The USS Regan aircraft carrier battle group conducts a military exercise in the Philippine Sea, Nov. 11, 2017.
The Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), a U.S. think tank, released a new report forecasting the potential for conflict around the world in 2021, ranking a serious conflict between the U.S. and China over Taiwan as the highest level for the first time.
Since 2008, the CFR’s Center for Preventive Action has issued an annual report based on its prevention priorities for the coming year to predict and assess potential conflicts or crises that could erupt or escalate.
For the past 13 years, the Center has surveyed hundreds of U.S. foreign policy experts each fall, asking them to list 30 potential global crisis or conflict factors for the next 12 months, assessing their probability of occurrence and potential impact on U.S. interests. The risk assessment form is divided into three levels according to the probability of occurrence and the degree of impact on interests.
On January 17, Voice of America reported that on January 14, the CFR released a new report that forecasts the likelihood of potential conflicts around the world in 2021. The CFR report gives several important insights, the report said.
For the first time, the report lists the outbreak of a serious crisis between the U.S. and China over Taiwan as the highest level of potential global conflict and elevates it to a Tier 1 risk.
“U.S.-China crisis over Taiwan” was first included in the report in 2019 and has since been classified as a Tier 2 risk for 2 consecutive years. As the confrontation between the U.S. and China intensifies, experts predict that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) will intensify pressure on Taiwan at the political and economic levels, leading to a serious crisis between the U.S. and China, thus raising the second level of risk to the first level.
In recent years, the Chinese Communist Party has been increasing the intensity of its civil and military attacks on Taiwan, especially in the Taiwan Strait in 2020, with war clouds thickening, giving the appearance of an imminent war.
The latest poll released by the International Strategy Association of Taiwan on October 24 shows that as many as 77.6% of Taiwanese are willing to fight for Taiwan. Even if Taiwan declares independence and a war in the Taiwan Strait is triggered, 66% of people are still willing to fight.
If a conflict between the Chinese Communist Party and the United States were to affect security in the Taiwan Strait, a whopping 58.7 percent of Taiwanese would be willing to fight alongside the United States against the Chinese Communist Party, compared to 24.6 percent who would not.
As to who is to blame for the tensions across the Taiwan Strait, 51.9 percent say the Chinese Communist Party is to blame for the oppression.
In October of the same year, White House national security advisor O’Brien warned that if the Chinese Communist Party dared to violate Taiwan by force, the Communist Party would be in a very dangerous situation if the United States intervened, and that the United States would unite with the world to form an anti-communist coalition, and the Communist Party would be isolated and become an “international pariah.
The U.S. Department of Defense is deploying long-range bombers to contain the threat of Chinese communist force in the Taiwan Strait and South China Sea. The photo shows the U.S. B1-B bomber.
In addition, the CFR report also assessed China and India as a Tier 2 risk of military conflict over their disputed border, which may reflect heightened concerns about the growing risk of military confrontation between major powers.
Experts, on the other hand, see the potential risk of an armed confrontation between the U.S. and China in the South China Sea in 2021 as reduced, from Tier 1 to Tier 2. This result becomes the only event among the 30 potential crises or conflicts listed in the report that has a reduced probability of occurrence.
In addition, the CFR report also mentions concerns about North Korea’s further development of nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles as the most important contingency in 2021.
Experts view this as both a high probability and a high risk of impact. The Biden transition team has been observed to take little position on the threat posed by North Korea.
Photo shows a series of ballistic missiles displayed at a military parade on the 75th anniversary of the founding of North Korea’s ruling party, Oct. 10, 2020.
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, however, appears intent on challenging the new U.S. administration. At the eighth party congress of the Workers’ Party of Korea, which concluded on Jan. 12, Kim Jong Un declared that he would “vigorously push forward with the nuclear power building that has been started for a long time” and called the United States “the biggest enemy” of North Korea.
On Jan. 14, the North Korean authorities made further forceful provocations. On the same day, a large military parade was suddenly held in Pyongyang to display a series of submarine-launched ballistic missiles. At the parade, Kim Jong-un once again declared that the United States is North Korea’s “main enemy.
In addition to the above-mentioned serious crisis, the CFR report listed other medium probability, serious impact of the first level of risk, including: Iran and the United States, or U.S. allies outbreak of armed confrontation, serious crippling U.S. critical infrastructure network attack, Russian intervention or intimidation of North Atlantic Treaty Organization member countries so that military tensions rise, terrorist attacks resulting in mass casualties on U.S. soil, and so on.
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