How China could turn crisis to catastrophe
While the world’s eyes were fixed on the unfolding horrors of the latest Middle East war, China was busy pushing the envelope in the South China Sea. On Sunday, a Chinese coast guard vessel and another Chinese ship rammed a Philippine supply boat and coast guard ship in international waters claimed by China around the Spratly Islands. The State Department gravely noted that the Chinese actions “violated international law," but China appears unimpressed.
As readers of this column know, the most important international development on President Biden’s watch has been the erosion of America’s deterrence. The war in Ukraine and the escalating chaos and bloodshed across the Middle East demonstrate the human and economic costs when American power and policy no longer hold revisionist powers in check. Washington’s attention is understandably fixed on the threat of a wider Middle East war.
The human and economic toll would be significant, and the U.S. might be drawn into the conflict. But if the erosion of America’s deterrent power leads China and North Korea to launch wars in the Far East, it would be a greater catastrophe by orders of magnitude.
For the past two weeks I’ve been on the road—in Pearl Harbor, Tokyo and Seoul—and the American, Japanese and Korean officials and think-tankers I met with kept hammering two thoughts into my head. First, a war over Taiwan would be far more serious for the world economy than the war in Ukraine or even a wider regional war in the Middle East. Second, our margin of safety is shrinking: The power of American deterrence in the Far East is declining.
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