Fallout of China’s war over Taiwan ‘unthinkably large’

Veteran strategist Hugh White has urged Australia’s political leaders to think carefully about their preparedness to join a war against China over Taiwan.

Defence Minister Peter Dutton says it would be ‘inconceivable’ that Australia would not fight with the US if a war breaks out over Taiwan. Picture: AAP

Veteran strategist Hugh White has urged Australia’s political leaders to think carefully about their preparedness to join a war against China over Taiwan, warning such a conflict could prompt a nuclear confrontation with “unthinkably large” consequences.

In a new paper, the Emeritus Professor of Strategic Studies at the Australian National University says the US and China are locked in an escalating game of brinkmanship, hoping the other side will back off.

“This is how wars between great powers have often started in the past, when neither side wanted to fight,” he argues.

“So we in Australia would be unwise to join this game unless we are clear in our own minds whether we are bluffing or not.”

The warning comes less than a fortnight after Defence Minister Peter Dutton declared it would be “inconceivable” that Australia would not fight with the US if a war breaks out over Taiwan.

President Joe Biden has also made clear in recent months that the US will defend Taiwan if China invades the territory.

In his paper, to be presented to the Academy of Social Science in Australia and reproduced in part in The Australian on Monday, Prof White says a US-China conflict “would swiftly become the biggest war since 1945”.

The former Defence Department deputy for strategy and intelligence argues such a conflict would quickly descend into stalemate, prompting both sides to consider using nuclear weapons.

“We are in the midst of an acute strategic crisis,” Prof White says. “One hopes our political leaders are taking all this as seriously as they should.”

Rather than preserving US leadership in Asia, he says a war over Taiwan would “likely destroy it”.

Prof White says Australia must consider a future in which the US is not the region’s predominant power, and it must not fear change so much that “we plunge into a major war we cannot win”.

“I think it is perfectly clear that we would and should prefer US leadership. But should we be willing to go to war with China for it?” Prof White says.

“The cost of such a war, in both blood and treasure, would be almost unthinkably large.

“The costs of war would probably be far higher than the costs of living under a new Chinese-led regional order.”

He says Australia needs to consider how to adapt to a new regional order, and “how best to work and flourish within whatever new order eventually emerges”.