THE STRATEGIST – Peter Jennings
In The Australian newspaper on Monday, Hugh White gave us a picture of democratic defeat in the face of overwhelming Chinese dominance should war break out over Taiwan.
‘Going to war with China,’ he says, ‘will more likely destroy’ US leadership. The chances of nuclear war ‘are quite high’ and ‘the chances of America winning such a war are very low’.
White goes on to say that ‘America’s dwindling chances of winning’ are such that it’s all the ‘more likely that the Chinese will provoke a crisis to call America’s bluff’.
Faced with such dire prospects of defeat, what should we do? We should, according to White, weigh up whether an ‘imperative to support democracy against authoritarianism’ is worth it. ‘There is a mortal imperative to avoid war’ because ‘the costs of war would probably be far higher than the costs of living under a new Chinese-led regional order’.
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