A Judicious Show of Resolve : Reacting to Chinese threats, U.S. moves carriers closer to Taiwan

As China steps up its military and rhetorical threats against Taiwan, the United States has responded with its own show of resolve. A naval battle group led by the aircraft carrier Independence, which last week was operating about 200 miles from Taiwan, is being shifted closer to the island. A second carrier battle group, led by the Nimitz, has been ordered to the area from the Persian Gulf.

These deployments are probably less ominous than they might sound. The Independence battle group will almost certainly stay clear of the 6,600-square-mile area in the Taiwan Strait that China has designated a live-fire area until March 20. And the Nimitz battle group won’t reach its destination until after the scheduled end of the provocative Chinese military demonstration. Barring a major political miscalculation or some astonishingly bad marksmanship, a direct U.S.-Chinese military contact is unlikely. But a serious political confrontation has begun to look unavoidable.

Beijing is candid about its reasons for shaking a mailed fist. Taiwan holds its first free presidential election on March 23. Beijing is agitated both by talk about eventual Taiwanese independence--a blow to the notion that the island is simply a province of China--and about Taiwan’s increasing international assertiveness. Beijing’s bully-boy swaggering is a warning that it is prepared to strike out if it feels its claim of residual sovereignty over Taiwan is seriously challenged. What gives Beijing’s attitude an especially hard edge is the fight for supreme authority that will come once the ailing Deng Xiaoping dies. At this stage no contender for power can afford to look soft on Taiwan.

Washington has decided that it can’t afford to look soft either. High administration officials insist they don’t foresee a military crisis. What they will do if one develops, however, is anything but clear. Meanwhile, congressional sentiment is rising for a political reckoning with Beijing.

Congressional Republicans have proposed an explicit military commitment to defend Taiwan, which would go well beyond long-standing policy to simply help the island defend itself. The Clinton administration, even as it reminds China of the power the United States can deploy, prefers to emphasize, as Defense Secretary William Perry says, the U.S. interest “in maintaining stability in that part of the world.” How far Washington will go to do that is, probably wisely for now, calculatedly ambiguous.