Taiwan, Cuba and our new 51st state

In the midst of all the COVID-19 madness and the several false narratives circulating around the upcoming election, I have been reading that aircraft from the People’s Liberation Army Air Force (AKA China) have been making increasingly provocative incursions into Taiwan’s airspace. It’s a serious matter and of great concern. We know that China, or the PRC, has been slowly, carefully expanding throughout the South China Sea in an effort to establish hegemony over the region, and they are both willing and able to play the long game.

One of the prime advantages of an authoritarian dictatorship is the ability to make long-term plans. They don’t have to deal with changes of leadership and direction every four to eight years as we do. Over time, they have added more than three thousand acres of manmade islands off their shores and extended their claims to territorial waters accordingly. They have planted military outposts on those islands and conducted naval and air maneuvers throughout the area, much to the chagrin of Taiwan, as well as Vietnam, the Philippines, Japan, and South Korea.

And play the long game, they will. In “The Art of War,” Sun Tzu’s fifth-century B.C. military masterpiece, now taught in better business schools everywhere, he wrote, “The supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting.” That is the stated goal of the PRC, and they are indeed doing just that. With the expansion into India and considerable economic activity in Africa, they are expected to overtake the US in GDP by the end of the decade.

They are a genuine force to be reckoned with, and I’m afraid that their recent activities in Hong Kong are a dry run for what will eventually happen to our friends in Taiwan. Let’s be honest. I don’t think we have the will to fight them nose-to-nose. Yes, there might be proxy wars somewhere, but both sides will try to limit it to that. Our relations with China have already been called a “new” cold war, but I don’t see direct conflict having any positive outcomes.

In spite of my bleak outlook on the situation, I find it oddly amusing that they have the same dilemma with Taiwan that we have with Cuba. We have had a communist country 90 miles off our shore since 1959, which has been a bit of an irritant over the years. It nearly took us to war in 1962 and as a Soviet client state was an ongoing contradiction to the Monroe doctrine. Taiwan has been an independent, breakaway rogue state 100 miles off China’s shore since 1949 and it has been operating as a democracy since 1987. China has consistently refused to recognize Taiwan as a separate state and claim it to be their own.

Given the similarities, I can’t help but wonder if there isn’t a way that we can swap their embarrassing situation with ours. One complication that is hard to ignore is that Cuba was, for so many years, a client state of the Soviets. That wouldn’t be an easy interest to get around for a number of reasons. Not only do ties run deep with Russian nationals, but when Mr. Putin isn’t busy running the Trump reelection campaign (as my friends on the left tell me), he’s taking parts of Ukraine and backing tyrants in Syria. We haven’t done a blessed thing about it, and clearly, we don’t have the will.

The good news is that as the old Soviet Union faded away, China has stepped up to the plate and become one of Cuba’s primary trading partners. They may not be a satellite to China as they were to the Soviets, but China has significant interests there. If we could get Vlad on our side (that’s a big if) then we could tell China that whatever they do to Taiwan, we will do to Cuba, starting with air incursions and maneuvers. Then, we’ll see where it goes from there.

Under the worst-case scenario, invasion and occupation, we would get the better part of the deal. According to my old friend, the CIA Factbook, the total area of Cuba is 109 thousand square kilometers (about the size of Pennsylvania) while Taiwan is only 32 thousand square kilometers (closer to the size of Maine), yet the population of Cuba (as of July of 2020) is 11 million as compared to Taiwan’s, at 23 million. Cuba has three times the land and half the population.

If we needed to evacuate a few freedom-loving friends from Taiwan, we would have plenty of room for them in our new, fifty-first state. If a substantial number of Cubans prefer life under the communist system, we can have a “cultural exchange.” The latitude is comparable as should be the weather. The Tropic of Cancer (23.5 North) lies just to the north of Havana and slices through the middle of Taiwan. They are both accustomed to Island life and can you imagine the fusion food? It would be fantastic.