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ASEAN can act to defuse tensions in Straits of Taiwan
Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand and Cambodia bear a special responsibility to persuade China that attacking Taiwan is not its best interest nor in the best interests of the region.
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Showing off: People walk in front of a large screen showing a news broadcast on China's military exercises encircling Taiwan, in Beijing on Aug. 4, 2022. The exercises followed the visit of United States Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi to Taiwan. (AFP/Noel Celis)
A
frightening memo from a United States general hit the headlines recently. “I hope I am wrong. My gut tells me we will fight in 2025,” Air Mobility Command head Gen. Mike Minihan wrote for the officers under his command about the Taiwan conundrum.
"By 2025, China will bring the cost and attrition to its lowest. It has the capacity now, but it will not start a war easily,” he continued.
This is basically a validation of what Defense Minister Chiu Kuo-cheng of the self-ruling island of Taiwan shared back in 2021. “China already has the ability to invade Taiwan and it will be capable of mounting a ‘full scale’ invasion by 2025,” Chiu said.
My sincere hope is that the status quo will prevail not for the next five or 10 years but forever unless the leaderships of both China and Taiwan consensually find a new way to define their relationship.
But let us assume that China’s impatience toward Taiwan will run thin very soon. After all, if China calculates that the more it waits, the more difficult it will be to take over the island militarily, then perhaps the gut feelings of Gen. Minihan will prove pretty much correct, especially after the visit to the Philippines by US Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin.
If the direst of scenarios, a real attack by China in 2025, really happens, what will be the reactions, the responses of the international community?
A lot of discussions and a multitude of op-eds have been written on what the US would do to counter such a move. Yet a more interesting question would be what other players, both far away from and close to the South China Sea, will do in such an extreme and apocalyptic scenario.
