal with China’s Xi Jinping. Both could be attributed to the same “realist” spheres-of-influence view of geopolitics.
Of course there were arguments the other way. To put it bluntly, Putin is white: confrontation with Russia never had the same racist appeal for Trump and the Republican Party base that confrontation with China had. Moreover, there was (and is) a war actually in progress in Ukraine; it made sense for Trump to try to do something about it, even if it was something bad. But putting his toe in the Taiwan Strait would mean anticipating a conflict that might never have been going to happen anyway.
Now the issue has come to the fore, at least as far as Australia is concerned, with the current review by the United States of its commitments under the 2021 AUKUS agreement. Apparently the Trump administration would like any submarines that it provides to Australia to be available for use in the event of a Taiwan conflict: as the Financial Times put it (as quoted by Anton Nilsson in Crikey), it is “pressing Japan and Australia to make clear what role they would play if the US and China went to war over Taiwan.”
I should say I don’t know much about submarines. I’m sceptical about what use they might be for us, and I’m quite willing to believe that the whole AUKUS deal is a grotesque waste of money, for Australia and probably its other participants as well. But if they are to be useful for anything, defence of Taiwan would have to be high on the list.
Yet notice the coy way in which pundits and reporters approach the issue, with studiously neutral language like (per John Blaxland) “in the event of a war with China over Taiwan.” But we’re not talking about war as a free-floating thing that just happens. Taiwan isn’t going to attack anyone; what we’re talking about is a potential Chinese invasion in an attempt to destroy Taiwanese independence.
And if defending the independence of medium-sized Asia-Pacific powers is not a core Australian interest, it’s hard to see what is. If Trump, however capriciously, has latched onto that truth, he should be supported and encouraged.
But, you may ask (as Blaxland does), what about strategic ambiguity? For decades, US policy on Taiwan has (mostly) refused to be drawn either way on whether it would come to Taiwan’s aid if it were attacked, including potentially with nuclear weapons. (Contrast again the case of Ukraine, where the Biden administration unwisely ruled out military assistance before the invasion happened.) Isn’t a request for some sort of understanding with Australia a breach of that policy?
Well, no. The point of strategic ambiguity is to keep China in the dark about what the western response might be. Keeping the US in the dark as well doesn’t add anything to that. If ambiguous deterrence fails and China invades, then a decision will have to be made about what to do; rather than pre-empting what that decision will be, Trump is asking for some assurance that Australia will go along with it.
Whether that’s a reasonable request or not depends partly on what you think about the American alliance in general, but also on the specifics of Taiwan. I’m the last person to suggest we should blindly sign up to following the US into war: I think that’s done enormous harm in the past (with Iraq as exhibit one). But as regards Taiwan, it’s hard to imagine a scenario where resistance would be in America’s interest but not in Australia’s; the risk is that the US will leave us (and Taiwan) in the lurch, not vice versa.
As always, it’s important to stress that deterrence is primarily about preventing war. A promise of Australian participation might not add much to the deterrent, but it surely adds something – and in a dangerous world that’s something worth having.
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PS and off topic a little, but for those who missed it last time, our namesake movie, The World is not Enough starring Pierce Brosnan and Sophie Marceau, is on TV tonight (Friday) in Australia: 9Go! (channel 93) at 7.30pm.
The World is Not Enough 
Taiwan is the only Chinese-speaking democracy (sarcastic thanks to Mao and Lee Kwan Yew) so JS-J and Shoebridge and the “peace movement” can go take a leap.
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Trump’s tough talk on Russia’s war with Ukraine hasn’t lasted. There’s now talk of a summit meeting with Putin.
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Indeed – not a surprise, I’m afraid.
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Good to see some rationality from you on Trump. Can you just lose the racist trope though? It’s poor analysis.
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Thanks Graham. So do you not accept that Trump is a racist? Or do you think that it’s just not relevant for understanding his actions? Or that it is, but it’s somehow infra dig to mention it?
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I’ve never seen any credible evidence he is a racist, but plenty that suggests he isn’t. In fact, if you were looking for a racist president there is more to condemn his predecessor than there is him.
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Well, it strikes me that it’s pretty hard to look at Trump’s career as a whole and not conclude that he’s a racist. If you’re interested in the evidence, the Wikipedia article “Racial views of Donald Trump” has several hundred footnotes to sources. And I mention it because on this subject at least, it seems to have some explanatory power; his attitudes to Putin & Xi seem very different, and the opposite of the way America saw things in the 1980s. But I certainly don’t suggest racism is the only reason, and to the extent that it matters it’s certainly not exclusive to Trump; it clearly runs deep in the Republican Party.
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I thought your evidentiary standard would be higher than Wikipedia. As you’d well know his vote amongst African Americans in the US is higher than any other Republican President in recent memory, as well as with Hispanics. Don’t know about other minority demographics.
Perhaps the vibe you get from his attitude to Putin and Xi is different to mine, but just a little too vague to use as evidence.
There’s quite a few black Republicans would take issue with your last comment, as would Hispanics, like say Tim Scott or Marco Rubio.
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Go back & read that again – I didn’t suggest using Wikipedia as evidence. I suggested using some of the sources cited in its several hundred footnotes.
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Of the claims in Wikipedia the only one that isn’t bogus is the complaint that the Trump organisation pled guilty to what amounts to “systemic” racism because of renting practices, but I think that can be explained in terms of commercial convenience rather than racism.
Relying on Wikipedia means you are excluding a huge amount of material that contradicts it. Take Lynne Patton for example: https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/lynne-patton-addresses-the-cohen-hearing-fight-about-racism-defends-trump. A former employee who is black defending him as “colour blind” in congressional hearings. I think a lot of his black voters would say the same thing.
Repeating the propaganda of his opponents as fact is not a good look.
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The politicians and the thinktankers and the journalists and the others who are responsible for shaping Australians opinions on this matter are doing a disservice, and governments have been worried for a long time that yet another failed US war is going to affect them. Mostly, there has been an attempt to deepen support amongst those who support already, rather than to broaden support. For instance, the people who say “we should support the US” generally do so because they feel a sense of shared identity and shared history — familial bonds. But many Australians view Australia as our country and the US as a foreign country, and wonder what we can do at what cost. If you view the matter as familial bonds — and the people with authority generally do — you will be offended at the thought of a BCR. If you see Australia as one democratic country and the US as a foreign democratic country, you will be offended at the lack of autonomy, at the subservience of the leaders. Both perspectives are out there, in much more balance in the electorate than the establishment.
And the chief problem, of course, is that Taiwan doesn’t even enter into any of this, because the shared history and the shared values narrative with the US looms too large. How does the Aukus debate go? Until someone mentions Taiwan, the talk is all about the strength of the relationship and what we’ve got in common. Then someone says Taiwan, and either the response is that the subs are great for defending Australia anyway, or the talk becomes about how Australia remains the sovereign right to make its own decisions. In fact, I suspect that most Australians wouldn’t know Taiwan from a MacGuffin and Aukus has surely made this much, much worse.
Australia can’t let the US confidently know it will defend Taiwan because the Taiwanese relationship is mediated by the US relationship and the US relationship is political. The US relationship is unavoidably political because there are two different views on us ourselves, and yet only one of them is communicated by the authoritative channels. If you want to end strategic ambiguity one of these things has to change. Australia needs more honesty.
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Casoar – no. Most of the Australian electorate (especially in the outer suburbs and regions) are actually opposed to the Larissa Waters/Faruqui/Shoebridge/Thorpe worldview — the one that meta-fellates Noam Chomsky (KR apologist) and blames an incohote “the USA” and the “Global North” for the Third World’s troubles, thus infantalising and dis-agency-ing non-white majority parts of the world.
The Moratoriam march in 1970 brought out 40 thousand people. “Free, Free Palestine!” can only bring out a few thousand. Times have changes but the westen left refuses to adapt.
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