As Trump acts with open contempt for international law, China is taking notes. The Cuba model, in particular, offers a useful blueprint for Chinese President Xi Jinping to apply in pursuing his “historic mission” of “reunification” with Taiwan. This is a live demonstration of how a superpower can strangle a country into submission. (……)
For Cuba, which has long depended primarily on oil purchased from Venezuela and Mexico, Trump has exploited that vulnerability by imposing a complete blockade on fuel deliveries. Millions of people have lost access to electricity. Water-pumping stations have shut down. Tractors and delivery trucks sit idle, leading to food-price spikes, food shortages and rising hunger. Hospitals struggle to function amid intermittent blackouts.
The suffering is the point; it is the lever Trump is using to apply pressure to the regime, whose fall, Trump glibly maintains, is imminent.
For Xi, such a coercive siege of Taiwan might be more appealing than a full-scale amphibious invasion across the Taiwan Strait, which would be fraught with logistical challenges and likely draw in the US and Japan. Instead of firing missiles at Taipei or storming Taiwan’s beaches, China could declare a maritime quarantine or customs-inspection regime around the island, with Chinese coast-guard vessels stopping energy tankers bound for Taiwanese ports for “safety checks” or “anti-smuggling operations.” (……)
In Taiwan’s case, China could simply wait until the economic and humanitarian crisis that it created became severe enough to justify moving in to “stabilize the island” and “rescue its people.” As with Trump’s “friendly takeover,” which makes geopolitical coercion sound like corporate restructuring, the logic is that of a protection racket: create the problem, then step in to “solve” it.
All this could unfold under a shroud of legal ambiguity. While a formal naval blockade would be regarded as an act of war under international law, a quarantine or inspection regime could be presented as law enforcement, rather than military action. China’s government — which insists that Taiwan is a Chinese province, not a sovereign state — would likely portray maritime inspections as an internal matter of administrative enforcement.
Would Japan and the US risk war with a major nuclear power and the world’s second-largest military spender over actions portrayed as customs enforcement? Would they want to take responsibility for a crisis-stricken Taiwan? The answer may well be no, especially at a time when the US is hemorrhaging blood and treasure owing to Trump’s multiplying military adventures abroad.
Other countries would be even less likely to jump to Taiwan’s defense. Just as the US is using tariff threats to prevent third countries, such as Mexico, from providing oil to Cuba, China could leverage its central role in global trade and its chokehold on rare-earth supplies to deter opposition to a siege of Taiwan.
Korea Herald
You can read more at the link, but the problem Cuba has is that they have no friends willing to help them. If China tries to blockade Taiwan will they attack American ships brought in to supply the island?
