The recurring tension over Taiwan is often described as a clash of policies, alliances, red lines or historical claims. But at a structural level it behaves more like a maintained gradient in a communicative field. Large national identities do not simply persist by consensus or memory. They require articulated vectors – directions of tension that organise attention, loyalty and narrative coherence. These vectors simplify reality because complexity diffuses energy, while a bounded opposition focuses it. Taiwan becomes less a territory than a locus where multiple identity-fields intersect and generate differential pressure. The same pattern appears elsewhere – Russia and Ukraine, Israel and Palestine, India and Pakistan, North and South Korea – not because these contexts are identical, but because the dynamics are homologous. Each pair sustains a structured distance: a permanent gap between what is claimed and what can actually be achieved, between control and uncertainty, unity and fragmentation. That gap is the engine. It preserves internal coherence, justifies mobilisation, and allows each system to rehearse and reaffirm its self-image without ever fully resolving the relation. When that gap is closed, when tension hardens into kinetic action, the semiotic engine collapses. Political capital burns. Narrative coherence disintegrates. The very structure that sustained legitimacy destroys itself (Asia Society Center 2022; International Crisis Group 2023; OCHA 2023; Bose 2003; Chari et al. 2007; Kapur 2007; Snyder 2018; World Bank et al. 2023; IISS 2023).
In field terms, these situations persist because the unresolved gap is never meant to close. It is the system’s permanent misalignment – the difference it cannot resolve without dissolving itself. This structured difference is what gives national narratives momentum, traction and continuity. Remove it and identity collapses because there is no longer anything to orient around. Complete unification, total domination or final resolution would erase the tension that made the story coherent in the first place. This is why rhetoric across Taiwan, Ukraine, Gaza, Kashmir and the Korean Peninsula circulates endlessly at the edge of action, rehearsing conflict without consummating it. The enigma is not a flaw to be corrected. It is the condition of persistence. And this is not unique to geopolitics. All communication systems – ideologies, institutions, shared cultural myths – survive by orbiting what they cannot fully integrate. They exist above and before the meanings we assign to them. Language arrives later as interpretation. We describe the pattern, then confuse that description for its source. But the source is the field itself: a structured imbalance that must remain unclosed, because closure would be indistinguishable from disappearance.
Extended Annotated References
Taiwan Strait
Asia Society Center (2022) Avoiding War Over Taiwan. Asia Society Center on U.S.–China Relations, New York.
• Summary: Policy report assessing the strategic and economic consequences of a major conflict over Taiwan and outlining deterrence and crisis-management mechanisms to avoid war.
• Relevance: Supports the argument that the Taiwan stand-off operates as a managed tension gradient where escalation would destroy accumulated strategic and economic stability.
International Crisis Group (2023) Preventing War in the Taiwan Strait. Asia Report No. 333, International Crisis Group, Brussels.
• Summary: In-depth analysis of cross-Strait tensions, signalling risks and de-escalatory policy options.
• Relevance: Reinforces that the Taiwan issue functions as a maintained gap rather than a problem designed to be conclusively solved.
Israel–Palestine / Gaza
UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) (2023) Humanitarian Needs Overview 2023: Occupied Palestinian Territory. United Nations, New York/Geneva.
• Summary: Provides comprehensive assessment of humanitarian conditions in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including Gaza, detailing damage to infrastructure, livelihoods and civilian life.
• Relevance: Demonstrates how repeated escalations destroy the social and material substrate that political narratives rely upon, illustrating the self-consuming nature of kinetic “resolution”.
India–Pakistan / Kashmir
Bose, S. (2003) Kashmir: Roots of Conflict, Paths to Peace. Harvard University Press, Cambridge MA.
• Summary: Traces the historical origins, political structures and social consequences of the Kashmir conflict.
• Relevance: Shows how Kashmir functions as a long-standing structural gap embedded in rival national identities.
Chari, P. R., Cheema, P. I. & Cohen, S. P. (2007) Four Crises and a Peace Process: American Engagement in South Asia. Brookings Institution Press, Washington DC.
• Summary: Analyses four major Indo-Pakistani crises and the cycle of escalation and de-escalation.
• Relevance: Documents how this rivalry is organised around crisis management rather than definitive resolution.
Kapur, P. S. (2007) Dangerous Deterrence: Nuclear Weapons Proliferation and Conflict in South Asia. Stanford University Press, Stanford CA.
• Summary: Argues that nuclear weapons have created a condition of deterrence that stabilises confrontation while increasing long-term systemic risk.
• Relevance: Supports the claim that nuclearised rivalries stabilise tension rather than remove it.
Korean Peninsula
Snyder, S. A. (2018) South Korea at the Crossroads: Autonomy and Alliance in an Era of Rival Powers. Columbia University Press, New York.
• Summary: Examines South Korea’s strategic position between great powers and the unresolved division of the peninsula.
• Relevance: Frames the Korean Peninsula as a persistent tension field where identity and security are sustained through misalignment.
International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) (2023) The Military Balance 2023. Routledge for IISS, London.
• Summary: Annual strategic assessment including detailed analysis of North Korea’s nuclear and missile capabilities and regional military balances.
• Relevance: Provides a verified account of North Korea’s weapons development as part of a deterrence and signalling system sustaining long-term strategic tension.
Russia–Ukraine War
World Bank, Government of Ukraine, European Commission & United Nations (2023) Ukraine: Rapid Damage and Needs Assessment (RDNA3). World Bank Group, Washington DC.
• Summary: Comprehensive assessment of economic, infrastructural and social damage caused by the Russia–Ukraine war up to 2023.
• Relevance: Demonstrates how full-scale war consumes economic and social capacity, undermining the durable conditions that previously sustained political narratives and state functions.
Systemic and Theoretical Foundations
Luhmann, N. (1995) Social Systems. Stanford University Press, Stanford CA.
• Summary: Develops a theory of society as composed of self-referential communication systems that reproduce themselves through maintained distinctions.
• Relevance: Provides the theoretical foundation for interpreting geopolitical systems as self-reproducing through unresolved differences.
Tilly, C. (1985) ‘War Making and State Making as Organized Crime’, in Evans, P. B., Rueschemeyer, D. & Skocpol, T. (eds) Bringing the State Back In, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
• Summary: Argues that modern states historically formed through organised violence, resource extraction and threat management.
• Relevance: Grounds the idea that states reproduce themselves through the controlled management of threats and insecurities rather than their resolution.
Daedelus Kite 