When the Dutch began interacting with the indigenous people of Taiwan, they found that their hunters classified deer hide quality for trade using the Portuguese terms for “head,” “belly,” and “foot.” The Portuguese must have stopped here more than once to trade, but those visits have all been lost to history. They already had a colony on Macao, and did not need Taiwan to gain access to southern China or to the trade corridor that connected Japan with Manila. They were, however, the last to look at Taiwan that way.
The geostrategic relationship between Taiwan and the Philippines was established internationally quite early. In 1619 the Dominican Bartolome Martinez, en route from Manila to Macao, was forced to take shelter in Taiwan to ride out a storm. On his return to Manila, he wrote a report advocating that the Spanish put a fort in “Pacan” — probably Tainan. He linked that, conceptually, to Manila, seeing it as part of the city’s market and defensive arrangements.
The Dutch were constantly at war with the Spanish and often blockaded Manila, hoping to intercept the galleon from Acapulco in Mexico, or the ships of the Chinese traders who came down to trade with it. Martinez argued that a base at Pacan would be an alternate port for the galleon if the Dutch threatened it, and that swinging by that location was easier for the galleon on its return than passing closer to Japan.
Photo: AP
Ironically, the Dutch intercepted and translated his report. How much of an influence it had on their subsequent establishment of the fort in Tainan is not known, but his thinking was obviously prescient.
LOOKING SOUTHWARD
I have observed before that whoever gains control of Taiwan immediately begins looking southward (“Notes from Central Taiwan: Taiwan: A dagger pointed where?” April 22, 2024) to the Philippines and beyond. The reverse is also true: the real historical inevitability is not Chinese control of Taiwan, an accident of history, but the geostrategic relationship between Philippines and Taiwan. The two are always connected when strategic thinkers imagine what future threats and opportunities might manifest.
Photo: AFP
The Chinese realize this, which is why they have been showing increasing interest in the Batanes Islands and the Bashi Channel south of Taiwan in the last 15 years. The Philippines are crawling with Chinese agents, as the recent case of Alice Guo, an apparent People’s Republic of China (PRC) agent who became mayor of Bamban in Luzon has shown.
Guo is only the tip of a very long spear — an investigation reportedly showed that over 200 Chinese had obtained Philippines passports using fake identities, in Davao in southern Philippines. Most of these appear to be connected to offshore gambling operations.
It is worth noting, however, that while news reports have focused on Guo’s alleged involvement in gambling and money laundering, Bamban is right across the river from Clark Air Force Base. The PRC’s use of organized crime in its espionage and influence operations is well known.
Photo: AFP
US UNDERSTANDING?
The US has of course long understood the relationship between Taiwan and the Philippines. Also recognizing this fact, Tokyo and Manila signed a defense pact in July, a Reciprocal Access Agreement that allows either nation to post military units to the other for joint training.
Japan in recent years has been signaling more strongly that it will intervene if the PRC attacks Taiwan. US national security policy expert Elbridge Colby, who has been arguing in many venues that the US needs to hand over Ukraine to Europe (in effect arguing that Russia should occupy Ukraine) and prioritize Asia, has refined his argument to make Taiwan expendable.
“Taiwan is valuable, but we could have an anti-hegemonic coalition of Japan, South Korea, Australia, India, Philippines, et al. This would be tougher to do, but not impossible,” he recently posted.
Colby is among the many who have shifted, or perhaps expanded, their voices to contend that the US doesn’t really need Taiwan. Abandoning Taiwan is, intentional or not, the obvious conclusion of the syllogism that runs: (1) the US should prioritize Taiwan. (2) Taiwan isn’t doing enough for its own defense. This implies (3) The US shouldn’t help Taiwan unless it does more.
Ironically, what Colby and others have really been arguing is that the US should abandon Taiwan to its fate, because they never argue that the US should be shifting its policies to get Taiwan to do what Washington thinks it should. In that truncated, impoverished rhetorical world, Taiwan needs to invest more in defense, on the assumption that the US will intervene, while the US makes no commitment to protecting Taiwan, instead coyly maintaining “strategic ambiguity.”
That is why across the barren realms of that discourse, gazes have been shifting to a future in which Taiwan is PRC-occupied, and voices to the claim that the US can keep its position in Asia without Taiwan. Essentially, Colby and others are contending that Taiwan should be given up in a fit of geopolitical pique.
GEOSTRATEGIC VALUE
If the PRC occupies Taiwan with only a token fight, Taiwan’s prime geostrategic position will fall into its hands.
Most eyes look north to the effect on Korea and Japan. After the Anschluss, PRC pressure on Japan will of course increase. As if to signal that, last week a local paper, the United Daily News (UDN) reported that a university in Dalian in the PRC is setting up an “Okinawa Research Center,” the Okinawan parallel to its current Taiwan “research” centers. It may also suggest something else: the PRC expects to move against Okinawa, Japan, and Taiwan, relatively soon.
But look south. The Philippines has nothing like Taiwan’s advanced defense industries and military assets, is heavily penetrated by PRC agents, and sprawls across a much larger area. With Taiwan annexed, the PRC is suddenly hundreds of kilometers closer to Manila, making defense far more difficult. Geostrategically, Taiwan shields the Philippines and keeps its communications to Japan open, as it has for the last 400 years.
If Colby and his fellow travelers complain about Taiwan’s small defense budget, wait until they see Manila’s: the planned defense budget for next year is US$4.38 billion. There’s a separate modernization program, but Manila still spends much less than Taipei does, and has a far smaller stock of modern defense equipment (Philippines has no modern fighters).
It makes zero strategic sense to give away Taiwan because you are too lazy or too indignant to do what is necessary to get Taipei to move faster, and then expect Manila to pick up the slack. Quite the opposite: Taiwan prevents the Philippines from becoming a severe geostrategic headache. Without Taiwan, the Philippines is far less defensible.
As we saw in the last major war in the area. Tell us again where those fighters that destroyed MacArthur’s air forces on the ground came from?
Notes from Central Taiwan is a column written by long-term resident Michael Turton, who provides incisive commentary informed by three decades of living in and writing about his adoptive country. The views expressed here are his own.
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