Taiwan is in imminent danger, the US Senate has been warned. Now the world has to decide what it will do about it.
The influential US Senate Armed Services Committee was this week addressed by former national security adviser to Donald Trump, H.R McMaster. Fired after little more than a year in the top job, he’s now a member of the Hoover Institution think-tank at Stanford University.
“Taiwan is the next big prize” now that Beijing had entrenched itself in the East and South China Seas, he said. “What China’s trying to do is to create in the South China Sea a barrier that would make it just far too costly for us to come to any ally’s defence.”
Time is no longer on the island democracy’s side, he warned.
Chairman-for-life Xi Jinping “has a fleeting window of opportunity that’s closing, and he wants – in his view – to make China whole again”.
That makes Taiwan “the most significant flashpoint” in the world that could lead to a large-scale war.
“There’s a race ongoing right now to help Taiwan harden its defences to make itself indigestible,” Mr Jinping said.