Not so Pacific: the frightening prospect of war over Taiwan

Hey, Ryan Reynolds here for Mint Mobile. You know, one of the perks about having four kids that you know about is actually getting a direct line to the big man up north. And this year he wants you to know the best gift that you can give someone is the gift of Mint Mobile's unlimited wireless for $15 a month. Now you don't even need to wrap it. Give it a try@mintmobile.com Switch upfront payment.

Of $45 for a three month plan equivalent to $15 per month. Required new customer offer for first three months only. Speed slow after 35 gigabytes. If network's busy, taxes and fees extra. See mintmobile.com.

Hello and welcome to the Intelligence from the Economist in New York. I'm John Fassman. Every weekday we provide a fresh perspective on the events shaping your world. Recently, hundreds of thousands of Mexicans have taken to the streets to protest a set of laws that weaken the country's independent elections agency, raising concerns about the health of Mexican democracy. And nearly 400 years ago, the penal code of then colonial Connecticut defined 12 capital crimes, including witchcraft. But the state's legislature has been holding hearings to exonerate accused witches. We'll learn why. First up, though.

There's been a lot of alarm talk about the prospect of war between America and China, particularly over the status of Taiwan. I've been traveling around the Pacific to watch American forces training in different ways in preparation for the prospect of such a conflict.

Anton LaGuardia is our diplomatic editor.

In Okinawa, the Marines, the 3rd Battalion of the 4th Marine Regiment, known as Dark side, were practicing in the jungle. In Guam, the US Air Force was rehearsing with several allies. And in both cases, what they were doing was learning to disperse to avoid giving the Chinese an easy target, yet maintaining the ability to fight in a distributed way. They call it dispersed lethality. In these exercises, there's a huge amount of activity. You've got Marines taking off in helicopters, clattering away into the jungle. Some of them are carrying ultralight vehicles that will act as a mobile command post. You've got jets screeching overhead in all sorts of shapes and sizes, transport planes, maritime patrol aircraft, and of course, the F22 and the F15 fighter jets. Out at sea, helicopters would fly out and open fire with rockets and machine guns at targets on an island where, under the scenario, enemy forces were landing.

Anton, we've spoken before about the possibility of a conflict over Taiwan. Why is this such a pressing topic now?

I think the talk of war has become a lot louder, especially on the American side, but not only Chinese leaders, Xi Jinping himself and the new foreign minister have been quite belligerent in recent days. There is the kind of steady growth of Chinese military power which is making everyone nervous. You've seen Japan adopt a new defense concept, promising to double defense spending, making much clearer that it's willing to do more to help America. The Philippines, too, is giving America more, more access to its bases. And there's a sense that Xi Jinping has moved closer to Russia and therefore possibly might copy some of what Russia has done in Ukraine. And of course, last year we had Nancy Pelosi's visit, which provoked a huge volley of missiles landing very close to Taiwan. So all those things are building up to create a sense of a looming crisis, and both sides feel that they are losing deterrence.

So what kind of timeline are we looking at here? When might we see war break out?

There's a military capacity timeline, which is that Xi Jinping, China's leader, has ordered the pla, the People's Liberation army, to have the capability to invade by 2027. This now looks like a firm target date. Whether he intends to do so is a different matter. And that, I think will depend a lot on politics. And there are some in America who think that war could come in 2025. Even Xi Jinping, of course, may prefer to bide his time, but he may feel compelled to act if Taiwan, for example, declared independence or if America deployed fighting units in Taiwan. Of course, none of this alarm means that war is a foregone conclusion. As I was told by Admiral John Aquilino, commander of Indo Pacific Command, which would oversee any such war against China.

Right.

War with China is not inevitable and it's not imminent. Mission number one is to take all actions and do everything in my power to prevent a conflict. And boy, we spend a lot of time focusing on that mission. But as Admiral Aquilino and every other American military commander says, if deterrence fails, they must be ready to fight and win.

Assuming a conflict is on the way though, how might it start?

It could happen in many ways. You could have a blockade, you could have the seizure of a small outlying island, you could have a missile attack on or near Taiwan, and so on. These are so called gray zone attacks, short of all out war. But increasingly, all sides are preparing for the most extreme scenario, which is an amphibious D day style invasion of Taiwan by China. That is because conflicts that are short of all out war could escalate into it. It's also because it sets the terms of the power balance between America and China. If America can't stop an invasion that then it might not bother trying. For example, all sides have difficult decisions to take. The Chinese in particular have to decide whether they want to preemptively strike American forces in Japan, in Guam. Alternatively, they could try and limit a war to Taiwan only, but leave themselves vulnerable to an American intervention. And of course, if they attacked the Americans in Japan, they would almost certainly bring in the Japanese into the war.

And so what happens then?

In all probability, the Chinese will be able to land some forces onto Taiwan, although Taiwan hopes to destroy them in the littoral sea and on the beachheads out in Okinawa. I spoke to Lt. Col. Jason Copeland, the commanding officer of the Darkside Battalion, who explained to me the task they faced.

So the battalion's done a lot across getting ready to deploy forward a support of the stand in force. So here, I mean, if we had to secure a lot of this, if we didn't have somebody that was also invested in part of that security, as deeply as they are right now, I think that would change as far as what our force posture would have to be.

The task then will be to try and cut off the supply lines of that amphibious force so that it loses power and can no longer keep going. And that task will be mainly carried out by American bombers and by American submarines. And there are several questions in a war. First of all, will the Taiwanese fight as hard to repel an invasion as the Ukrainians are fighting against Russia? Unless the Taiwanese resist, everything else is futile, but they can't do it on their own. They need the Americans to intervene to hold back the Chinese. And the Americans in turn need their allies to help. In particular Japan, which has substantial forces, and the Philippines, which is weaker but is close by.

I think the hardest part is to visualize something you haven't seen before. So for Marines, we are still offensive in nature, but you're starting to see an adversary that's coming at you en masse. This is what the threat model looks like. This is what the pacing challenge is. This is what we think is coming at us.

Predictions about how this would end are difficult. There are war games conducted by American think tanks that find that the American led allies eventually do succeed in cutting off the Chinese, but at great cost to all concerned. And that doesn't include the possibility that countries will resort to nuclear weapons. So the risk of nuclear war is ever present.

But even without a nuclear exchange, even if both the US and China managed to keep their fingers off the button, I assume A war would still be quite devastating, right?

It would be, especially for Taiwan, whose electricity and power sources and water supplies would be destroyed. Much of the country's economy would be devastated. The Americans and the Chinese would also lose a great number of ships and of planes. The world economy would be knocked back severely, much more than it has been by the war in Ukraine. The Rand Corporation, another think tank, estimated back in 2016 that a year long war over Taiwan would reduce China's GDP by 20 to 35% and America's by 5 to 10%. Taiwan also makes about 90% of the world's most advanced computer chips. And nobody knows what a serious disruption to that supply would entail for the world economy.

So given that China, if it does win this kind of conflict, would basically inherit a completely broken island with no infrastructure. Why would it even go to war?

You can ask the same question of all sides. It would be terrible for all. But a war might happen by accident. For example, the war in Ukraine shows how an autocratic power can miscalculate terribly. It may think it can do so easily, may overestimate its own strength. It might also feel compelled to act even if it thinks its forces aren't ready for nationalist reasons. The Taiwanese show no sign of wanting to reunify with China. And you might get a future president who is more independence minded and wants to push the country in that direction. And a communist leader may feel he has no choice but to respond. The Americans, on the other hand, will be fighting, yes, to defend an embattled democracy, but I think also for the preservation of an order in Asia that they created. If Taiwan is captured, all countries on the first island chain, as it's known, particularly Japan, would be much more vulnerable, much more liable to be drawn into a Chinese sphere of influence. As one American military officer put it to me, Taiwan is the cork in the bottle. If it goes, China spills out.

So what can America do realistically to avoid going to war?

So the Americans really have a delicate balancing act to play here. They need to do enough to increase China's doubts about its ability to invade. They need to strengthen their own forces. They need to strengthen Taiwan. They need to draw the allies more closely, particularly Japan. At the same time, they have to be careful not to do so much as to provoke China into thinking that it has no choice but to gamble on war.

All right, Anton, thank you so much for your time today.

You're very welcome, John.

Thousands of demonstrators filled Mexico City's central square, the Zocalo, in February. They were there to protest a recently passed package of laws that guts the agency that oversees Mexico's elections. They sang the national anthem. They wore bright pink, the color of the elections agency, and they carried banners that said, don't touch my vote. A former member of Mexico's Supreme Court called on the judiciary to find the laws unconstitutional. These changes came at the behest of Mexico's populist president, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, also known as amlo. And they're the latest in a series of moves that could weaken democracy in the country.

The ine, which stands for the Instituto Nacional Electoral, or in English, the National Electoral Institute, is the body that oversees and runs Mexico's elections.

Sarah Burke is our Mexico City bureau chief.

It was created in response to anger at decades of single party rule by the Institutional Revolutionary Party, also known by its acronym, the PRI, or the PRI in Spanish.

And.

And power only changed hands from the PRI in Mexico in 2000 after seven decades. And that was partly because of the INA. And today, the INA makes sure that Mexico's elections stay free and fair. So it organizes the ballots, it counts the votes, it makes sure politicians follow electoral law, and it even issues the voter ID cards. But the current president is trying to roll back the INA's powers.

Why is he doing that?

He doesn't trust the agency. I mean, he has a personal grudge. Back in 2006, he ran for president and he lost by 0.6 percentage point. Claimed afterwards, without evidence, that ine had rigged the vote against him. So since then, he has been trying to sort of get back at it. He also thinks it costs too much money. It's expensive, but running elections in Mexico is an expensive thing to do. So he announced a plan to defund and limit the powers. He wanted to do a constitutional change, but he didn't have enough of the vote for that. So he came up with the proposal that we've just seen passed. And the Senate finally passed the final bits of the law on February 22.

What does this package of laws do?

I mean, it essentially cuts down slashes in A. So it cuts off its funding, which means that it has to lay off about 85% of its 2,500 professional staff. It scraps 300 of the local permanent branches. They do things like set up polling stations in local areas and oversee what's going on in those states. Mexico is a big country, and it restricts the powers of the IN A to monitor electoral law and to apply fines to candidates who breached the laws. The attack on your knee is a blow to Mexico. But there are other things that the president has done to chip away at its democracy as well.

What else has he done to chip away at democracy?

So he was elected in 2018 as a populist, and his campaign was to cut down on corruption and make life better for many of the poor people in Mexico. But he has a very liberal streak. He doesn't like any criticism. So he spends a lot of his time in morning press conferences striking out against people he doesn't like, including journalists. He's given a lot of powers to the army, giving them control of civilian tasks and lots of things where they can generate their own income, such as running a train line. But he's very popular. His approval rating rarely falls below 60%. Many voters are frustrated with the economy and security in particular, but they don't seem to blame the president for these problems. But the attack on the INE might be an area that could change that.

Why do you say that? How does the public feel about this issue?

So when the laws were passed at the end of February, we saw those large protests in Mexico City and at least 85 other towns across the country. No other issue has brought this number of people to the streets, apart from perhaps some protests by women on feminist issues. A poll by the INA found that many Mexicans favored reform of the body, but it is one of the most trusted institutions in Mexico. And when a liberal newspaper, Reforma, asked Mexicans what they thought of the body, 80% of respondents said it was important to Mexico's democracy, and over half were satisfied with its current form. So the president and his allies have basically dismissed these protesters. This is one of the things he's done. He's called them right wingers who don't want reform, who want to return to corruption that there was in the past. And he's questioned how big the protests were. He's also even suggested that the demonstrators were linked, or at least some of them were linked to drug gangs, which is just not true.

So there's this massive groundswell of protest against these measures, but the president is dismissing it. Where does that leave Mexico? Can demonstrators do anything really to stop these reforms from being implemented?

There's a very good chance that Mexico's Supreme Court will strike down parts of this reform as unconstitutional. This is something that the protesters explicitly called for, and even a past member of the Supreme Court has called for.

But.

But the president's anti democratic rhetoric on this and other issues is damaging. And INI will be affected in some way by these reforms, and that's worrying there's going to be a presidential and general election in 2024. The president can't run again because they can only serve one six year term, but his party and whoever he picks as successor is predicted to win. And the problem is they're going to be overseeing a weaker democracy. And frankly, it's bad for the president because there's more reason with a weaker ine to question the results the election.

Sarah, thanks so much for your time today.

Thanks, John.

All right.

Good morning everyone. I'd like to call to order the Judiciary Committee public hearing mention witch trials.

And the name of Salem, a city in Massachusetts comes to mind. But the neighboring state of Connecticut also prosecuted women accused of witchcraft.

I'm here to support the bill to exonerate witches. I'm here to tell you the story of my great to the eight's grandmother, Goodwife Knapp, who was executed by hanging in Fairfield in 1653.

This history is being re examined.

Goody Knapp was a pawn in a power struggle between Roger Ludlow, founder of Fairfield, and his political rival Thomas Staples.

Now, more than 375 years after the first execution, Connecticut's lawmakers are seeking atonement.

In 1647, Alice Young was the first person recorded in colonial America to be executed for the crime of witchcraft.

Rosemary Ward covers New York and New England for the Economist.

Apparently there was an outbreak of influenza in the town and it took the lives of several local children. But her child remained healthy, so people started to resent her. Fingers started to point at her and they accused her of witchcraft. And she was hanged pretty smartly on the grounds of the Hartford Meeting House in Connecticut, which is now the site of the old state House. Now, more than 375 years after young was executed, absolution may be close as Connecticut began a new hearing on exonerating those prosecuted for witchcraft.

Give us a sense of the scale of those prosecutions. How many people were prosecuted and how did they come about?

Aside from Alice, 10 other people were executed for witchcraft in Connecticut and more than 30 people were indicted for it between 1647 and 1697. Back in 1642, colonial Connecticut adopted a list of capital crimes and these included murder, kidnapping, treason and and witchcraft. And those accused of witchcraft often met their end at the gallows. Others faced the ducking test, which is when suspected witches are dropped into water and if the accused sank and drowned, she would be innocent. If she floated, she was guilty.

Roe at the top of this segment, you mentioned that Connecticut's legislature was holding hearings on exonerating them, you went to one. Tell us what it was like.

I went to the hearing where descendants of the those prosecuted and those who prosecuted testified, including Susan Bailey, the ninth granddaughter of Alice Young, the first woman executed for witchcraft. She told me that it might not be witches, but today there are parallels to what went on back in the 1600s.

So to say it doesn't matter because it's 375 years, it's absolutely wrong for all those same reasons, because these things keep happening over and over. If someone wants to blame someone for something, that's totally out of their hands because they can't just accept reality.

And what was striking to me, that some of the descendants only found out recently that they were even related to those accused of witchcraft. And which speaks to that few in Connecticut generally are aware of the state's witchcraft history. Most American school children learn about the Salem witch trials that took place next door in Massachusetts, but they don't learn anything about what went on in Connecticut.

So it sounds like Massachusetts has been a lot more forthright in confronting its history. Is this a lesson that Connecticut could learn?

Well, the one thing that everyone I spoke to, be it amateur historians, descendants, politicians, they don't want Connecticut to become like Salem, nothing too kitschy. They want something more dignified. But what they do want to do is model Massachusetts and how it's atoned for what happened all those centuries ago. For instance, in 1702, the General Court of Massachusetts declared the trials unlawful. And a decade later, Massachusetts overturned the convictions in 1957, and in 2001, more alleged witches were exonerated. And just last summer, the last alleged witch was exonerated. But it's not just Massachusetts or even America that has done this. Last summer, Nicola Sturgeon, Scotland's first minister, issued a posthumous apology to the thousands of people persecuted as witches in Scotland.

Do you think it's fair to maybe give Connecticut a rap on the knuckles for being slow in confronting its controversial history?

Probably a little too harsh. There were efforts at the state level that went nowhere. But at the local level, there has been success. The town council in Windsor, where Alice Young lived, exonerated her in 2017. And frankly, as I said before, not many people even know this history to even think about going through this process. Jane Garabe, the state lawmaker who introduced the bill in the state's House of Representatives, told me that exoneration is a long time coming. She described it as a wrong, and her bill is a way to say we're sorry.

All right, Ro thanks so much for joining us today.

Thank you, John.

That's all for this episode of the Intelligence. Let us know what you think of the show. You can get in touch@podcastconomist.com and you can subscribe to the economist@economist.com intelligenceoffer. The link is in the show Notes. We'll see you back here tomorrow.