Time to support Taiwan and Japan

An historical analogy which should not be overlooked is the campaign of Five States' Multilateral Recognition (Wu Guo Xiang Wang, or Xi Shou Li Wu Wang) during the Warring States period (Zhan Guo Shi Dai) in ancient China .

Before China was unified for the first time by Qin's expansionism in the 3rd Centuries BC, there were dozens of states across the territory of modern China. How to team up against Qin's expansion was a question that puzzled strategists across centuries during the Warring States period.

Although the Six States (Wei, Han, Yan, Zhao, Qi, Chu) had teamed up against Qin and signed a treaty to form an alliance in 333 BC, it took one year only for Qin to plant enough doubts among the Six States to dismantle the alliance. Qin won a battle against Wei soon after that.

No state helped Wei. However even though the Six States were not loyal to the Alliance, they were aware that they actually needed it to survive the Qin's expansionism because not a single state could by itself deal with the Qin's mighty military threat.

They badly needed a breakthrough to revive the alliance.

Eventually, Gong Sun Yan (aka Xi Shou), one of the best strategists of all time in Chinese history, launched the international campaign Five States' Multilateral Recognition to eliminate the doubt among states and improve solidarity.

In the campaign, Gong Sun Yan persuaded the leaders of five states (Wei, Han, Yan, Zhao, and Zhongshan) to mutually recognise each other's kingship status. He managed to achieve some success because the five states' leaders were hardly willing to lose their kingship status to be downgraded to lords again. They shared a sense of reality which trumped their doubts about each other.

Today's situation in the Indo-Pacific under the increasing threats from China resembles the confrontation between Qin and the other states during the Warring States period.

Taiwan and Japan are critical first island chain countries on the frontline facing China's outward expansionism.

The Five States' Multilateral Recognition campaign 24 centuries ago has left a playbook for the democracies to scrutinise and evaluate.

The democracies need an urgent public debate to determine whether to find unity by recognizing Taiwan as a sovereign nation and helping Japan regain defence normalcy.