He is not commander-in-chief, and so he cannot have a doctrine that will be adopted. But he knows all about wargaming, and this gives him the credibility to put together a military plan as would an armchair general. In fact, that's what Gary Anderson did.
He wrote what sounds like an
open letter to President Joe Biden, telling him about the plan he developed for
the Indo-Pacific region, and urged the President in a very subtle and gentle way,
to develop a doctrine along the plan’s line. The open letter came in the form
of an article written under the title: “Biden doctrine on China and Taiwan yet
to be articulated,” published on March 9, 2021 in The Washington Times.
Wargaming is what Gary Anderson
teaches, so he must know a thing or two about the subject. For this reason,
very few if any would want to challenge him regarding the soundness of his
military plan. But this is a minor consideration in the basket of grand
geopolitical issues facing the Indo-Pacific region. The question is not what
war strategy will yield the best result; the question is whether or not it is
wise to do anything that will escalate the situation to a point where war
becomes a possibility.
But what is it that must be
avoided lest it escalate to such a dangerous level? It is what’s developed by a
society’s frame of mind that lives inside an echo chamber, cut off from the
real world. This is where someone often comes up with an idiotic idea. It is
repeated and amplified with each echo iteration. When it reaches the ears of
the susceptible in the Washington Beltway, it causes America to start what
escalates by mission creep, into a full-blown tragedy, such as the invasion of
Iraq. If you want to know how to detect such frame of mind, look at the way
that Gary Anderson has been thinking about the current situation. Here is how
he started discussing the geopolitical issues involved:
“President Trump was close to
clarifying the American post-Nixon position on the defense of Nationalist China
(Taiwan) but the Biden administration has been quiet on the issue. Despite its
supposedly isolationist stance, the Trump administration worked to solidify the
Quad Group's (US, India, Australia and Japan) stance on Chinese bullying in the
Indo-Pacific region. Mr. Biden's foreign policy team has not backed away from a
commitment to resist Chinese adventurism; but a Biden doctrine on China has yet
to be articulated”.
What you see here is a
discussion about foreigners, that revolves around three American presidents:
Nixon, Trump and Biden. The issue is a Chinese province that broke away from
the mainland, and the latter’s determination to bring it back into the fold. To
be sure, nothing more pressing can motivate a country to act, than an issue of
this gravity. It is how deeply mainland China feels, so much so that we can
reasonably assume it would risk a war to accomplish its mission. So, the
question to ask is this: What motivation can America engender to convince
India, Australia or Japan to get involved in a war that has the potential to
escalate to the nuclear … all that to satisfy America's impulses, whatever
they’ll turn out to be if and when Mr. Biden will articulate them?
But why is it that Gary
Anderson could not, at least for a moment, shed the American disease of seeing
things through the lens of his navel gazing, and put himself in the shoes of
the rulers in Beijing who would risk a war to bring Taiwan back into the fold?
And what about the shoes of those in New Delhi, Canberra and Tokyo who most
certainly would not want to sacrifice a single one of their people to satisfy
America's ego? Did Gary Anderson ask himself what the leaders in those capitals
may be thinking?
These are good questions, and
the answers to them are that Gary Anderson's mentality has been halted by the
constant bombardment of false premises describing those whom America chooses to
antagonize. Here is how Anderson has inadvertently lifted the veil on the
American habit, unfolding as it is at this time: “Mr. Biden's foreign policy
team has not backed away from a commitment to resist Chinese adventurism.” Did
you get that? Anderson calls adventurism China's natural desire to unify the
country; but sees nothing adventurous in rallying other nations to come and risk
starting a war that might end life on Earth. It is beyond horrendous to know
that someone could be like that.
Still, in case he doesn't get
the war that he wants, Gary Anderson came up with an alternative that should be
regarded as a consolation prize to please the hawks of the war echo chamber.
That consolation is called deterrence; a word that’s often used in conjunction
with the adjective “credible” as in credible deterrence. What this means, is
that China must be made to believe that America will risk an all-out war to
defend Taiwan should the mainland attempt to bring it into the fold by force.
To be certain that Joe Biden
will get the message, Anderson harked back to historical events that have as
much in common with the current situation as to say that Czechoslovakia was
once a province of Germany and broke away; the reason why Hitler invaded and
annexed the Sudetenland.
Of course, nothing like that
happened in Europe whereas Taiwan was once a province of China. Its government
never claimed it wasn’t, even went as far as to call itself the legitimate
government representing all of China.
Hell, Taiwan’s leaders went
beyond that, and promised that they will someday conquer the mainland and bring
it into the Taiwanese fold. That’s not what the leaders of the Sudetenland were
saying before 1938.
America has no business siding with Taipei against Beijing. Stay home, America, and the world will be better off without your constant nagging.