Balancing between superpowers
Taipei’s response has been to diversify toward the US, aiming to raise American LNG’s share of imports from 10 to 25 per cent by 2029. This is partly strategic logic, partly political hedging as the US tries to persuade Taiwan to invest in increasingly costly LNG projects. Such buy-in is also a way of currying favour with a US government whose backing, in the event of confrontation with China, Taiwan regards as essential.
There is, however, a harder lesson in all of this than Taiwan’s particular dilemmas. Energy dominance, as a doctrine, mistakes the instrument for the goal. Control over fossil fuel flows is not the same as strategic resilience, as the Hormuz disruption demonstrated. Countries responding to that shock are not concluding they need more oil; they are concluding they need less exposure to it, and that US behaviour is having painful economic costs.
The strategic goal for most countries is energy systems that are affordable and cannot be blocked or held hostage. For countries like Taiwan, it means diversifying oil and LNG supplies, grid hardening, increasing use of renewable energy, as well as selective nuclear re-engagement.
For the United States, it means recognising that fossil fuel supremacy is not a durable form of power; and that for middle-income states caught between the two superpowers, it increasingly resembles a costly and clumsy protection racket, rather than a respectful strategic partnership advancing long-term energy security and climate liveability.
This article was co-authored by Suzanne Duroy, a full-time journalist based in Taiwan.
This article was originally published on The Conversation.
