Background: https://www.cnbc.com/2023/03/07/chinas-new-foreign-minister-qin-gang-holds-first-press-briefing.html
What is the rational course for US foreign policy regarding e.g. the Taiwan problem? What is China's? What is Taiwan's? Are the US, China, and Taiwan currently acting in rational ways in regards to this geopolitical issue? If not, why? If every actor was acting rationally, would this result in the possibility of cooperation to solve the problem peacefully? Or does at least one actor's rational course of action necessarily put them on a 'collision course' with the others? Or, worse, for this situation, is it possible that it is in every actors' most rational course of action to desire the same peaceful resolution/treaty, but some type of tragic coordination problem renders this impossible?
To avoid this being a culture war topic, let's avoid talking about what type of resolution would be best in the sense of most moral, just, etc. Let's only discuss what would be the most rational course of action for every party involved, whatever that may mean.
Of course there have been many attempts to solve geopolitics in the past (see: the various schools of international relations theory). Even still, I'd hope that this wouldn't prevent us from having a discussion of our own about this. Most schools of IR theory attempt to explain why nations do what they do, and some schools ascribe this to possibly non-rational reasons e.g. social constructivism which says that sometimes culture of a nation might explain that nation's actions, and of course often times cultures can hold irrational beliefs or encourage irrational actions. Other schools e.g. realism attempt to explain international relations by stating that nations are rational actors at least as wealth/power-maximizers, but this is obviously contentions, and even if true it could be said that nations that always act as wealth/power-maximizers are not acting rationally, etc.
I'll start the discussion by giving an example of what I consider to be an extreme version of an irrational geopolitical actor, and one for whose actual historical actions have well-understood explanations other than rational behavior: the Empire of Japan after the Meiji restoration. At a certain point it became clear to many Japanese elites that their country was on an undesirable path, one that put them on a collision course with the United States. This war was correctly predicted by many Japanese leaders to be an un-winnable war, if not at least a highly undesirable one. With this in mind, it would probably have been 'most rational' for Japan to abandon their colonial possessions in Manchuria and Korea in the interwar period in order to avoid war with the US, rather than starting a new and more ambitious war with China to try and expand their empire to acquire the natural resources required to prop up those colonies, instead. However, due to ideological sentiment, any Japanese leader against the expansion of empire was essentially selected against by a series of ultranationalist assassins, leaving only irrationally hawkish leaders to direct their country in terms of foreign policy. Thus, Japan irrationally went to war in China, which eventually brought them into war with the US which was disastrous for them.
And, I will provide examples of what I consider to be rational geopolitical actors, as well: both the US and the Soviet Union during the Cuban missile crisis. The Soviet Union initially began to emplace nukes in cuba for a variety of reasons, but for one because they correctly determined that they were at a disadvantage in terms of MAD and putting nukes in cuba could bring more core American territory into range, in order to better ensure their deterrence against a US first strike. Ensuring national security against that of e.g. nuclear destruction, for example, seems to me like a rational goal. The US felt rationally quite threatened by the development, and as well felt their global political situation was threatened unless the responded properly, and so there was a crisis. The US considered doing nothing, which is a rational thing to at least consider, but correctly concluded that a better outcome for their own self-interest could be reached by brinksmanship. The US (namely, Kennedy) also rationally decided against a full scale invasion of cuba despite the unanimous advice of the joint chiefs, probably correct in his assumption that an escalation such as that would have been beyond the pale, and would probably be matched by a soviet invasion of at least west berlin, etc, which would necessitate further escalation, and so reasoned again that a better resolution could be reached through diplomacy. Eventually, the crisis was resolved through a decently clever compromise, with the nuclear disarmament of cuba in exchange for the secret nuclear disarmament of turkey -- a resolution which involved both actors properly considering the others' positions and being willing to make concessions in order to accommodate for the other's circumstances, rather than being driven by ideology, pride, etc. at least in and of themselves. Khrushchev is considered to have lost face from this outcome, and it perhaps seriously contributed to his eventual ousting two years later, but considering the alternative was potentially nuclear armageddon, (i.e. a situation which would have greatly harmed the Soviet Union) it seems notably rational to have leaders at the helm of your nation willing to lose face/sacrifice their own personal career in order to achieve better outcomes for the nation as a whole such as not having it destroyed by nuclear bombs. If any actor can be said to be irrational in this situation, it might be the United States considering that there is an argument to be made that nukes in cuba wouldn't have seriously worsened the soviet nuclear threat and that Kennedy/US was more beheld to the irrational whims of the US public, and that they should have been the ones to rationally decide to take the PR hit by 'losing' the crisis in order to avert even the risk of extremely negative outcomes posed by engaging in brinksmanship. However, I think both the US and the USSR acted rationally enough on balance, at least to demonstrate enough individual examples of rational international relations behavior over the course of the historical anecdote, for the example of them as 'rational' to be sufficient.
With this in mind, how should we describe the geopolitical courses of China, the US, and Taiwan regarding the problem of Taiwanese sovereignty? Are any, or perhaps multiple of the involved actors making decisions meaningfully similar to imperial Japan on the leadup to war with the US i.e. irrationally? If so, why? Or are any or perhaps multiple of the involved actors acting more like the US/USSR during the cuban missile crisis, i.e. acting rationally -- but perhaps still on a collision course, even possibly on a collision course with other rational actors?
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Notes -
Japan went into Manchuria and China in part because they wanted the resources necessary to fend off the US and Soviet Union. From the Japanese perspective, these great powers were extremely threatening. If they leave and Manchuria falls to the Soviet Union, then they'll just keep pushing into Korea and China. Then Japan has no coal or iron and is basically defenseless before a gigantic Eurasian hegemon. If they gave up Korea, someone else would take it and use it against them. The US navy was also very large and obviously a major concern for an island nation.
Furthermore, why should the Americans be so concerned about what's going on in Asia, from the Japanese perspective? It's on the other side of the world. The US has an entire hemisphere and vast resources, isn't that enough? The only reason to be concerned is if the US wanted Japan to stay weak, preventing them from attaining those resources. They didn't think the US cared about whatever horrible things they were doing to non-whites, which is probably right given how happy the US was to incinerate North Korea later on. The conclusion they came to was that the US wanted them weak, in such a position that they could be crushed whenever they wanted. If you think the police want you dead, you may as well take your chances in a gunfight.
The Japanese made an effort for peace but there were issues with misunderstandings as to the meaning of decrypted Japanese diplomatic cables and hawkish US officials organizing their own sanctions policies behind the president's back. (see https://doi.org/10.2307/3638003 and https://doi.org/10.2307/3638003). Both sides grew unnecessarily suspicious and unyielding. Japan isn't the only one with rogue state actors and internal factions. It was a clusterfuck.
Why did they tell anyone about Soviet missiles on Cuba in the first place? Why does it matter? Both sides were developing ICBMs, basing missiles in Cuba had little strategic impact. The US could've just ignored it and moved on with the Cold War. It's not obvious like blockading Berlin, nobody needs to know. The Soviets decided to transfer a hundred tactical nukes to Cuban control after the crisis ended, in November. It was only that Castro was too much of a weirdo, so they changed their minds. But crucially, nobody threw a massive tantrum over this (probably because the US didn't spot it) and so it wasn't a problem.
The US created this crisis in the first place, they bear total responsibility. Why were they flying U2 spy planes over other people's airspace right in the middle of a major crisis? One got shot down, which caused serious tension! Why were they dropping dummy depth charges on Soviet submarines, resulting in the whole Arkhipov situation? The US mobilized all its bombers, dispersing them in such a way as it looked like they were preparing to strike. The US's behavior was incredibly irresponsible.
In terms of rationality for the West, I propose benign neglect where major interests aren't threatened. Kennan called for something similar back in the 1990s. His attitude towards China was also prescient, it was a foolish decision to carve out our own manufacturing capacity and send it to Chongqing.
https://twitter.com/St1Station/status/1629510108945301507
In short, we should only fight wars or take major actions if there are important issues at stake, such as Taiwan. Taiwan is an important base for controlling Asian trade and energy flows. It has semiconductors we need, that we're increasingly trying to deny to China. We shouldn't mess around in the Middle East unless oil supplies are threatened. We shouldn't have adopted the NATO expansion policy that Kennan so intensely opposed back in the 1990s and poisoned Russia against us.
We should make our stance actually clear on Taiwan. Either sign a formal, binding alliance or discard them. I favor the former option but the current strategy of 'hint hint nudge nudge we really feel strongly about Taiwan's security but we're not going to say whether we'll do anything about it (oh ignore Biden's clear statements that we'll defend Taiwan)' is risky. This is a matter of great power war, it is extremely serious and deserves clarity and precision. The Taiwanese are already free-riding in terms of defence expenditures, an alliance costs us little on that front. If China thinks we're bluffing, then that will embolden them. And given how the US navy is actually shrinking in ship count (and only 9% of carrier-borne F-35Cs are actually fully mission capable), it might well look like we're bluffing.
We shouldn't have suppressed Taiwan's nuclear program back in the 1980s either, that error has worsened this current crisis. If they already had nukes, the island would be perfectly defensible. Too late now.
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