While we've been distracted
On humanitarian relief, security umbrellas, and the heightened dangers for places like Taiwan in today's world
Taiwan's new president has declared China a "foreign hostile force" and warned that "China has been taking advantage of democratic Taiwan's freedom, diversity, and openness".
■ The most likely strategic opening for China to launch a military attack on Taiwan remains the cover of some kind of major natural disaster -- a crippling earthquake or typhoon. The island is vulnerable to both, and if it were to be hit hard enough by Mother Nature, then Communist China could be expected to use the event as cover for a massive mobilization under the cover of providing "relief aid".
■ Those events, though, remain sufficiently unpredictable that it could easily be a matter of decades before such an opening would occur. But the extraordinary uncertainty lately unleashed on the global order may create something close to a human equivalent of a massive natural disaster. The US has provided Taiwan a security umbrella of sorts for a long time, but if that umbrella is retracted -- even if only temporarily -- then China might take it as a signal to act.
■ Concerns over infiltration operations being conducted to undermine Taiwan's system of government are probably very well-founded. And that, in turn, ratchets up the danger of domestic overreaction. The balance is exceedingly hard to get right under the best of circumstances. And these circumstances are not the best, by a long shot.
