OPINION: Ukraine and Taiwan More Connected Than You Think

Henry Kissinger, the architect of America’s relationships with both Taiwan and China, is gone. His party, the Republican GOP, has abandoned grand strategy and global leadership in favor of isolationism that prioritizes short-term tactical gains at the expense of long-term national interests. Though I (and others) have consistently argued about the deterrent effect a Russian defeat in Ukraine would have for China’s ambitions against Taiwan and in the Indo-Pacific, the history that binds Kyiv to Taipei is overlooked and understudied.

World War II was fought in multiple theatres – namely, but not exclusively, in Europe and in Asia.

On the European Front, Washington sat on the sidelines under the guise of “America First” and so-called “neutrality.” America’s weakness and lack of engagement, coupled with European appeasement of Italian strongman Benito Mussolini and German dictator Adolf Hitler, is the context in which Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union formed an alliance and annihilated Poland in 1939. Within 10 months, Norway, Denmark, Luxembourg, Belgium, the Netherlands, France, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania had fallen. Great Britain stood alone as the last beacon of freedom against the Soviet-Nazi alliance. 

On the Asian Front, Japan was bogged down in China from 1937 and plagued by domestic infighting. Some generals wanted to ally with Nazi Germany, arguing this would strengthen Japan’s hand against the Soviet Union, which supported Chiang Kai-Shek, leader of the Kuomintang, against Japan. Others feared that an alliance with Nazi Germany would compel Great Britain and America to increase their support for Chiang Kai-Shek in China. This debate was finally put to rest in 1940, when Japan reversed its decades-long policy toward London and Washington by forming an alliance with Berlin and Rome.

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In response, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill re-opened the Burma Road to supply the Kuomintang against Japan. Franklin D. Roosevelt shifted US policy to a “defeat Germany first” stance by branding Berlin as America’s primary adversary. Like Ukraine today, the Kuomintang kept fighting against Japan with military aid and financial assistance from Washington and London. Yet Chiang Kai-Shek, Churchill, and Roosevelt knew then, as many leaders and thinkers believe today, that the two theatres were connected, and that Washington and London would eventually go to war in Asia, against Tokyo.

After years of being bogged down in China, Japan altered its strategy by seizing French Indochina (Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos). First, because Tokyo considered the resource-rich colonies of south-east Asia indispensable for its national survival given sanctions imposed by America. Second, to encircle Chiang Kai-Shek’s forces in China and cut off British supply routes to the Kuomintang from the Burma Road. And third, to build forward deployed bases to prepare for the invasions of British Malaya (Malaysia, Singapore, Brunei), the Dutch East Indies (Indonesia), and the Philippines.

Drawing the parallels

Ambassador Kichisaburo Nomura met US Secretary of State Cordell Hull several times in 1941, including on the day that Japan attacked Pearl Harbor. In many ways, the diplomatic deadlock between America and Japan back then resembles the ongoing conversations between Moscow and Washington today. Tokyo requests that America stops supporting Chiang Kai-Shek. Washington retorts that Japan must first withdraw from French Indochina before that could be discussed. Then Tokyo refuses to withdraw, citing, among other things, the blood it has already shed to conquer the land.

Japan’s final proposals were submitted a month before the attack on Pearl Harbor. The first, on Nov. 7, 1941, to settle all outstanding differences between Tokyo and Washington. The second, on Nov. 30, 1941, to restore relations with America and unfreeze all Japanese assets in exchange for an end to Japan’s advances in the Indo-Pacific.

A compromise could not be reached. Prime Minister Tojo concluded that yielding to America’s demands would endanger Japanese-occupied Chinese Manchuria (from the Soviet Union to the north, and China to the south) and undermine Japan’s control of the Korean Peninsula, which it had occupied since 1905. Then, Japan launched a preemptive strike against America at Pearl Harbor on the morning of Dec. 7, 1941, compelling Washington to finally declare war against Japan on Dec. 8, 1941, and against Nazi Germany on Dec. 11, 1941.

Not only is President Volodymyr Zelensky in the same position that Chiang Kai-Shek was throughout both the Second-Sino Japanese War and the Chinese Civil War, but US President Joe Biden’s policy toward Ukraine was basically borrowed from President Roosevelt’s policy toward the Kuomintang. Sanction Moscow incrementally, provide enough military assistance to Kyiv to keep Russia bogged down, but still negotiate with the Kremlin behind Ukraine’s back. Informally under President Biden, and now openly under President Trump.

Chiang Kai-Shek might have fled to Taiwan in 1949, but China’s Civil War never ended. Rest assured, Beijing will end it, either militarily or diplomatically.

Some argue that a conflict over Taiwan became inevitable when Washington was reluctant to help the Kuomintang prevail against Japan and, later, the Chinese Communists. Others argue that it’s due to Kissinger’s signing of the Shanghai Communiqué with Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai, which normalized relations between Washington and Beijing at the expense of Taipei. Though both are debatable, it is clear that the world would be different today, with millions of innocent lives saved from Korea to China to Vietnam to Cambodia, if the West had helped the Kuomintang defeat the Chinese Communists all those years ago.

This begs the question: can we, the decent people of the world’s liberal democracies, even begin to imagine what the next century will be like if Russia, an authoritarian nuclear power and permanent member of the United Nations Security Council, gets away with the crimes it has committed against Ukraine, its former colony and smaller neighbor that relinquished its nuclear weapons and strategic bombers to Moscow in exchange for meaningless “security assurances” from the US and the UK?

Betraying President Zelensky and the brave people whose interests he represents would be devastating for global security. Just like the Korean War broke out less than a year after the Kuomintang fled to Taiwan, so, too, is another major conflict likely to erupt if Russia is allowed to defeat Ukraine. If we, the decent people of the world’s liberal democracies, abandon Kyiv, the day might come when defeated Ukrainians, with their million-man army and innovative defense sector, join Moscow and Minsk alongside the Chechens, Georgians, and Moldovans previously conquered by Russia in a future war against Europe.

George Monastiriakos is a professor of law at the University of Ottawa.

The views expressed are the author’s and not necessarily of Kyiv Post.