ROC and a hard place: Taiwan’s lessons from Ukraine

Hello and welcome to The Intelligence from The Economist. In London, I'm Jason Palmer.

And in New York, I'm Jon Fassman. Every weekday, we provide a fresh perspective on the events shaping your world.

In the wake of deadly gang violence in El Salvador, President Nayib Bukele has instituted a state of emergency and rounded up nearly 20,000 people. We discover why that heavy hand is unlikely to stop future rounds of violence.

And it's the perennial question asked by environmental activists: How do you get voters to accept a bit of pain today to stave off calamity in future? New research suggests that at least in rich countries with cool climates, hot, dry weather can be pretty persuasive all on its own.

But first—

[Speaker:PROTESTERS] Slava Ukraini! Slava Ukraini! Slava Ukraini! Slava Ukraini!

[Speaker:NARRATOR] In Taiwan's capital, Taipei, protesters show their support for Ukraine in the face of Russia's invasion. But there's more than selfless solidarity at work here. Taiwan, too, has a big muscle-flexing neighbor that considers it part of its own territory, Mainland China. Taiwan is a vibrant democracy of 23 million people. It's the world's biggest maker of high-end chips, but it's got diplomatic relations with just 14 countries. No others want to be seen to go against what China's Premier Li Keqiang said last month at the opening of the annual rubber stamp parliament. [SPEAKING CHINESE] We firmly oppose any separatist activities seeking Taiwan independence, he said, and firmly oppose foreign interference. War in Ukraine has made people on both sides of the Taiwan Strait think harder about interference and independence.

The Taiwanese have seen in horror how Ukraine was being invaded by Russia.

Anton LaGuardia is The Economist's diplomatic editor.

And particularly because China and Russia are increasingly close allies, saying that their partnership has no limits, they're worried that they'll be the next prey.

But the fear of, of an invasion by mainland China has been around in Taiwan for years. Why has what's gone on in Ukraine sharpened that so much?

First of all, there's been the great increase in China's, uh, military capacities, mainland China's military capacities. The second thing is Xi Jinping's increasingly aggressive nationalism, where you see increases in Chinese incursions into Taiwan's air defense identification zone. You've seen China's building up of islands in the South China Sea and turning them into military bases. And now is the war in Ukraine, which means that what had previously been thought to be unthinkable is now perfectly imaginable. And grimly so.

But if Taiwan is looking to Ukraine for an analogous situation that it finds itself in, surely they're taking heart a bit that Ukraine is defending itself well. Wouldn't that give Xi Jinping pause before trying to mount an analogous mission?

I think Xi Jinping is fully aware, even more fully aware of the difficulty of mounting an amphibious operation that would certainly be the biggest since D-Day. That said, Xi Jinping probably still thinks that there is something of a window for China. It has raced ahead in the military buildup. America is preoccupied at home. It is now preoccupied in Europe as well. Though he would want to entice Taiwan into reunification peacefully, uh, he has also made clear he's willing to resort to military force, and he probably wants to do it in his tenure as president of China. And if you're a military person looking specifically at capabilities, you worry that the Chinese might do this in the coming years, perhaps by the end of the decade.

And what about the prospects that Taiwan could mount a reasonable response to an eventual invasion?

Well, I think the way the Ukrainians have fought, and remember that few people gave them much chance of holding out against the Russians, has given a lot of ordinary Taiwanese heart that they too could conceivably hold off an attack. It does mean rethinking some of the tactics that Taiwan has adopted and some of the armaments, but the principle that a stout defense, a fighting spirit, a proper organization, and help from allies can help you fend off a more powerful enemy, I think, is a powerful lesson.

So in what way is Taiwan changing how it's thinking about that potential conflict?

It comes down to a term called asymmetry, which is whereby the weaker side uses subterfuge, camouflage, mobility to deny the enemy the ability to achieve its aims. That worked very effectively in Ukraine. So you had anti-tank missiles, the Javelin, anti-tank missile being able to defeat incoming Russian tanks. In the case of Taiwan, though, I think the emphasis would be different. It would need to be mainly about anti-shipping weapons. But the principle of being a porcupine, of being difficult to attack and digest, bristling with cheaper defensive weapons, I think is probably sound. Taiwan on paper has already adopted this strategy. It just hasn't really implemented it.

So in light of that change of ethos, if you like, what would China try to do in the event of an invasion?

It would do more of the sorts of things that it has been practicing, but probably try to do them faster. The things that China has been practicing are missile barrages that could disable a lot of Taiwan's facilities, at least the big infrastructure, airfields and ports. It has been practicing blockades, and it has been practicing a full-scale amphibious assault. Now, none of those things will give you certainty of quick victory. So it may be that it will go for some combination of them. One of the scenarios that was painted by one expert I spoke to was the idea that China could stage a naval exercise and quickly turn that into a blockade. which means that you immediately stop Taiwan from being resupplied, then warn the Americans that anybody who tries to interfere is liable to face nuclear escalation. And that then might buy you time to build up your conventional force for an invasion. It means that they can have an element of surprise without being detected in the way that the Russians were detected when they were building up their forces, uh, to attack Ukraine.

In running through that scenario though, and how in particular the US might respond, it makes me wonder also about how Japan might respond though, traditionally an ally and a very nearby one.

The westernmost island of Japan can see Taiwan, uh, and it also has, uh, large American bases on its territory. So I think there is a realization in the government that in one way or another, if Taiwan were attacked, Japan would have to get involved. In any operation to help it. And they seem to be ready to do that. But there's a lot of wiring that needs to be sorted out between the Americans and the Japanese. When they've done tabletop exercises, particularly the Japanese, they end up being tangled in legal knots. So an awful lot of talking has to take place between the Americans, the Japanese, the Taiwanese, and others.

Talking and more than that. I mean, I, How do you see that kind of negotiation progressing given the war that has provided this analog is still going on?

Well, the simple but trite answer is that it depends on how the war in Ukraine ends. The second point is that it points to a need probably to stockpile weapons in Taiwan. That's mainly for the Americans to do. It'd be very difficult for the Japanese to do that, but also to stockpile weapons in Japan. Possibly. And they have to think very carefully about how they would be able to get in to help Taiwan, given that the Chinese would probably have air superiority, would have a lot of ships, and have the ability with these long-range missiles to target ships in movement, even deep in the Pacific. So it is a conundrum that they need to plan for very carefully.

Anton, thanks very much for joining us.

Thank you. Nice to talk to you.

In response to a string of brutal deaths at the hands of gangs in El Salvador, the young and increasingly autocratic president Nayib Bukele responded with characteristic force. There are rumors that gang members want to take revenge on honest, random people, he said last month. If they do that, he said, there won't be food in jail. I swear to God, they won't eat a grain of rice. As Mr. Bukele carries out a highly visible campaign against the gangs, those jails are filling up.

A week ago, on Sunday, the 24th of April, the El Salvadorian assembly approved a second month of a state of emergency. Now that has been in response to a murder spike that came in late March. So in 3 days, 87 people were killed.

Sarah Burke is our bureau chief for Mexico, Central America, and the Caribbean.

It was committed by gangs against ordinary civilians. Now, these gangs have long extorted and terrorized ordinary people in the country, forcing many to flee, but this was an unusual spike of violence.

And the state of emergency is intended to stop that spate of violence?

Yeah, I mean, that's the aim. So it prevents people from doing things like gathering in groups outside. It also gives police more powers so they don't have to explain why they're arresting someone when they are. And so this has helped the police arrest over 19,000 people in just over a month.

All of them gang members?

Well, that's the question. You know, this is a very heavy-handed use of the law, which is also an extensively powerful law, and obviously there's room for errors. So the president, Nayib Bukele, thinks that only 1% of cases are actually mistaken, but signs on the street are that actually a lot of innocent people are being caught up in this, especially as estimates suggest there are 60,000 gang members in the country, and some of those are already behind bars. Any president would need to react to the violence. There is a gang problem in El Salvador, and this was a horrific killing of many people of the population. But there's a question about what the response should be. For the president's part, he thinks these heavy-handed efforts are working. He says that these gang members are hiding like rats and he's sniffing them out.

So meanwhile, how are all of these arrests landing with the people?

Well, pretty well. I mean, the response is popular. One survey suggested 9 in every 10 Salvadorans approve of the crackdown. That's partly because, as we've said, these gangs have really terrorized people. It's awful. And the killings were against them, not security forces. But it's also because Mr. Bukele is very popular. He's the most popular leader in Latin America by far and one of the most in the world. He's dropped below 80% approval rating since he took office in June 2019. He really is a bit of a millennial autocrat. He's young, he wears a baseball cap, he's on Twitter. He is not particularly democratic, but he is very good and savvy on social media. And many credit him for the fall in homicides that came before this spike of killings. Murders plummeted from a peak of 103 per 100,000 of the population in 2015 to just 17.6 6 last year. I mean, that trend started well before he took power, but the credit has gone to him. There is some opposition on the streets. For example, there are Salvadoran residents complaining that people, good people, innocent people, are being affected as well as criminals. And another worry is that they're just arresting people because of the way they dress or their hairstyle, especially tattoos. But as they say, it hasn't dented his popularity.

Do you think the crackdown will work, though? Is this the way to tackle the problem that he suddenly has again?

It's a difficult problem to tackle. Previous governments have done what he is doing— a crackdown, as well as potentially some negotiations in secret. There has been the odd thing done to address root causes. Such as putting in community centers in poor neighborhoods. But this chronic violence needs to tackle— be tackled by the root causes, not just a crackdown. And really, at the moment, it's all about the showy results. And the gangs are aware that they can get the government's attention and leverage by doing these sorts of spates of violence. So it might well go back to being calm after this, but it's not going to be long-term. We could well see another spike like this. In the future.

Well, it seems likely that this problem would continue to flare up if the mechanism is that a few murders get the government's attention and gives the gangs an upper hand in these secret negotiations.

No, exactly. This is not new. Secret negotiations and crackdowns have long been the sort of modus operandi by governments in El Salvador. But yes, that's the thing. If this is the solution, it's a plaster, it's not a long-term solution. And so you're likely to get these spikes spikes keep flaring and keep happening.

But for the short term, Mr. Bukele has taken on some extraordinary powers here. He's just been granted them again for this state of emergency. As the millennial autocrat that you described, is that a healthy situation?

I mean, no. This is the concern by foreign governments, civil society, and some Salvadorans as well. It's that he can use these powers not just to tackle gangs but also to crack down on other things. So he doesn't particularly like the media, for example, and there's a new law that has been issued ostensibly to deal with this gang problem, saying that journalists who report on gang activity can be imprisoned for 15 years. There's also this pattern of a lack of transparency. So Salvadorans don't know what's happening in terms of negotiations between the gangs and the government. The government denies it, but there's a lot of evidence that this has been going on. And so, yes, the worry is that Mr. Bukele, who does not seem to be particularly worried about the nice trappings of democracy, will use this response and the powers as a way to simply gain more control over the country.

Thanks very much for joining us, Sarah.

Thanks, Jason.

Extreme weather events are becoming more common and, well, more extreme. In Europe alone last year, Madrid experienced its heaviest snowfall for 50 years.

It's been snowing all night and it's virtually knee-deep here in Madrid.

Floods claimed the lives of 89 people in Germany in July.

Heavy flooding has turned streets into raging torrents, as you can see, and many rivers have burst their banks, sweeping away cars, sometimes buildings, and much else besides.

And in August, temperatures hit an exceptional 47.1 degrees Celsius in Greece, sparking month-long wildfires.

Flames are tearing through the Greek island of Evia as temperatures hit nearly 113 degrees, putting the country at risk for more fires.

It might be assumed that the more people feel the effects of climate change, the more likely they are to vote for candidates running to address it. New research has put that assumption to the test.

So the theory is that extreme weather events such as heat waves or floods could have a silver lining. Being directly impacted by these events acts as a wake-up call for climate complacent citizens. So it causes them to become more concerned about the environment.

James Franchum is a data journalist with The Economist.

And that is the basis of a recent paper by Roman Hoffmann, Raja Mutterack, and Jonas Peisker of the IIASA, a think tank in Austria, along with Piero Stanig of Bocconi University in Italy. And the researchers do find a link, but it only shows up in rich countries that are not yet accustomed to severe heat.

So let's talk about the research first. How did they go about doing it? What did they test?

So firstly, they gathered a lot of data from 28 European countries, firstly on weather events across different measures of extreme heat and cold, and also floods, droughts, and wildfires. And then at the same time, they gathered data on environmental concern as measured by a longstanding representative EU survey. And then finally, they looked at the share of people voting for green parties in EU parliamentary elections between 1994 and 2019. And these elections, they take place every 5 years.

And when they looked at those elections, what did they find?

So they found that people who have been directly impacted by extreme weather, particularly heat waves, they have become increasingly concerned about the climate. And in other words, the greater the number of unseasonably warm days, and that's when compared with the 30-year average to the year 2000, that caused Green Party's vote share to increase at European elections. The rise isn't enormous, John, but it does have an impact. And that impact was also present, although to a lesser extent, for hot weather and for wildfires too.

And so hot weather, wildfires, dry weather seems to act as a wake-up call for people. What about other types of weather events?

Yeah, well, that's where it gets a little bit nuanced. So the authors looked at cold weather and wet weather, floods and so on too. And they found that cold snaps do appear to help Green parties, but much less than hot periods, about 0.3 percentage points on that kind of standard deviation measure. And extremely wet periods, so floods, they typically have little effect on raising Green parties' vote share. And that may be because the authors suggest that whilst we tend to know climate change also as global warming, which it is, it's the global warming of the world, but it is also causing extremely variable weather. But people may not necessarily associate floods with climate change and global warming. And that is actually echoed by a study in America that found that hot and dry days increased survey respondents' propensity to say that they believed in anthropogenic climate change, but floods and low temperatures did not.

And you said earlier that this research concentrated on rich and usually cool-weather countries. Why is this? How do the researchers explain this?

Well, the study, because it looked at local administrative levels in the EU, so about 1,200 different regions in total, the researchers were able to split up these regions into different climates. So hot, cold, and temperate, like Britain is. And they found that the impact of extreme weather, extreme heat, was weakest in hot climates. And that is likely because these people are already used to hot weather. So when it gets particularly hot in the summer, they're kind of already used to it. And also, secondly, that they have the kind of mitigation techniques already. So for example, buildings are adapted, they have tiles rather than carpet in their homes. And, you know, as a New Yorker yourself, you'll appreciate the benefits of good air conditioning. So hot weather is far less noticeable if you've got good AC. And then finally, I'd say that income plays a role too. So they found in the richer parts of the EU, such as Brussels, votes for green parties do tend to surge following high temperatures, but that they didn't find actually an increase in poorer areas of the EU, such as Western Bulgaria, where green parties are uncompetitive regardless of the kind of recent extreme weather that they may well have been experiencing. And I think, you know, what I'd say is that for families kind of struggling to put bread on the table, worrying about the fate of the planet, in decades in the future may seem like one luxury too far.

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

My pleasure, John.

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