Why This Island Could Trigger World War 3

(playful music) - [Johnny] It is the 1940s and China is ripping itself apart.

(playful music) The ruling government is quickly losing the country to a rising communist revolution.

It's a well-organized military movement supported by the Soviet Union, led by revolutionary Mao Zedong, and they're now marching across the country, driving out the ruling government all the way down to here, where the government leaders and over a million loyalists and soldiers retreat on boats and planes across this strait to a Chinese island that had been taken over by Japan but had just been liberated.

Mao's fighters can't go any further.

They can't reach the island without a proper navy or air force, which they did not have yet.

For now, the near defeated Republic of China is safe on this island, and this isn't just any island.

(playful music) 400 years before this, Portuguese explorers arrived here, Ilha Formosa, or beautiful island.

It was sought after by empires from Europe to Asia for its fertile land and strategic military and trade location at the heart of Asia's Ocean corridors.

China had lost this island for 50 years to Japan, but the winners of World War II said that China would get it back.

(playful music) The island was called Taiwan, and now it was home to the Republic of China's government.

They're safe here for now.

Back here on the mainland, Mao declares the People's Republic of China, a new communist nation that was to restore the greatness of the Chinese nation after years of domination by outsiders.

Literally a day later, the Soviet Union recognizes Mao's government as the legitimate government of China, but this civil war isn't actually over.

Both sides still claim to be the rightful government of China, and the Republic of China government plans to continue to fight from their island refuge to eventually take back the mainland.

They rule the island with a military government that arrests, imprisons or executes anyone suspected of disloyalty or communist sympathy, or anyone who wants independence from all of this.

Meanwhile, Mao is working on his navy, getting ready to cross this strait.

He's gathering his forces and building his capabilities to be able to complete his takeover of the entire country.

(playful music) But not yet.

(playful music) Now the US is out here in a big way.

They just defeated Japan in World War II.

They're kind of trying to leave Asia.

And they're eyeing all of this and deciding to not get involved.

They don't recognize Mao's new country, the PRC, and they do hate that a communist government now controls the world's most populous country, but they have other priorities, namely rebuilding Europe after the big war.

They've just created a big military alliance with their European allies to counter Soviet influence.

The Soviet Union was their friend in the war, but is now their rival.

Oh, and they just got nuclear weapons, like the US did four years earlier.

(playful music) President Truman's secretary of State draws this line on a map, shows it to people at a press conference saying that anything outside the zone is outside of America's defense commitments.

This includes Korea and Taiwan, that remember the US said would be given back to China after the war, and Vietnam, where local communist fighters are kicking out the French, declaring a new communist country that is being recognized by China and the Soviet Union.

This is all concerning to the United States, but this is outside of their perimeter.

Back in Washington the communist hawks are hating that the US is letting communism spread in Asia, that Taiwan will soon fall.

But Truman says this is a civil conflict in China, we're gonna leave it to them to work out.

That's the policy.

(playful music) That is until everything changes all at once.

(playful music) It is a morning in the summer of 1950 and a flood of Korean troops from the Soviet aligned side of Korea rush across this line.

They tear through the American aligned south, almost taking the whole country in just 11 weeks.

It's another communist revolution, and these soldiers are equipped with Soviet guns, tanks and artillery.

They invaded only after getting the green light from the Soviet leader, Joseph Stalin, who also by the way said they needed to get the green light from Mao.

Now, Mao had been hesitant to support this invasion of Korea knowing that it might invite the wrath of the United States, but he had to show that he was willing to support communist revolutions everywhere.

Eventually, he would commit some of his troops to go fight in Korea to help his fellow communists liberate the Korean peninsula.

Now, the US doesn't have troops in Korea in this moment.

Remember, it's outside of their perimeter.

But now they're starting to change their mind.

This is starting to look like a coordinated communist conspiracy all across the region.

It's threatening to turn the whole map red.

(playful music) But there's still time to push it back.

The US crosses the line that they drew a few months earlier and goes full force to stop the spread of communism.

Truman tells the nation that he's sending troops to Korea, and in the same speech he also says that he's ordered a huge naval fleet to Taiwan to quote, "Prevent any attack."

He's not gonna let Mao take the island now.

And to justify this sudden U-turn, Truman says something that will influence how the US approaches this situation to this day.

He says that Taiwan isn't actually officially a part of any country yet.

It had been a Japanese colony until 1945 when Japan surrendered it when they lost the war, but they technically haven't worked out their sovereignty in any official treaty yet.

So for now, Taiwan's status is technically undetermined, which makes it okay for us, the United States, to move in and protect it from Mao.

(playful music) Now, Mao is looking at all of this, and I can imagine he's feeling some regret over the green light he gave the North Koreans to invade the south.

It was looking more like a strategic error which brought the US into his neighborhood, prevented him from taking this island.

And so for the next three years, this brutal Korean war rages on, it eventually settles into a tense stalemate that still hasn't ended.

So it's 1953, and it's looking like the US is gonna be in Asia for a while, all in the name of containing the spread of communism, which they do by building out a chain of island bases that form this line of defense against their communist enemies.

And you can see that Taiwan is right at the center of it.

(playful music) Congress gives the president full authorization to defend Taiwan.

The president is allowed to put nukes on the island.

(playful music) Mao, meanwhile, is reshaping his country in huge ways, and he needs to drum up support from his people, which he does by initiating an attack.

Unleashing tens of thousands of rounds of artillery on these close by islands that the Republic of China still controls.

(playful music) The US wants to show Mao how serious they are about coming to Taiwan's defense.

US military planners draw up plans to drop nukes on the PRC.

In one plan they calculate up to a million potential casualties if they do the attack, but they never do.

But they do send in a huge armada of military hardware, two super aircraft carriers and their destroyer convoys, 56 combat aircraft, a bunch of their most high-end missiles capable of deploying nuclear weapons.

Not to mention all the backup in Japan and the Philippines.

The US is there making good on its promise to defend their strategically important island, to keep supply lines open and force Mao to think twice before invading.

(siren blaring) (intense music) Now, this is looking like the beginning of another bloody war, which is exactly what the Soviet leader back in Moscow is thinking.

He sends a telegram to the United States, a pretty long telegram, telling them to back down this hasty military buildup with nukes that are all concerning a Chinese island that was never theirs.

He says, this is an open provocation, and then he reminds the US that China isn't alone.

China and the Soviet Union are friends, brothers in communism.

And he says that an attack on China will be treated as an attack against the Soviet Union, which will lead to World War III, this time with nukes.

Then he signs it, "Sincerely N. Khrushchev."

(playful music) I mean this is a tense moment, but ultimately both sides back down, (playful music) but not really.

The US keeps tens of thousands of troops here, they keep their nukes ready to go, and right here across the strait, neither of the two China's want the other to have the last shot.

So they keep shooting a few shells at each other every day, eventually settling to this weird rhythm.

Mao's PRC troops fire a few shells, the next day the Republic of China troops on Taiwan would fire a few shells of their own, never hitting anything valuable or lethal, but just a reminder that tension is high.

They will go on to do this every day for the next 21 years.

(playful music) Okay, so we just narrowly avoided World War III and things are about to dramatically change here.

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And with that, let's dive back into the map of Taiwan.

Okay, welcome back.

It's now the end of the 1950s, we're moving into the 60s, and the US is very much in Asia.

Obsessed with stopping the spread of communism, including in Vietnam.

They have this defensive island chain on the map with Taiwan at its center.

Tensions continue to rise, and in 1960, the US puts nuclear weapons on the island itself.

Over here, the Soviet Union is heavily supporting the new People's Republic of China, including helping them develop and deploy nuclear weapons, which China officially gets in 1964.

So now things are a lot more tense right here.

But it doesn't take long before this relationship starts to shift.

These two communist empires start to diverge.

They start to disagree on how each other is carrying out the communist promise.

Mao is radically and violently transforming his China, punishing anyone he sees as disloyal, running huge societal experiments on farming in the economy, and it's not working.

Crops are failing, food is disappearing.

Tens of millions of people are starving.

The Soviets see Mao as reckless, unpredictable destabilizing and ungrateful for all of this support that they've been giving him.

Meanwhile, Mao is falling out of love with the Soviets as well, saying that they're too accommodating to the capitalist west, not real Marxists.

Tension rises fast, and soon they're clashing at their shared border.

The Soviets are threatening to strike China's nuclear facilities that they just helped them build.

And look who comes into the scene.

This is a huge moment for the US who is watching this big communist alliance fracture.

What if they could divide them even further?

(playful music) Richard Nixon becomes president in 1969, and his intent on playing the China card against the Soviets.

And he does so by sending his national security advisor, Henry Kissinger, to secretly start communicating with the Chinese.

The US had no formal relations with China, they were enemies.

They didn't talk to each other.

So Kissinger had to talk to the Chinese using Pakistan as a middleman.

They send messages, they arrange a meeting, and soon Kissinger flies to Pakistan, says that he needs some rest, but secretly he sneaks onto a plane that takes him to Beijing, breaking into this place that has been cut off for two decades.

Now, why is Mao entertaining this cozying up to his enemy, the Americans?

Well, he's concluded that the Soviet Union who has weapons pointed at China at this point is a more immediate danger, and that the Americans are maybe willing to bargain, bargain about this.

But not if they still have troops and nukes on Taiwan, their giant military base right off his coast.

So here's Kissinger in this huge moment in the story.

He's in Beijing, talking to Prime Minister Zhou Enlai, Mao's right hand man, and the conversation almost immediately goes to Taiwan.

The Prime Minister is sharp on his historical details, and he starts off by telling Kissinger basically the story that I've told you so far.

He reminds Kissinger that after World War II, Truman was okay with Taiwan being a part of China.

That is until he suddenly changed his mind when the Korean War broke out, and starts calling Taiwan's status, undetermined, a stance China deeply rejects.

And then suddenly the US takes over Taiwan, a Chinese island, and turns it into basically a huge military base with nuclear weapons, 130 kilometers off the Chinese mainland.

And the center of a military effort to contain China and its neighbors.

Kissinger agrees with this.

He says blatantly in this private conversation that if the Korean War didn't happen, Taiwan would probably belong to the PRC.

But he says, previous administrations made Taiwan a key part of the Korean War.

So here we are.

But then he says, we're different now.

We're no longer going after communism for communism's sake.

The new President Nixon, quote, "operates on a different philosophy."

We can be friends even if you're communists.

Now, Kissinger's main goal is to befriend the PRC to divide it from the Soviet Union.

But even with that in mind, Prime Minister Zhou says that he trusts Kissinger, he believes him.

But then he says that the key question is if the US is ready to recognize that Taiwan's status is not undetermined, that it is a part of China, and that there is only one China, he says, quote, "This is the crux.

Nothing can happen unless we agree to that."

And Kissinger says, yes, we're not advocating for two China's or one China and one Taiwan, but look at the language in this transcript.

He vaguely remarks that, quote, "As a student of history, one's prediction would have it be that the political evolution is likely to be in the direction that the PRC wants."

This is a tactfully vague way of saying that Taiwan will probably be reunited with the PRC, but we'll see.

Kissinger is kind of throwing Taiwan under the bus here, at least in the words of one expert I talked to.

But again, his goal is to get leverage over the Soviets, so he's willing to give something up to the Chinese.

He promises to not support any independence movements in Taiwan, and he even says that the US will take out all their troops.

But in return, he needs the PRC to tell the communist fighters that they're supporting in Vietnam to negotiate a peace deal, to release American prisoners of war so that the US can leave Vietnam.

And Zhou's like, "We'll try."

And soon there's a sense of agreement in the room.

The Prime Minister says he's hopeful.

It sounds like these enemies are taking the first steps towards friendship, and soon everything changes once again really quick.

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I think we're at like fall of 1971.

The People's Republic of China is adopted into the UN.

Taiwan gets kicked out.

President Nixon then goes to China, totally publicly, and announces that they're starting to talk to each other, that friendship is in the near future.

They aren't officially recognizing the PRC as a real country, but they're warming up.

During this visit, Nixon has some secret talks with Zhou Enlai, Mao's right hand man who Kissinger had negotiated with.

The declassified transcript of these private conversations contains a moment where Nixon straight up in his own words, acknowledges that, quote, "There is one China, Taiwan is a part of China."

And then he says that if he could control the American bureaucracy back home, he would tell them to do away with referring to Taiwan's status as undetermined.

That was not American policy towards Taiwan.

But you can almost feel how eager Nixon is to make this friendship work, to divide the Soviets from their big ally.

But he's kind of getting ahead of his skis.

So it's 1972, and Nixon and Kissinger have successfully pulled off this rebalancing.

They've gained a ton of leverage over the Soviets by dividing them from the Chinese, and then starting to befriend them.

And then the Vietnam War ends, not quite with the support from China that Kissinger had envisioned, but the troops are gone, which lowers tensions even more.

In 1974, the US takes its nukes off the island, another down payment towards full friendship.

Soon after, Mao, the revolutionary, who started this country dies, and the leaders who take his place come in much more open to trade in the global markets.

The US sees huge potential here.

So in the late seventies, president Jimmy Carter finishes what Kissinger and Nixon had started a few years earlier, the US officially recognizes the People's Republic of China as the only China, no longer recognizing Taiwan.

They move their China embassy from Taipei to Beijing.

More countries are flipping as well.

(playful music) At this same time, the US erases the treaty that says that they would protect Taiwan.

They remove all troops from the island, and that shooting match that had been going on for years every day, that finally stops.

Capitalism with Chinese characteristics is taking off, and these two are trading, reshaping the global economy.

It's a monumental shift, in just a few years.

And just as Kissinger and Nixon wanted, it weakened and isolated the Soviet Union, and it started a new era for Chinese-American relations.

But notice that in all of this, even during all the friendship, all the visits, the US never publicly acknowledges what Nixon said in private, that Taiwan is a part of China.

They recognize that Beijing thinks this, but they continue to operate with the ambiguous policy that Truman laid out in the fifties.

That Taiwan's status is undetermined.

In a short time, Taiwan went from core ally to diplomatic orphan on the world stage, and many Americans and members of Congress didn't feel right about abandoning an ally.

That by the way, is changing into a more open and developed economy and society.

We're abandoning them all to embrace a communist authoritarian former enemy.

What message does this send to our other allies?

So while Carter is normalizing relations, Congress is passing a law to reassure Taiwan.

The law says, "Yes, the US doesn't recognize Taiwan as a country, but we will still support it as a partner."

And crucially, the law says that even though the troops are leaving, the US is required to sell weapons to Taiwan so that they can defend themselves.

And finally, if that wasn't enough, the US will maintain capabilities to come to Taiwan's rescue if they're ever to be invaded.

But they stopped short of saying that they actually would come to their rescue.

It was intentionally crafted to be ambiguous, to give reassurance to Taiwan so that they didn't go declare independence, cause a conflict.

But not to make promises that would anger China, who by the way, sees this law as cheating the spirit of their agreement, seeing the US as an insincere friend.

Because remember, China's position here is that they are officially the government of China, which includes Taiwan, which was to be given back to China after World War II.

The allies said they would.

And that Taiwan would be like any other part of China today if the US hadn't stepped in in the 1950s, that's their position.

And they begin a campaign to try to convince Taiwan to come back into China peacefully, but it's becoming too late.

(playful music) This whole time Taiwan has been transforming, its economy looking like one of those miracles.

And by now it's replaced its decades of military dictatorship with a democracy.

It's the 1990s and they're holding elections for the first time on the island.

The US is loving this.

They wanna support it.

They give one of the candidates in the election a visa to come visit the United States.

And for China, this has gone too far.

They immediately recall their ambassador from Washington DC.

They amass a hundred thousand troops across the strait of Taiwan, right here at this strait.

They launch missiles, including ballistic missiles that land 20 miles northwest of the island.

There's warships and aircraft.

They're threatening the island, warning them against embracing democracy and the United States.

But here comes the response.

It's March, 1996, and the US sends two aircraft carrier battle groups to the waters near Taiwan.

It's the largest show of force in this region since Vietnam.

The standoff dies down.

And while all of this is happening, on the island this first democratic election goes forward peacefully.

Taiwanese voters turn out in huge numbers, 76%.

They're defying this attempt to be bullied by their big neighbor who they identify less and less with, and the world watches as a symbol of democracy flourishes in the shadow of the intimidation of their huge neighbor.

A neighbor who becomes infamous for massacring peaceful pro-democracy protestors in Tienanmen Square.

A democratic Taiwan supported by the US is reversing some of this warmth and friendship that was cultivated in the seventies and eighties.

Tension is back, especially now that it's the nineties, and the Soviet Union has collapsed.

They no longer have a mutual enemy.

And once again, Taiwan is at the center of this growing tension.

But by now, the island knows how disposable the US can treat them if they lose their strategic value.

So they continue to position themselves in a way that will result in protection from the United States.

The government has been subsidizing companies that are becoming top manufacturers of these valuable little silicon chips, semiconductors that make computers work.

These microchips are becoming more and more vital to economic and military power.

And if Taiwan can become the epicenter of making them, then the US will have more of an incentive to protect them, to keep this valuable capability out of Beijing's control.

This works tremendously well, and by the 2000s, valuable technology companies like Apple and AMD and Qualcomm have outsourced the incredibly expensive and complex task of manufacturing microchips to Taiwan firms, one in particular.

One microchip company wouldn't even exist without Taiwan to make their chips.

That's Nvidia.

So there's tension here, but that doesn't stop China from trading with the US and the rest of the world, resulting in economic growth like the world has never seen.

They become rich really fast.

And with that, they build a world class military.

And even after all of these years, they still remind the world that they are set on finishing the Civil War, that the US stopped them from completing, reunifying with Taiwan, who they see slipping further and further away.

In 2005, Beijing passes this anti secession law, which says that China will pursue unification with Taiwan by peaceful means, but they reserve the right to use quote, non peaceful means if Taiwan moves towards formal independence, or if peaceful unification becomes impossible.

The United States disagrees with this.

Under their one China policy, Washington acknowledges China's position, but it doesn't endorse it.

And it says that Taiwan's future must be decided peacefully without coercion and with agreement of people on both sides of the strait.

But even despite this law, relations across the strait start improving in the nineties and two thousands, thanks mostly to economics.

Mutually beneficial deals, And the PRC continues to incentivize some kind of peaceful reunification with Taiwan, telling them that they can keep their way of life and their system.

There seems to be some hope in the air here, but that quickly fades as nationalism starts to rise on both sides of the strait and across the ocean.

The modern day version of this conflict is overseen by Xi Jinping, who rises to lead the PRC in 2012 with the vision of rejuvenating the Chinese nation.

This includes fortifying their territory, including first and foremost Taiwan, a symbol of this effort who quote, "Must be reunited with the mainland," according to Xi.

This vision has been paired with a rapid growth of the Chinese army.

And the US now sees China as their greatest rival and has responded with a military buildup of their own in this region, resurrecting that old island chain.

It's been tech wars and tariffs, and sanctions and bluster.

And the relationship between these two great powers has deteriorated in recent years, for reasons that have little or nothing to do with Taiwan.

But that served as a reminder that this decades old balance that keeps peace here is deeply reliant on what happens between these two superpowers.

Meanwhile, the 23 million people on this island continue to develop their own identity.

Only around 12% of the population favors any kind of reunification with the mainland.

And yet, China continues to flex on Taiwan.

They fire missiles over the island.

They practice invasion drills.

They send ships and jets to block Taiwan's sea and airspace for days.

They show them just how easy it would be for them to take this little island.

That is if the US doesn't come to their rescue and everybody asks, would they come?

The US uses that intentional ambiguity to keep this tense situation somewhat stable.

And as planned, Taiwan now manufactures 90% of the most advanced microchips.

The chips that have made Nvidia the most valuable company in the world.

And official US government policy still says that Taiwan's status is undetermined, operating with this intentional strategic ambiguity that at once keeps the situation stable, but also precarious and unpredictable, especially as Sino-American relations deteriorate.

And Taiwan continues the 75-year-old story of living at the center of these big countries struggling for power, and wielding the psychological tools of ambiguity and deterrence that keep all sides guessing.

(playful music)