Welcome to this week’s Active Measures.
Europeans won’t be seeing Joe Biden for a while. He’s busy with China, particularly Taiwan, where the mainland military is ratcheting up the the threat.
Talk about invasion is overblown. Beijing’s tactic is salami-slicing the credibility of the island democracy’s defence. Each air intrusion is bigger and more ostentatious. If Taiwan retaliates, it risks escalation in which it is the loser, probably with a blockade. If it doesn’t retaliate, then it looks like a pushover.
Europe could help. Sending naval vessels into the Taiwan straits, for example, would show the Beijing regime that this is not just a US-China issue. Not much chance of that for now — indeed the German frigate heading to the Pacific is carefully paying a visit to a mainland Chinese port before it does anything with the US Navy.
A more likely approach is what I call the “Taiwan Tiptoe”. This involves lots of countries taking very small steps to improve their relations with the authorities in Taipei. Elements of this include:
Sending politicians and officials to Taiwan for “informal” or “humanitarian” meetings;
Opposition politicians, mayors and independent public figures heading there under their own steam;
Improving the status of the quasi-diplomatic missions in Taipei (eg adding a military attaché);
Inviting Taiwanese officials to meetings in Western capitals for informal or even formal meetings;
Pushing back against mainland attempts to dictate how Taiwan is described: insisting that it appears as “Taiwan, Republic of China” rather than “Chinese Taipei and suchlike;
Protecting overseas Taiwanese from harassment (eg on university campuses);
Encouraging Taiwan’s remaining diplomatic allies, particularly the important ones such as the Holy See, Paraguay and Guatemala, to resist pressure from the mainland; and
Preventing Western companies from being accomplices in the bullying of Taiwan (for example this shameful behaviour by a German pharma company) .
Individually, none of these makes a big difference. But they all help puncture the mainland taboo, and make it easier for other countries to take similar steps.
I’d welcome more suggestions — you can sms, Signal or WhatsApp me on +447770380791.
The big problem here, as I’ve written before, is that Taiwan is not ready for primetime. Deferential, bureaucratic, hierarchical, process-oriented habits die hard. Outsiders would like Taiwan to be the Baltic states of the western Pacific: dynamic, flexible, gutsy frontline allies. But it isn’t.
What I’ve been doing
My CEPA column was about Biden and the summits (further thoughts in Estonian here, Italian here, Lithuanian here, and Polish here and here)
I signed this open letter calling for a new East European university. A shortened version was published in the Times.
And this Globsec open letter calling for a more robust defence against “hybrid” threats (which we used to call active measures).
I had great fun with this week’s China Influence Monitor. You can read it here (and do sign up — it’s free).
What I’ve been reading:
Wilful Blindness, How a network of narcos, tycoons and CCP agents Infiltrated the West Journalist Sam Cooper’s hair-raising account of Chinese influence ops in Canada is unfortunately so badly written that the message gets lost.
The China Nightmare: The Grand Ambitions of a Decaying State Dan Blumenthal’s short, pithy, and well-written book should be on everyone’s reading list.
The Grey Men: Pursuing the Stasi into the present Former FBI man Ralph Hope writes a startling account on how the “east German” (Soviet Occupation Zone for oldies like me) secret police hung on to their loot, evaded justice, re-wrote history and rebuilt their influence networks.
The Glass Wall: Lives on the Baltic Frontier Grand old man of English letters Max Egremont has penned an erudite but infuriatingly patronising book about Estonia and Latvia. I’ve just finished it. My blistering review will be in the Economist shortly.
I’ll be back in your inboxes next week.
Best regards, Edward