An Interview with Dr. Renard Sexton: China’s Relations with Taiwan, Afghanistan, the Philippines, and the U.S.

To begin, what are your thoughts about China’s recent military drills around Taiwan following the inauguration of President Lai Ching-te? Are they cause for concern?

The recent drills that took place, which were quite notably called the Joint Sword (with the Chinese military trying to emphasize that they can do joint operations around Taiwan), were significant. They included activities close to Taiwan’s outlying islands. However, they were not any more alarming than expectations. That’s somewhat unfortunate in the sense that a few years ago these drills would’ve been highly alarming, but in the wake of the activities that happened after Speaker Pelosi’s visit to Taipei back in 2022, this is just where we are now in terms of the relationship. The bar has been set higher, so to speak. In order for Beijing to feel like they are sending a message, they’ve got to get close to or exceed that bar.

Do you think China can be deterred from future aggression towards Taiwan? If so, what’s the best approach? You mentioned the bar keeps getting higher. Do you think Beijing will ever surpass that bar?

Yes, I do think that Beijing can be deterred from moving from demonstrations to an actual military operation. However, when we think about deterrence, we have to be careful in how we consider it. For example, Dan Sullivan, the Senator from Alaska, put forward a bill in the Senate, which is now co-sponsored with Senator Duckworth from Illinois, that puts forward a set of sanctions should Beijing choose to pass some red line with respect to military action against Taiwan. The idea is that by setting up these triggers, Beijing would know that should they take this military action, they would experience a bunch of really nasty sanctions. It’s similar to the sanctions the United States and its allies put on Russia after their invasion of Ukraine.

This is core to the idea of deterrence: trying to commit ahead of time in a credible way. If you take this action, we’re going to have some countermeasures. This is the prevailing wisdom in Washington: the United States needs to show China that if they take action against Taipei, it’s going to be really painful for them.

Now the counterpoint to that is, what happens when negative consequences alone are not enough? There’s got to be some other pathway that looks attractive, because even if the pathway of forced unification through military means looks really nasty, if the alternative is even worse or politically infeasible for Beijing, then the trade-off is less clear for them. Maybe a Chinese leader in the future would be willing to roll the dice.

As others such as Jessica Chen Weiss have noted, at the same time that you’re turning up the volume on the deterrence side, you also need to have the other side of the equation be reasonably attractive. So, you say to Beijing things like, “No, we’re not trying to unilaterally change the status quo. No, the United States is not encouraging Taipei to declare unilateral independence. Yes, we’re going to put pressure on the DPP government to make sure that they don’t go too far or say things that make you lose face.”

However, when it appears that Washington is trying to broadly hold back China’s economic growth or take protectionist actions or otherwise contain China, the concern is that that pushes them towards thinking forced unification is their only pathway forward.

There must be two parts of the strategy. Yes, we should keep sanctions on the table, improve the Taiwan military’s capabilities, and make sure that U.S. assets are close by to be able to react in the event of some contingency. But we also want to have as cooperative a relationship that’s possible on other matters.

What are your insights about the election of President Lai Ching-te? Do you believe the election of President Lai Ching-te is representative of broader Taiwanese desire for independence from the mainland?

The recent election had a complicated set of results. On the one hand, yes, DPP won a third term, which is quite notable. The election follows two terms of President Tsai with a pretty clear policy orientation towards autonomy. On the other hand, President Lai won without a majority. He won with the opposition being divided. The KMT put forward a candidate that some regard as relatively weak. And there was also the Taiwan People’s Party with Ko Wen-je running as a third candidate, which in a plurality election allows a candidate who maybe wouldn’t get a majority to win. The TPP and the KMT couldn’t come to an arrangement before the election to run on a ticket together, in part because of their own egos. It was not by any means a groundbreaking election, certainly not even like four years ago. So no, this election definitely does not represent Taiwanese desire for an independence declaration. But it does, I think, send a pretty clear message that the KMT recipe for the past, which included some playing footsie with the idea of “one country, two systems,” is really off the table for the Taiwanese electorate. Former President Ma Ying-jeou’s belief that the slow but steady march towards inevitable unification has been pretty thoroughly discredited, at least in terms of its popularity among the population in Taiwan.

Because the KMT and TPP now control the legislature, this means from Beijing’s perspective, yes, Lai won, but this DPP government is going to be constrained by quite a strong legislative counterbalance. In fact, there were protests recently because of some new legislation that the Legislative Yuan has put forward to try have more oversight on the executive. What you’re seeing from the Taiwanese people is a desire to not move closer to China, to support the status quo, but to have more oversight of the DPP through a divided government.

Based on your Council on Foreign Relations Fellowship, did you notice a difference in opinion between military leaders and the general public?

I did this long-standing, really terrific program called the CFR International Affairs Fellowship, which basically allows academics to go into government for a year in order to share their expertise, but also, more importantly, learn about how our foreign policy process works. I had the opportunity to work at US INDOPACOM, which is based in Honolulu Hawaii. It’s essentially the U.S. military’s combatant command for Asia from India all the way into the Pacific. 

It’s definitely the case that there’s a broad array of opinions within the foreign policy community regarding how significant of a problem or risk there is in the Taiwan Strait. There’s certainly those that look at quite exquisite intel and have briefed Congress in a variety of directions about the existence of a unification timeline and what President Xi in Beijing thinks. There is no one opinion, and similar to the general public, people have many different thoughts about how plausible it is. The difference of course, is that people in the military think about this every day, whereas I would say the general public in the U.S. generally don’t think about foreign policy in their daily life.

Within Taiwan, the idea of declaring independence as a Republic of Taiwan separate from the current Republic of China or, on the opposite end, becoming part of the PRC, is very, very unpopular. It’s similar on the U.S. side. I think everybody understands that the status quo and our current policy of strategic ambiguity has been reasonably successful at maintaining peace and stability in Taiwan.

Taiwan has de facto autonomy. They run their own affairs. People want to see that continue. So, it’s really about how to achieve the status quo, which is kind of a funny thing to say.

With the U.S. election coming up in November, do you think who wins that will determine our ability to maintain the status quo with Taiwan? If Donald Trump wins, do you think that will change anything in our approach towards Taiwan?

If President Biden wins reelection, I think the expectation is that the current trajectory will be largely maintained: a moderately hawkish policy vis-a-vis Taiwan, including continued arms sales training, providing for deterrence, and some amount of reassurance, although leaning more heavily on the deterrence side of the equation. If Trump is elected, if he wins a second term, I think there’s a real open question about what direction he and his administration would choose to go.

Part of it is a matter of personnel. In the previous Trump administration, the people that were responsible for Taiwan matters were quite hawkish. Matt Pottinger, who was the Deputy National Security Advisor, and Mike Pompeo, who was Secretary of State, were quite vociferous in terms of Taiwan autonomy and maybe even pushing into the Taiwan independence world. They also had a very aggressive timetable in mind for when China might take action to try and unify forcefully with Taiwan. But you never know, those guys may not come back. Some had quite strong things to say about the January 6th incident; they could be persona non grata now with the Trump folks.

It’s also the case that by all accounts, Trump and others close to him view Taiwan as a sort of thorn in China’s side, rather than something they feel particularly strongly about ideologically. If a deal could be made to give away Taiwan in exchange for things that they care about more, say trade issues or something else, it’s not inconceivable they could move to an isolationist position like they’ve had vis-a-vis Ukraine. In the early days of Ukraine, sure, there was some sense that maybe the Russian invasion was ill-advised, but fairly quickly they decided Ukraine’s not their problem. You could imagine the Trump administration saying something similar for Taiwan if it suited their broader foreign policy goals. In the short run, they see Taiwan as a chess piece to be played against Beijing.

Much of your research pertains to politics in Afghanistan. Does China have a role to play in the postwar reconstruction of the country? Does the U.S. military withdrawal leave room for China to gain more influence in the region?

China has long played an important role in Afghanistan, certainly since the mid-1990s when the Taliban first took power there. In fact, there were relations between Beijing and the Taliban even when the Taliban were international pariahs. One of the reasons that China engaged that early with the Taliban was there were militant groups including Uyghur Muslims who were training and operating in exile in Afghanistan, which Beijing saw as a big security threat. China and Afghanistan share a border along the Wakhan Corridor, which is up in the mountains. It’s very difficult terrain. This was a zone where different kinds of groups, whether they be militant or politically exiled, would make treks back and forth.

Interestingly, earlier this year, China officially recognized the Taliban’s diplomatic envoy in Beijing. This was one of the first examples of this kind of recognition. What’s fascinating about this is that they did not officially recognize diplomatically the Taliban as the government in Afghanistan. Beijing has representation in Kabul, but they aren’t official diplomatic representation.

They’re in this halfway house of treating the Taliban more officially than most governments, but not completely recognizing them. That’s because they want to maintain some strategic leverage. Chinese companies have made very important investments in Afghanistan over the last 20 years, including in the oil and gas industry. China has two main things they’re thinking about: the ongoing risk that militants could take shelter there to train, and economic interests.

U.S. withdrawal, of course, leaves space for others to gain influence. I don’t necessarily see that as a bad thing. Afghanistan is an international challenge; it’s going to take more than just the U.S. and NATO allies trying to control and prop up a government there. Instead, you want everybody to have skin in the game. It’s good that China is implying they want to see Afghanistan as a safe and stable place.

The challenge is, what does the end game look like? There’s no real agreement, and Russia, China, and Iran have interests in the region. The United States and its allies have relatively bad relations with all three of these countries right now. Pakistan is also quite important, and they have a closer relationship with China now than ever before. In some ways, I think the U.S. is happy to allow others to own the problem, provided that they can intervene periodically if there’s threatening Islamic State activity.

Do you think China will attempt to negotiate with the Taliban to improve human rights issues in the country?

The key point here is that the Taliban took over and are firmly in charge, but they are not governing by consent. There are broad swaths of the population in Afghanistan that disagree with Taliban leadership and would want things to be run quite differently. Nonetheless, people are very happy about the fact that there is peace now. In research that I’ve done over the last 10 years, it was quite clear even near the end of the U.S. occupation, that people were willing to sacrifice quite a lot in terms of their public policy priorities in order to achieve peace. Basically, even if they don’t love Taliban governance, they would rather accept it and have peace than to have ongoing fighting.

It’s possible that China could help push the Taliban to have more consensual governance in terms of cutting deals with other groups living in Afghanistan to maybe devolve authority on certain topics; for example, allowing girls to go to school in certain regions. Some of that is quietly happening de facto, but it could be more widespread. But of course, this is, generally speaking, not the way China has operated. They have a very strong orientation towards non-interference in internal affairs, for two reasons. One, once you start playing these mediation games, you sort of own the problem, and they don’t want to own the problem. The second is that it could make them liable for backlash. If something goes wrong or people feel like they lost out as a result of these negotiations, then the target isn’t just the Taliban, the target is external foreign players that are meddling in some way.

Also, China is most concerned with stability in Afghanistan to ensure their investments are safe and militants are not being harbored. There’s less of a values-based component to their foreign policy in the way that Western countries tend to prioritize.

Switching areas, as the United States strengthens its cooperation with the Philippines in the South China Sea, do you anticipate a Chinese response? How might this impact broader global relations in the region?

There are two sides of this story. The first is how you stated it, as the United States strengthening its cooperation with the Philippines, and there’s some truth to that. But the bigger shift has been in the other direction: the way that the Philippines has chosen to cooperate with the United States.

Under the past administration, President Duterte, there was more tension in the U.S.-Philippines relationship than there had been in recent history. Duterte had beef with the United States. Some of it’s personal — his own experience with the United States as a former colonial power that is sometimes overbearing. During his younger years, he definitely experienced the kind of racism that was associated with U.S. colonialism and imperialism in the Philippines. Also, he had legitimate grievances with the ways that the United States sometimes interacts with the Philippines, with a senior/junior partner dynamic that can appear disrespectful.

When current president Ferdinand Marcos Jr. took over, he chose to take a much more aggressive approach vis-a-vis the “West Philippine Sea” than the Duterte administration had. This coincides with both a shift during the Trump administration and into the Biden years, that the United States was going to push back against perceived Chinese expansionism in the South China Sea, in particular in the Philippine exclusive economic zone (EEZ).

The United States and Philippines have a new defense arrangement called the Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement (EDCA), which has allowed the United States to access a bunch more military sites in the Philippines. Reasons such as Taiwan contingencies, broader Chinese expansionism, and so on, are the drivers for this. The Philippines has chosen to deepen its military relationship with the United States through EDCA, and also by trying to do more visible patrolling of its EEZ. That change, which the United States is of course quite happily going along with, has indeed generated a pretty big Chinese response. Beijing is very unhappy about this; they’re not happy that there’s the possibility of significant U.S. military assets on the northern tip of Luzon, which is quite close to Taiwan.

There’s been back and forth in the Spratlys with the Chinese Coast Guard, and in particular around the Sierra Madre, which is a grounded vessel of the Philippines. In terms of broader relations, you have to think about what exactly the Philippines is choosing. They have decided to double down on their relationship with the United States, and China is going to wait for the next president to see if things change. They’re going to try and put pressure on them in the meantime, but they’re also going to have to adapt.

Can you tell us a little bit about your current research?

There are two main areas I research. The first is insurgency, and the second is rising Chinese muscular foreign policy in Asia. On insurgency, I’m still doing work in Afghanistan about understanding the post-Taliban takeover, political environment, and people’s attitudes about peace. I have ongoing work in the Philippines on two insurgencies there, both the broader remaining jihadist elements in the South, and then also the New People’s Army, which is a communist insurgency.

A growing element of my research is the challenges of great power competition in Asia. I have a number of projects in Taiwan, including a study on the reform of their conscription system, a study on civil defense trainings in Taiwan, and then broadly about the South China Sea how leaders use these territorial disputes in their own sort of domestic politics.

I also have a book project on how weak countries try to manage rising regional powers and superpowers. In a narrow sense, how places like Philippines, Singapore, Japan are contending with growing military strength of China, and also broadly, through history, how small countries navigate their big neighbors.