Evan Ellis - How PRC forcible incorporation of Taiwan could change the global strategic environment
Dear Colleague:
While the international community is rightfully focused on the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the suffering and inspiring resistance of the Ukranian people, I would like to also share with you my new work on a different, but disturbingly parallel topic: how the People’s Republic of China (PRC) forcible incorporation of Taiwan would alter the global strategic environment.
Although this work was written before the Ukraine crisis, and although PRC-Taiwan and Russia-Ukraine are very different situations, the reality of Russia’s increasingly brutal aggression in Ukraine reminds us that such questions are not unthinkable, and have enormous implications, both only in terms of the potential conflict unleashed and its risks of escalation, but also how the direct and indirect fallout from such a defining event transforms the global strategic environment, unifying some, weakening or isolating others, and changing the calculations of all.
Just as the positions, unity, and calculations of the world’s states will look very different after the Ukraine conflict, a Taiwan conflict would be similarly, or even more transformative. Although security analysts arguably consider HOW a Taiwan conflict could come about and be fought, few have considered what the global environment AFTER it would look like.
The enclosed article makes a preliminary, scenario-based analysis in that direction. While I do not personally believe that the PRC seeks to exploit the West’s distraction in Ukraine to invade Taiwan in the short term, the Xi Jinping government in the PRC clearly has a strong interest in putting an end to Taiwan autonomy before the end of Xi’s unprecedented third term in office. The outcome of the Ukraine conflict will impact PRC thinking about how it should proceed on Taiwan.
The article is included here in English, published as an eBook by the India-based media company IndraStra:
https://books.google.com/books/about?id=pn9hEAAAQBAJ&redir_esc=y
It is published here in its original Spanish, by the Journal of the Peruvian Naval War College (my thanks to them for the publication, and the translation):
https://revista.esup.edu.pe/RESUP/article/view/128/105
As always, if this work is of value, please feel free to pass it to a friend or colleague, or to join my (always free) distribution list:
Respectfully,
R. Evan Ellis
Latin America Research Professor,
U.S. Army War College Strategic Studies Institute
#REvanEllis