Taipei, June 11 (CNA) If there is going to be a conflict between the United States and China, it would start with Taiwan, and the scale of the conflict would be larger than the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, U.S. scholars said in Taipei on Friday.
"The rise of China will be one of the most important issues in 21st century U.S. foreign policy" and the Taiwan Strait is the core of potential conflict between the world's two superpowers, although the possibility is low, said Richard Bush, former chairman of the American Institute in Taiwan (AIT) and director of the Brookings Institution's Center for Northeast Asian Policy Studies.
Bush and Michael O'Hanlon, a researcher at Brookings Institution who specializes in national security and defense policy, were in Taipei launching "A War Like No Other -- The Truth About China's Challenge to America, " a book they co-authored in 2007 that is now being released in Chinese.
"As a defense analyst like many others in the United States who spent a lot of time studying Bosnia, Kosovo, Iraq and Afghanistan, these problems -- as bad as they have been -- are modest in scale compared to what the cross-strait conflict can quickly become, " O'Hanlon said.
Most Americans and people on this side of the Pacific Ocean were not aware of the potential size of the conflict, he added.
The risk of Chinese invasion of Taiwan is small, O'Hanlon said, because modern technology makes it unlikely that big ships could cross the Taiwan Strait without being detected. China is more likely to use a blockade, complemented by missile strikes and a cyber-attack -- a move that is "less threatening but in a more acute sense, " he said.
China would be able to carry out offensives against merchant ships during the blockade, cease the operation if the U.S. reacts, and re-impose it later, he said.
Contrary to what some people think, O'Hanlon said, China would not be able to take Taiwan by force easily because Taiwan has a "robust survivable commanding control." The survivability of Taiwan's air force, including its ability to repair airfields quickly, would be crucial in the early days of an attack because it could make it very difficult for China to carry out a successful assault. Anti-submarine warfare is also important for Taiwan, he said.
Meanwhile, avoiding conflicts is equally important, Bush said, because "when you realize modern war, you treasure peace even more." Although the U.S. is bound by the Taiwan Relations Act, passed by the U.S. Congress in 1979, to provide Taiwan with arms of a defensive character and help Taiwan resist any force of coercion that would jeopardize its people, whether or not the U.S. would intervene in a cross-strait conflict has been much discussed.
Bush said that how the U.S. reacts would depend on who made the provocation, although he added that sometimes the definition of "provocation" is ambiguous.
Alexander Huang, a professor at Tamkang University's Graduate Institute of International Affairs and Strategic Studies, said that as the Chinese economy is rising rapidly, it would not be wise for China's next generation of leaders to ignite a conflict.
"How Taiwan shapes up its China policy is more important, " Huang said. (By Chris Wang) enditem/bc