Opinion | To avoid a disastrous war over Taiwan, US and China must halt great power rivalry and dust off the deterrence crystal ball

Name: Xi warns Biden that US ‘playing with fire’ as tensions soar over Pelosi’s proposed Taiwan visit
Uploaded: 2022-08-30T01:15:15.000Z
Duration: 3 min 13 s
Description: Xi warns Biden that US ‘playing with fire’ as tensions soar over Pelosi’s proposed Taiwan visit

Washington and Beijing need to focus less on who may be in decline and more on the tragic consequences of an armed clash as both sides define future policies towards Taiwan

Their goal should be an agreement to dial down the threat, as the US and Soviet Union did over West Berlin after years of constant crises

Reading Time:4 minutes

Why you can trust SCMP

Gregory Mitrovich

Published: 9:15am, 30 Aug 2022

Joseph Nye of Harvard University famously argued that nuclear weapons had provided leaders in Washington and Moscow with a “crystal ball” foreshadowing incalculable destruction should war break out. Deterrence held for over 40 years because both sides understood that no short-term, strategic gains were worth the risk of a nuclear war.

It should be equally evident today that a Sino-American conflict in the 21st century would be catastrophic for the world. Yet, officials and analysts on both sides of the Pacific worry that conflict may be inevitable.

Indeed, the current crisis in the South China Sea, where China has conducted the largest military exercises since the 1995 Taiwan Strait crisis, is being portrayed by some as a rehearsal for a military operation that risks conflict with both the United States and Japan. Why doesn’t the crystal ball operate today?

An important reason is both Beijing and Washington are increasingly influenced by the predictions of power transition theory, which scholars use to understand the changing nature of great-power strategic competition, especially the dynamic between rising and declining powers and how it will affect the international system in the future.

Power transition theory tries to anticipate when dominant powers lose their pre-eminence to rising challengers. When that happens, proponents claim war is nearly inevitable, what Harvard’s Graham Allison calls a “Thucydides trap”. Chinese officials have become increasingly vocal that they see the US and the West in decline.

03:13

Xi warns Biden that US ‘playing with fire’ as tensions soar over Pelosi’s proposed Taiwan visit

Increasingly, some within the Chinese government are calling for Beijing to challenge the US more aggressively, expecting a weakening US to yield areas of competition.