from SCMP
What would Sun Tzu and Clausewitz think about Ukraine and Taiwan?
- When it comes to its own survival, Beijing is probably a better student of the two perennial philosophers of war than Washington and Brussels
Alex Lo
Published: 9:00pm, 15 Feb, 2024
Continuity of leadership in a big organisation is important. So it may be a good thing that Anders Fogh Rasmussen, former Nato chief, sounds exactly like his successor Jens Stoltenberg while discoursing in public. Let’s hope they – or rather Washington, their real boss – can find another clone as Stoltenberg is about to retire.
Only Western unity would enable Ukraine to win, Rasmussen wrote in the Financial Times recently, and nothing less than victory would discourage Beijing from invading Taiwan. He didn’t define what that victory would look like, though: regaining all territories, rolling back all Russians and deposing Vladimir Putin? All those outcomes look unrealistic at the moment.
“The final and most important way to deter a Chinese move on Taiwan is to ensure a Ukrainian victory in the current conflict,” he wrote.
“If Russia can gain territory and establish a new status quo by force, it sets a dangerous precedent. China and other autocratic powers will learn that the democratic world’s resolve is weak and that nuclear blackmail and military aggression work.”
It sounds exactly like what Stoltenberg said at a Nato conference a few months ago and countless times before. So you wonder why Rasmussen even bothered. Oh, he recently visited the island of Taiwan, he told us by the second paragraph. Unfortunately it wasn’t well covered by the news media. That tends to happen when you are merely the former head of Nato. So presumably he was covering himself for our benefit. It’s hard for an old politician to lose the limelight – he was a Danish prime minister.
More charitably, though, I guess in both their brilliant minds, Nato is already Naapto (North Atlantic-Asia-Pacific Treaty Organisation), and the military alliance’s propagandists need to keep drumming up this message, however dangerous and absurd, until it sounds normal to us poor Asians. Now that’s a scary thought. It’s not like there is not enough powder in the keg for World War III in the Asian region already.
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I don’t know if Cui Tiankai, China’s longest-serving ambassador to Washington, had read Rasmussen’s op-ed, but what he said this week sounded like a direct rebuttal.
“Someone may be preparing for us that they will supply military assistance, they will supply weapons for proxy war, and Chinese will be killing Chinese. We will not fall into that trap”, he said in an apparent reference to Washington’s continuing arms sales to Taiwan.
A Russian invasion or a US proxy war in Ukraine? It’s fascinating that the two sides have drawn diametrically opposite conclusions and lessons.
First, consider what the Western consensus seems to be – at least by what is said in public – as represented by Rasmussen and Stoltenberg. That is, what the West thinks the Chinese think about the Ukraine war. Then, let’s examine what the Chinese think – or at least what they say publicly – about it.
“Know thyself, know thy enemy.” – Sun Tzu
Perhaps another way to phrase the second part of that most famous of quotes is that you should know how your enemy thinks, in other words, his assumptions and habits, his premises, prejudices and presuppositions, then think like your enemy, and on the balance of probabilities, reach the conclusions that he is likely to reach or the moves he is likely to make. Like chess.
Still another way is to quote Jack Reacher, the giant of a hero in the series of popular detective novels by Lee Child: “In an investigation, assumptions kill.” Well, your assumptions can kill you and your enemy’s assumptions can kill him. But you ought to know his assumptions to better kill him or let him kill himself.
Now that we have established the intellectual affinity between Jack Reacher and Sun Tzu, we can apply it to Ukraine.
Basically, the West extends what it thinks the Russians are thinking, and then applies those same assumptions to the Chinese – because all dictators think alike, never mind that Putin and Xi Jinping are so obviously very different kinds of leaders.
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It goes something like: Tyrannical Russia invades Ukraine. And now, if it succeeds, tyrannical China will follow suit with Taiwan. Monkey see, monkey do. It’s a case of FOMO, or fear of missing out, for the Chinese.
So, Rasmussen and Stoltenberg – and not a few Pentagon generals and US politicians – are adding assumptions on assumptions of their own. Do the Chinese even think like that? I seriously doubt it.
“War is a chameleon.” – Clausewitz
Everyone and his dog likes to quote the Prussian general’s dictum about war being an extension of politics. It’s good advice as far as it goes. But he has another observation that is just as timeless.
Every war is different, as they may fall in different genera. Eighteenth century cabinet or limited warfare was vastly different from the revolutionary-nationalist wars of the 19th century, a precursor to the total, industrialised and ideologically driven wars of the 20th century.
But each war by itself, on Clausewitz’s telling, can also change its nature, aims and purposes for the duration of combat. Few wars – or the purest kind of war – end up in a fight to the death in which one side emerges as total victor and the other side completely vanquished or exterminated. So Clausewitz would say the same about the war in Ukraine.
Volodymyr Zelensky may like to tell people it’s a fight to the death, but it clearly is not. This is how Clausewitz might analyse the Chinese way of thinking as expounded by Cui. Whether it was a war of aggression and conquest or a pre-emptive defensive war by Russia, the important thing is that – once Ukraine and the West united in their opposition – it has become a proxy war of the West led by Washington.
A proxy war means fighting a war in your enemy’s neighbourhood, while leaving your own backyard perfectly tranquil and your soldiers safe, at least so far as the Americans are concerned. For the Europeans, maybe not so much.
That’s exactly what Cui means by “a trap”. The Chinese, if he represents Beijing’s way of thinking, do not see the Ukraine war as something to EMULATE, but something to AVOID – whatever the outcome in Europe.
China will not fall into ‘trap’ of war in Taiwan Strait: Cui Tiankai
12 Feb 2024
A conclusion
I happen to think Nato and Pentagon strategists are not so naive or simplistic as I have painted them out to be. What they really think will be very different from what they, or their civilian spokesmen, say in public. But whatever their real calculations, declared or otherwise – they may even conclude Beijing has no intention to invade Taiwan at all – the result is the same: sell more weapons to Taiwan. And flood as much military hardware across the Taiwan Strait, the South China Sea and the Indo-Pacific as a whole in the years ahead.
But doing that would mean admitting outright aggression and military containment against China. The West cannot look like the aggressor. It has to make China look like the aggressor to justify its own and its allies’ militarisation of the region. Taiwan offers the perfect excuse.
So every opportunity needs to be exploited to link China to unprovoked aggression. And if Russia invades Ukraine, well, that just means the Chinese will invade Taiwan – aggression before the fact. It’s perfectly ridiculous logic, but great propaganda.
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