Washington Should Deter an Attack on Taiwan

It might not be easy, but it’s better than a full-scale war.

Oct 8, 2021

On Thursday it was reported that two dozen U.S. special operations forces have been on the ground in Taiwan for the past year providing training to Taiwan’s forces. This comes after a week of intense Chinese military threats against the island, including more than 100 sorties from Chinese warplanes into Taiwan’s air defense identification zone. The security situation has deteriorated to the point that Taiwan’s foreign minister asked Australia for help as it prepares for a possible war with China. As the dangers of war over Taiwan grows, it is essential that Washington and its allies work together to deter a Chinese attack on this vulnerable island democracy.

The risk of a war over Taiwan is real. China has the intent—and it is working on building the capabilities—to retake the island. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) takes an unreasonably expansive view of its territory, believing that any land previously controlled by Beijing needs to be taken back. From Beijing’s point of view, therefore, Taiwan is a renegade province, and it has been clear that it will use military force if necessary to reclaim it. Chairman Xi Jinping has not been shy about articulating this goal. Earlier this year, he said that “Solving the Taiwan question and realizing the complete reunification of the motherland are the unswerving historical tasks of the Chinese Communist Party and the common aspiration of all Chinese people.”

This is not a bluff. China is investing in military capabilities, like amphibious warships, tailor-made for a Taiwan invasion. Adm. Philip Davidson, who served as head of U.S. Indo-Pacific Command until earlier this year, predicted that China will try to invade Taiwan within “the next six years.”

A successful CCP invasion of Taiwan would be a disaster. Taiwan, a longstanding U.S. partner and thriving democracy, would lose its freedom. The episode would set the precedent that China can gobble up its neighbors by military force with impunity. Other countries would see China as ascendant and question the ability and willingness of the United States to play its traditional international leadership role. And China would possess a new military base of operations on Taiwan that would allow it to more easily project power against other U.S. treaty allies with which it also has territorial and maritime disputes, including Japan and the Philippines.

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Ben Connelly 1 year ago

Taiwan is one of the biggest factors in whether or not WWIII occurs. We have two options: 1. Give Taiwan to China, tell China that they can just take it and that we will do nothing to protect it. 2. Make it abundantly clear that taking Taiwan is off limits. We should establish a permanent troop presence on Taiwan (like a Rammstein AFB). We should station part of the 7th fleet very close by. And we should increase partnership with Taiwan and fully recognize it as a country.

Obviously, I lean towards the second option. Rather than provoke war, I think it would deter war. At a relatively low cost - a small troop presence would have huge leverage in demonstrated commitment. A good friend of mine is from Taiwan and his parents could be killed if China invaded it. And he would likely be drafted to go back and fight and die as well. If we put a base on Taiwan, there will be no war. If we choose option 1, I still think it will make war more likely.

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The Stray Goose 1 year ago

The authors fail to mention the effect of the United State's failure in Afghanistan (both the war and the Biden Admin's disastrous retreat) in Xi's calculus to attempt to retake Taiwan. That should have been part of the discussion.

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Richard Gale 1 year ago

I was about to write the same thing, then I read your comment. A blunder like Afghanistan only invites more war.

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DougAz 1 year ago

30.387701 by 126.009479

Because almost everyone here has absolutely no frigging idea what a thermonuclear hydrogen bomb will do, the above coordinates are generally in between China, Taiwan, South and North Korea.

Let's have a couple of demonstration H-bombs there and then see who all wants war.

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MarqueG68 1 year ago

The nukes scare the bejeepers out of me, too. But right now, through inattention, we're not doing much of anything to address the PRC's one-sided offensive nuclear buildup.

MAD played a role in maintaining stability during the Cold War, but it relied on rough parity. Indications are that the PRC is striving for absolute superiority.

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Patrick Phillips 1 year ago

I would be interested to learn about the pros and cons of helping Taiwan build a stockpile of strategic and tactical nuclear weapons that could effectively deter a CCP invasion of the island. Angelo M. Codevilla wrote an interesting piece for the Hoover Institution back on June 30 regarding this topic — and it was very much in favor of a nuclear deterrent for Taiwan.

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Narwhal 1 year ago

Yes, let’s destabilize the region even more. Great idea!

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DougAz 1 year ago

Above, I recommend that China and the US drop 2 thermonuclear Hydrogen demonnstration bombs in the China sea, so a couple billion people can take a look see. Get a ticket, because you have absolutely no idea what you are recommending.

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Harry Paget 1 year ago

I’m not sure what your point is. Nuclear deterrence has been part of the geopolitical landscape for generations. People are recommending using our nuclear deterrent to deter Chinese aggression. So-called extended deterrence, where we provide nuclear weapons to allies, like we’ve done with our NATO allies to deter Russian aggression, can be a part of that. The power and destructiveness of nuclear weapons, which I take it you think people don’t understand, is what makes them such a powerful deterrent and, indeed, a tool for peace.

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DougAz 1 year ago

I completely disagree.
We never used Nuclear weapons as a deterrent factor in the Korean War, Vietnam War or Gulf War.

One can hope that China has the same reverence for it's soil that the Russians has all along...as the ultimate deterrent to using nuclear weapons.

Anyone thinking that tactical nuclear weapons are a deterrent in any China-Taiwan war, are naive and out of their minds.

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David Stein 1 year ago

This article (and the resulting discussion) is focused on a full-scale war. While possible, that is not the PRC's best move and therefore is not in my view the most likely eventuality. The PRC is in a position to easily degrade or destroy Taiwan's economy with a minimum of violence and possibly no violence at all. For example, they could declare a maritime exclusion zone around the island and threaten to sink any commercial ship that enters the zone. This would make it impossible to get insurance and therefore would most likely stop all commercial shipping in and out of Taiwan even if the PRC never fires a shot. Even if we were to begin escorting ships ourselves the shipping costs and delays would skyrocket doing very severe damage to Taiwan's economy. If this is not sufficient, they could go further and declare missile test zones in the approaches to Taiwan's ports and start randomly firing missiles into those areas. In this case shots are fired but nothing is hit unless it ignores the warnings (which commercial ship owners are very unlikely to risk doing). If they desire, the PRC could keep such a posture up pretty much forever while the Taiwanese grow increasingly poor, cold and hungry.

The bottom line is that while there might be military measures that would have the possibility to deter a full-scale invasion and annexation of Taiwan by the PRC, there is nothing that realistic military measures can do to deter the PRC from exerting crippling pressure on Taiwan up to and including destroying their economy. Any measures to deter this would have to be political or economic, not military. And the more we disengage from each other economically and politically, the less leverage we have to deploy such measures to deter actions by the PRC.

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