John Mearsheimer: evaluation

Transcript context

…Why exactly? Because it’s an important strategic asset. Many people will say it’s because Taiwan’s a democracy, but that doesn’t matter that much. It’s because of two strategic reasons. The first is that if we were to let Taiwan go, it would have hugely negative consequences for our alliance structure in East Asia. To contain China, we need allies. We have an alliance structure, and our allies, Japanese, South Koreans, Filipinos, Australians, they’re all counting on us to be there for them. And if we say, “We’re not going to defend Taiwan, the Chinese attack,” they’re going to say, “I bet if the Chinese attack us, the Americans won’t be there for us.” So it would have a damaging effect on our alliance structure, which we cannot afford because containing China is a wicked problem. It’s a powerful state. You were getting to this before when you talked about China versus Taiwan. So that’s the first reason. Second reason is you want to bottle up the Chinese Navy and the Chinese Air Force inside the first island-chain. You don’t want to let them get out into the Pacific. You don’t want them dominating the waters of East Asia. You want to bottle them up again inside the first island-chain. And you can only do that if you control Taiwan. You don’t control Taiwan, they get out into the Philippines Sea, into the Pacific, and the Western Pacific and cause all sorts of problems. Well, you saying all that, you’ve also said the Century of Humiliation, Japan and the United States are a source of that humiliation for China, don’t you think they see the other side of that?…

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