Chinese Spy Balloon Fallout: Military Expert John Culver

February 15, 2023·43 min·3 clips

John Culver identifies three eroded pillars of Taiwan Strait stability: the military balance, Taiwan's democratic voice, and China's new great-power confidence.

John Culver returns to Intelligence Matters. Michael Morrell introduces him as an Atlantic Council Global China Hub senior fellow and former senior CIA analyst with 35 years on East Asia, much of it focused on the Chinese military. The balloon comes up first, and Culver treats it less as a spectacle than as a sign that the United States has a real appetite for confrontation with China. Taiwan is the harder problem. His military read: an invasion would be extremely risky for a force that has not fought large scale combat since 1979. The PLA looks modern and big, but Culver's shiny toy line gets at the uncomfortable question: would it actually work under fire? He spends more time on the gray area short of invasion. Coercive pressure, economic pressure, and blockade like moves could test Taiwan without betting everything on one military gamble. Trade gives Beijing leverage. Before the pandemic, he notes, 2 million Taiwanese lived on the mainland and a million Chinese visitors came to Taiwan each year, while trade stayed strong after travel stopped. A quarantine is one possible frame. China could call a blockade a quarantine to stop U.S. arms deliveries and enforce it for a while. The Coast Guard matters because China has the world's largest Coast Guard and a fast growing navy. That gives Beijing options below invasion. Still, Culver says any threatened or actual lethal force would be the first break of that kind since 1958 and would create a new world. Ukraine hangs over the conversation: Russia's invasion showed China that coercion would likely bring deep economic sanctions led by the United States and backed by much of the developed world.

As heard by us

A sober China-Taiwan briefing that turns balloon fallout into a sharper look at coercion, military risk, and escalation.

Michael Morrell's conversation with John Culver uses the Chinese reconnaissance balloon as a way into the larger question of China, Taiwan, and crisis escalation.

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When balloon headlines blur into Taiwan stakes, listen here.

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