Deterrence or War in the Taiwan Strait?

Three interesting, and potentially explosive, developments occurred as February came to a close: Taiwan (ROC) finally answered the PRC’s gray-zone attacks by intercepting and detaining the Chinese crew of a Togo-flagged cargo ship, after the ship severed undersea fiber-optic cables connecting Taiwan with the world. Two days earlier, a U.S. general was spotted participating in a table-top military exercise in Taiwan, alongside Taiwan’s defense minister and top military officers. And two days before that, Taiwan leaked photos of ROC fighter-jets testing a new anti-ship missile.

In short, it seems the U.S. and ROC are signaling Beijing.

PRC
Make no mistake: These signals are a response to PRC provocations.

PRC dictator Xi Jinping has declared that democratic Taiwan “must and will be” absorbed and has ordered his military to be ready to take Taiwan by 2027. “We make no promise to abandon the use of force,” he warns. “Complete reunification of the motherland…will definitely be fulfilled.”

Xi’s words are deeply problematic. Taiwan has never been ruled by the PRC, so “reunification” is inaccurate. Xi is misusing the word in an effort to legitimize plans to seize Taiwan and delegitimize
Taiwan’s sovereignty. While Xi considers Taiwan the PRC’s 34th province, a scant 1.1 percent of Taiwanese support unification.

As to Xi’s actions: PRC wargames in mid-2024 blocked the northwest, southwest, southeast and east approaches to Taiwan. PRC wargames in October 2024 simulated a blockade. In December 2024, the PRC deployed 90 warships around Taiwan. On a single day last November, the PRC surged 152 vessels into the waters around Taiwan. INDOPACOM commander Adm. Samuel Paparo ominously called it “the largest rehearsal we’ve seen.”

“Rehearsal” is a telling and apt term. PRC exercises around Taiwan are so large and so complex that they could be used as a springboard for invasion, ROC officials concede, with Taipei unable to discern when an exercise has transitioned into an attack until it’s too late.

Add it all up, and it’s clear that Xi is “preparing for potential conflict in the Taiwan Strait,” as the Pentagon concludes. If such a conflict comes, it won’t be a fair fight. According to a Pentagon report

PRC assets based in the Taiwan Strait region include: 420,000 troops, 750 fighter-jets, 300 bombers, and 158 warships (including three amphibious assault ships and 50 landing ships). In addition, the PRC has more than 1,600 missiles opposite Taiwan, and the PRC is constructing a fleet of special barges at Guangzhou Shipyard in southern China. Naval News reports that the barges “are most likely for amphibious landings” and are similar to the Mulberry Harbors used during the invasion of Normandy.

Taiwan
“I deeply admire former President Ronald Reagan’s approach of peace through strength,” ROC President Lai Ching-te recently noted. “I will enhance reform of and bolster national defense, demonstrating to the world the Taiwanese people’s determination to defend our homeland.”

Lai’s words set the right tone, but Taiwan needs to invest more in its military to back up those words and thus deter Beijing. Taiwan, by way of comparison with Beijing’s buildup, has 89,000 troops total,
300 fighter-jets total, 123 warships total.

Even with recent increases, Taiwan is investing less than 2.5 percent of GDP in defense this year. Compare that to other nations in the crosshairs: Israel spends more than 5 percent of GDP on defense. Poland will invest 5 percent of GDP in defense this year. Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania all spend more than 3 percent of GDP on defense. Finland’s defense budget has jumped 82.5 percent since 2021. Japan will double defense spending by 2027.

Investing in deterrence is costly. But there’s something far more costly than deterring war: waging war. Consider Ukraine, which is diverting a quarter of its GDP to defense to wage a war of self-defense.

An estimated 100,000 Ukrainian civilians have been killed in Putin’s war, along with 80,000 Ukrainian military personnel.

If Taiwan wants to avoid that fate, it must invest more in deterrent military capabilities. Lai has unveiled plans to spend 3 percent of GDP on defense. President Donald Trump has called on Taiwan to divert 10 percent of GDP to defense—an enormous share of national wealth.

How and where Taiwan’s defense dollars are spent may be as important as how much is spent. What’s been termed “a porcupine defense”—one that would make an invasion so painful as to dissuade Xi from even attempting it—would focus on antiship missiles, mines capable of remote activation/deactivation, air and sea kamikaze-drones capable of swarm attacks, shoulder-launched antiaircraft missiles, VSTOL fighter-bombers capable of operating without runways, nondigital communications operable despite cyberattacks, a citizenry trained for small-unit operations. These are the kinds of countermeasures that would bleed Xi’s invasion force and make him contemplate whether the benefits of aggression would be worth the costs. That’s the essence of deterrence.

Taiwan recently revealed that it had received an undisclosed number of ATACMS missile systems from the U.S., which bring PRC coastal staging areas within range, as well as shorter-range HIMARS rocket-artillery systems. The U.S. also is sending Taiwan Switchblade kamikaze-drones, which have been used to great effect by Ukraine against invading Russian forces.

But Taiwan needs these sorts of countermeasures at scale—and needs them to start flowing now. As Mike Gallagher, former chair of the House Committee on the Chinese Communist Party, argues, “Surging hard power to the Indo-Pacific before the shooting starts and clearing the nearly $20 billion backlog of foreign military sales to Taiwan will give our friends confidence and our enemies pause.”

In other words, policymakers in Washington can help beef up Taiwan’s defenses rapidly by unclogging that long-delayed backlog in arms deliveries for Taiwan.

United States
That brings us to America’s role in preventing Xi from attacking Taiwan.

Americans need to understand that helping Taiwan deter Xi is in the national interest. The forcible takeover of Taiwan would trigger a cascade of terrible consequences, many of which would undermine U.S. interests.

In addition to the loss of life and liberty in Taiwan, a PRC assault on Taiwan would lead to the loss of much of the Free World’s capacity to produce advanced microchips, the expansion of Beijing’s geographic reach, and the collapse of the U.S. alliance system in the Indo-Pacific. If Americans think it’s expensive to prevent great-power war and promote prosperity with our transatlantic and transpacific alliances intact, wait until those alliances are gone.

These worrisome outcomes may explain why, during his first term, Trump dispatched a cabinet official to Taiwan (the highest-level U.S. government visit since 1979), allowed U.S. Navy vessels to dock in Taiwan in 2018 and 2019, and quietly deployed U.S. troops to the island to train ROC personnel. They also may explain why President Joe Biden let it be known that U.S. troops were on the island and even increased the number of troops in Taiwan. They also may explain why, on multiple occasions, Biden said the U.S. would defend Taiwan if attacked.

To their credit, the American people recognize the importance of keeping Taiwan secure and Xi in check: 65 percent of Americans support military assistance for Taiwan.

If deterrence fails, America’s military is preparing to respond. Paparo revealed plans in mid-2024 to “turn the Taiwan Strait into an unmanned hellscape” if the PRC were to lunge at Taiwan. The plan calls for “using a number of classified capabilities, so that I can make their lives utterly miserable for a month, which buys me the time for the rest of everything.” Paparo emphasized that the capabilities needed to execute his plan are “real” and “deliverable.”

In addition, U.S. and ROC warships recently conducted “unplanned” naval exercises. The exercises, which took place in the Western Pacific, lasted several days. Taiwan’s navy issued a statement saying, “The navy often makes contact with vessels of other countries and conducts encounter drills as needed.” The Pentagon declined to comment. Reuters noted that “Both sides claim the exercises were simply the result of coincidental encounters.”

There’s noting coincidental or accidental about U.S. and ROC warships rendezvousing in the Western Pacific.

Defended
If, as the late Henry Kissinger concluded, America and China are in “the foothills of a cold war,” then Taiwan should be viewed as this century’s West Berlin: a tiny island of freedom under threat from a communist behemoth.

Yes, Taiwan is relatively remote; yes, it’s in the crosshairs of a military juggernaut; yes, that juggernaut has conventional advantages in-theater. However, each of these factors applied in West Berlin, which President John Kennedy called “a defended island of freedom.” It remained free only because it was defended.

The same principle applies to the island democracy of Taiwan.