Taiwan is holding presidential elections this week, and viewed from the United States it almost seems as if Ralph Nader has moved to the island.

For Americans, the Taiwanese vote is not merely an interesting, distant piece of news. China remains fixated, even obsessed, with the island, determined to take it back one day. And while the United States is not obligated to fight on behalf of the Taiwanese, successive administrations for half a century have made it clear they would not tolerate a Chinese attack on Taiwan.

Which brings us to Saturday’s election. The incumbent party, the Kuomintang, or KMT, advocates peaceful interactions with China, and during President Ma Ying-jeou’s four-year term relations with China have steadily improved. But the opposition Democratic Progressive Party, or DPP, advocates formal independence rather than the deliberate ambiguity that prevails now. Beijing simply will not tolerate that.

At the height of the campaign, Hu Jintao, the Chinese president, declared once again that “achieving re-unification” remains China’s single-minded goal, adding: “We must strengthen our opposition to Taiwanese independence.”

Taiwan is among the strongest democracies in Asia ― in sharp contrast to China, an unforgiving totalitarian state. When Taiwan held its first two-party election in 1996, the Chinese navy held aggressive war games just off its coast, prompting the United States to send warships of its own into the Taiwan Strait.

A DPP politician held the presidency during the 2000s, and relations with China sank to levels that seemed headed for conflict. (That former president is in prison now, convicted of corruption.)

As the 2012 campaign began in earnest last year, President Ma consistently led most polls over his DPP opponent. But then, in November, James Soong, leader of the People’ First Party, an offshoot of the KMT, announced he would run as a third-party candidate ― just as Ralph Nader did in 2000.

Who can forget the final results of Nader’s campaign? He had no chance to win, but Nader did accrue about 100,000 votes in Florida ― more than enough to deny Al Gore a victory in that pivotal state. That allowed the Supreme Court to hand George W. Bush the presidency. From that moment on, Nader has been branded with the moniker: “The Spoiler.”

In Taiwan right now, Ma and his DPP opponent, Tsai Ing-wen, are locked in a dead heat ― because of Soong. Some polls show Tsai ahead by a percentage point or two, others barely favor Ma. Fewer than 10 percent of those surveyed say they favor Soong, with nearly all of that support taken from Ma, just like Nader and Gore in 2000.

Ma promotes peaceful relations with China. But Tsai likes to declaim: “When Chinese visitors come, we have to put our flags away.”

Washington professes neutrality in the race but has worked to boost Ma’s candidacy ― without wanting to be obvious about it. The State Department has begun talking about offering Taiwanese visa-free travel to the U.S., a privilege many Taiwanese would love to have. In fact, attending college in the U.S. is an important status symbol for islanders. Ma studied at Harvard, Tsai at Cornell.

Ma touted the visa offer as an important indication of his strong relations with Washington. But the Taipei Times, which supports Tsai, opined: “Foolhardy or malicious, inadvertent or by design, the U.S. has taken sides” in the election. And with good reason.

Visiting the region in November, President Obama made a strong show of support for Asian democracies and promised to continue serving as the military counterpoint to China in the Pacific. But should China once again choose to send warships into the Taiwan Strait after the elections, the U.S. Navy might think twice before dispatching ships of its own.

China has developed and deployed an aircraft-carrier killer missile capable of striking warships almost 2,000 miles away, and the U.S. has no reliable defense because the DF-21D comes down toward its target at an angle that makes it difficult for anti-missile defenses to take it out. Military analysts say with certainty that the new missile has no conceivable purpose except to challenge U.S. naval dominance of the region.

China is watching the election closely; candidate debates are streamed live to the mainland. And several Taiwanese told me that China tried its best to persuade Soong to drop out of the race.

It didn’t work. Now, if Tsai wins and the situation devolves into conflict, as so many people fear, one man will hold the lion’s share of blame: James Spoiler-Soong.

By Joel Brinkley

Joel Brinkley, a professor of journalism at Stanford University, is a Pulitzer Prize-winning former foreign correspondent for the New York Times. ― Ed.

(Tribune Media Services)