Walter Russell Mead: Sounds like to me as if Taiwan may be the flashpoint in US-China relations, the one place where our vital interests might clash in some way. How do you view the Taiwan issue?
Marco Rubio: Yeah. Well, it’s a tricky situation. Obviously, the Chinese position within Taiwan has eroded. As you saw in the recent elections in Taiwan, clearly those who oppose being linked to the mainland have grown both in prominence and political strength at the same time as the US has become a more assertive in its relations with Taiwan, sending now two high-ranking officials there in the last month-and-a-half, and you’ve seen an uptick in Chinese air incursions into the air defense zone as a messaging exercise. I do believe that eventually it is a red-line issue for China, and eventually, if necessary, they will move by force, if necessary, to exert their claims on Taiwan, and in many ways, what we’ve seen them do in Hong Kong is a test for that in the sense that that’s how they’d ideally want it to be. They would love that political figures in Taiwan that manipulate the existing system to make that happen, but they’re prepared, as they were in Hong Kong, to send in forces, if necessary.
The only thing that would prevent that from happening is if the cost of doing that is too high, and so my view is the first thing is that we should help Taiwan not to win an all-out conflict against China, that’s not possible, but to have the capability to raise the cost of military adventurism there to a level that China’s not willing to pay and navigate that very carefully with an effort not to try to trigger a conflict like that from happening. That’s, I think, the best hope that we have at this point in managing that relationship, but it’s a very difficult one, it’s a challenging and tricky one, and I do think we have to navigate it very carefully and not be overly provocative, but also not be provocative in the reverse by almost inviting a Chinese action there at some point here in the next decade.
选择“Disable on www.wenxuecity.com”
选择“don't run on pages on this domain”
