Thank you, Chair.
My questions will focus on the risk of another catastrophic war in the Asia-Pacific resulting from a possible PRC invasion of Taiwan, and Canada's response.
On January 12, 1950, U.S. Secretary of State Dean Acheson gave a speech at the National Press Club in Washington in which he defined the U.S. defence perimeter in the Pacific. His defence perimeter excluded Korea. Six months later, Communists invaded South Korea, leading to the loss of 40,000 American lives, as well as the lives of many Canadians and others. The Communists invaded South Korea because they calculated that nobody would come to its defence.¸
Tragically, President Biden repeated this mistake. In December of last year, he promised heavy sanctions, but also explicitly ruled out an American military response to a further invasion of Ukraine, and so Russia invaded Ukraine two months later. When hostile countries are making decisions about acts of aggression, they generally make amoral but rational calculations about whether the costs will outweigh the benefits. The lesson of history is that making commitments to stand with democracies against aggression is the most pro-peace path available, because it deters aggression. Committing to defending allies from attack is a way of communicating in advance that the cost of invasion will be high, thus deterring invasion.
This leads me to the conclusion that western nations should be clear in their commitment to stand with Taiwan and that a clear commitment would deter war. A Chinese invasion of Taiwan would not be the result of a perceived provocation, because China's leaders are highly rational. A Chinese invasion of Taiwan would only occur if Taiwan's leaders were convinced, as Putin was in February, that the nation being invaded would not be protected.
With that in mind, I submitted a written question to the Canadian government simply asking this: Has the government made any plans related to how it will respond to a Chinese invasion of Taiwan? If so, what are the plans?
In responding to this question, the government noted its concern about potential escalation and its desire to engage in terms of trade and technology, but the government provided no information whatsoever about its plans for responding to an invasion.
Mr. Miller, I want to ask you this: What can Canada do to avoid the failure of deterrence that we have seen in the current Ukrainian war, and in the Korean War, as I spoke about, and what should Canada's plan be for responding to an invasion of Taiwan?