Due to China’s massive buildup of forces aimed at isolating Taiwan, the U.S. has been forced to focus more and more on forming alliances with Asian countries that have reason to fear China’s expansionist ambitions.
As China’s military might increases rapidly, it’s becoming clearer by the day that the U.S. will need to work with its partners in the region to field a unified response as an effective deterrent against a possible Chinese invasion of Taiwan. Luckily for the U.S., the irresistible logic of “the enemy of my enemy is my friend” is as relevant as ever, and almost every nation around China has many reasons to fear the growing might of China.
Japan has taken a leading role in the creation of a united front aimed at countering China’s threat to seize Taiwan. Japan’s military is asking for a record budget for military spending in 2023. The National Interest reports that “Japan is considering modifying its constitution to enable ‘enemy base strike capabilities,’ new language which would expand the country’s ability to conduct military attacks into a wider range of contingencies.” Such a rewording would be a significant change from the nation’s post-World War II constitution, which limited Japan’s military to only a few defensive units.
Japan has also called for strategic diplomatic cooperation between itself, India, Australia and the U.S. — a cooperative endeavor that is now crystalizing as the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue, colloquially known as “the Quad”. Currently, the Quad is still far from a military alliance. Japan and the U.S. have both signaled that they might be willing to fight if China invades Taiwan, but India has so far stayed quiet about the Taiwan issue.
Recent border skirmishes and water security fears have shown that India has reason to be wary of an increasingly powerful China. However, India is located far from Taiwan, and as The Diplomat explains it: “Intrinsically, India and China — both members of the BRICS platform for developing powers as well as the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, an Asian security grouping — ‘advocate for the reform of global economic institutions’ while sharing ‘a common vision for a multipolar global order.’ True to form, it is unlikely that India will support Taiwan verbally at the cost of undermining New Delhi’s ties with Beijing.”
The stance of the fourth member of the Quad, Australia, is also uncertain when it comes to the question of whether Canberra would send military forces to join the U.S. if China were to invade Taiwan and the U.S. were to intercede militarily. It is significant that a major recent survey shows that Australians have become a lot less trusting of China, and more Australians are supporting the idea of defending Taiwan militarily.
The Lowy Institute polled 2,006 Australians between March 15 and March 28. Fifty-one percent of respondents approved of deploying the Australian Defense Force to help Taiwan “if China invaded Taiwan and the U.S. decided to intervene.” This percentage is eight percentage points more than in 2019.
The survey also recorded that only 12 percent of respondents said they trust China somewhat or a great deal. This is a whopping 40 percentage points less than in 2018. Only 11 percent of Australians said they have a lot or some confidence in Chinese President Xi Jinping to do the right thing regarding world affairs. This figure has halved since 2020 (22 percent) and has dropped by 32 percentage points since 2018 (43 percent).
Image: U.S. Navy
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