Xi Jinping, China’s 21st-century communist emperor, has vowed that Taiwan’s “unification with the motherland” is part and parcel of his goal of restoring the People’s Republic of China to global prominence if not preeminence.

Why is Mr. Xi so determined to retake this small island of Taiwan, about the size of the state of Maryland? There are simple answers for readers who want a “Reader’s Digest” version, but the uncomplicated camouflages the more serious socio-economic and political forces that come into play in Mr. Xi’s resolve and intentions. A recent article in the New Yorker refers to this as “The Taiwan Tangle.”

Starting with the history, this small island was only momentarily a part of the Chinese “motherland,” at best about five percent of China’s dynastic history. For most of Taiwan’s modern history, it was known in Portuguese as Formosa and was basically a way station for merchant ships traveling through the East and South China Seas. The natives were made up of Austronesian tribes, not Chinese. The island was taken over by Dutch colonial rule in the first part of the 17th century, attempting to civilize the natives, and they brought some Chinese workers to the island to help them cultivate their fields. The Dutch were deposed in 1662 by a half-Japanese half-Chinese rebel who was trying to overthrow the Chinese Qing Dynasty. He lost that fight and the Qing (Manchu) Dynasty then took control of the island. When the Qing lost their war with Japan in 1895, Formosa became part of the Japanese empire.

With the defeat of Japan at the end of WWII, Chiang Kaishek and Mao Zedong battled for control of China in 1949, and to make a long story short, Mao chased Chiang Kaishek and his Kuomintang Party (KMT) off to what then came to be known as The Republic of China, or more internationally as Taiwan.

It could be said that America’s qualified indifference to China during the Truman and Eisenhower administrations reduced our ability to better influence 20th and 21st-century outcomes. China’s claims on Taiwan were enhanced by President Nixon and Henry Kissinger’s attempts (1972) to make relations with China more friendly and they agreed at the time that Taiwan would be understood to be a part of China – The Shanghai Communiqué.

Xi’s hostile nationalism and his motherland motivation to claim this exceedingly prosperous island as having always been a part of the Chinese “Middle Kingdom” has become extremely clear. It’s more than just claiming victory over the vestiges of Chiang Kaishek’s Kuomintang of yesteryear. It’s about strategic economic interests. Taiwan is home to the largest semiconductor manufacturing plant in the world (TSMC), capable of producing nearly 90 percent of the most advanced chips necessary for artificial intelligence and quantum computing.

The U.S. banned the sale of NVIDIA and AMD chips to China in 2022. The design and manufacturing processes for these chips will take China years to catch up; so, access to these chips, which are essential for generative AI, especially with military applications, make Taiwan potentially a key national security asset for China. In the meantime, relations have been hardening between the U.S. and China with stiffening tariffs and chip wars.

Sulmaan Wasif Khan, professor at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy says in his recent book, “The Struggle for Taiwan,” that “The United States now seems to see Taiwan as a means of getting tough on China.” Does Khan then conclude that these conditions will lead inevitably to war between the U.S., Taiwan and China? Not necessarily.

Khan believes that China could decide that it would be in its strategic economic interests to grant Taiwan its independence. Would that lessen the territorial and navigational tensions that exist in the East and South China Seas and broader global hegemonic competition? Probably not. Clashes between the Philippine coast guard and fishermen and the Chinese navy demonstrate China’s fierce intentions to call the East China Sea their domain. The very recent defense treaty signed between Japan and the Philippines is a statement of Asian-Pacific nations’ fears over Chinese hegemony in that part of the world, separate from the Taiwan issue.

On the other hand, a growing form of aggressive Chinese diplomacy known as “wolf warrior diplomacy,” tied culturally to Chinese action-film heroes and their ferocious defense of Chinese interests, militates against such hopeful prospects.

Yet Khan doesn’t view the current situation as an ineluctable preface to war with China. Outcomes may have more to do with the tension that exists within Xi Jinping’s psyche. Call it Xi’s dilemma. Like China’s support for Russia’s attack on Ukraine, are China’s economic and global leadership interests more important than supporting Russian terror, or seizing this small island at the expense of perhaps tens of thousands of combat deaths and being diplomatically and economically ostracized by much of the rest of the world?

Wars often start by accident, by miscalculation or miscommunications. Global affairs scholar Odd Arne Westad of Yale University cautions in a recent piece in Foreign Affairs that China and the U.S. might just be “sleepwalking toward war,” as a result of economic competition, geopolitical fears and deep mistrust, making conflict more likely; (but) he says, “It takes human avarice and ineptitude on a colossal scale for disaster to ensue. Sound judgment and competence can prevent the worst-case scenarios.”

Where does all this leave us? Westad concludes that “All current evidence points towards China making military plans to one day invade Taiwan, producing a war between China and the United States.” Russia, North Korea, Syria and Iran would relish the chaos and the confrontation between the axis of authoritarianism and democracy.

Is Taiwan a flash point with the potential for existential consequences? In my view it is, and the coming months will require experienced and exceptional diplomatic skills to avoid what could become a 21st century Armageddon. But the backbone of effective diplomacy is deterrence, making the cost of war too high, even for an exceedingly ambitious nationalist, like Xi Jinping.

Bill Sims is a Hillsboro resident, retired president of the Denver Council on Foreign Relations, an author and runs a small farm in Berrysville with his wife. He is a former educator, executive and foundation president.