‘Defending Taiwan’ and the Limits of Military-Only Deterrence

In the spring of 2007, just as China’s People’s Liberation Army was on the cusp of accelerating its development, President George W. Bush spoke at the United States Naval War College to promote a surge of U.S. military forces to Iraq from other parts of the world, including East Asia. President Bush was asked whether depleting U.S. forces in Asia would weaken the nation’s regional military posture and eventually leave the United States unable to effectively guarantee East Asia’s stability. It did. And in the years that followed, successive administrations compounded the problem. The U.S. spent more than $8 trillion on the post-9/11 conflicts in Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere in the Middle East, rather than modernizing its forces to meet China’s challenge. Today, the United States continues to spend tens of billions of dollars in the conflict with Iran that could be invested instead in modernizing its military forces and industrial base to deter conflict across the Taiwan Strait. The result, Eyck Freymann concludes in his new book, “Defending Taiwan,” is that the U.S. military forces necessary to provide stability in East Asia have indeed fallen behind China’s. In response, Freymann argues that the United States needs a more coherent strategy to prevent war.

The main theme of “Defending Taiwan” is that since the current balance of military power is insufficient to deter Chinese use of force or coercion against Taiwan, effective deterrence will require an integrated strategy linking political and economic components to traditional military ones. Failing the development of an integrated political-military-economic deterrence strategy, Freymann contends, “China’s economic deterrent against the United States could prove more effective than the U.S. economic deterrent against China.” The most important contributions of “Defending Taiwan” lie in Freymann’s articulation of how the political and economic instruments of national power might be brought to bear to augment military deterrence and prevent China’s conquest of Taiwan. His ideas are creative, if inchoate and open to challenge. But they make a valuable contribution to the national discussion about how to deal with what could be the 21st century’s single most dangerous crisis.

“Defending Taiwan” begins with Freymann’s view of China’s strategic objectives and a few scenarios the Chinese government might employ to bring Taiwan to heel. In these sections, Freymann sides with those in the wider debate who view advancing Chinese power as a threat not just to Taiwan’s separate status but also to regional and global security. To impress upon the reader the seriousness of the situation, Freymann lays out a series of debatable (and debated) assumptions and observations. These include his views that Taiwan’s separate status from the Chinese mainland is vital to American interests and that there is “no way for America to escape catastrophic consequences should Taiwan fall.” He asserts that if China gains control of Taiwan the key economies in East Asia would come under China’s hegemonic sway, which would lead to a collapse of the regional order, the destruction of international trade, and, ultimately, loss of security for the Western Hemisphere and the American homeland. In “Defending Taiwan,” Freymann stakes out positions on these issues without sufficiently supporting them, which will unnecessarily alienate some readers from taking seriously his more well-developed recommendations about how to deter war with China.

The book hits its stride halfway through with five chapters outlining what Freymann refers to as “the four pillars of deterrence.” Conventional and strategic military deterrence are two of Freymann’s four pillars. He describes the many ways in which U.S. conventional military deterrence has seriously eroded over the past two decades, which is fairly well-trod ground in the related literature. But Freymann’s purpose in recounting these deficiencies seems to be to justify the innovations he suggests are necessary in the political and economic elements of national power to continue to deter a crisis over Taiwan.

In terms of conventional military deterrence, Freymann emphasizes addressing American industrial shortfalls in missile production, advancing preparation of the battlespace for improved logistics support in a prolonged conflict, dealing with the communication and resupply challenges of implementing distributed maritime operations, and dramatically increasing production of smaller, cheaper unmanned aerial systems. These are no small challenges, but all are hard to argue with. Freymann further, and rightly, laments that the U.S. procurement process is optimized for peacetime risk aversion and must be unshackled to speed the services’ ability to rapidly expand their capabilities, since China is building its military-industrial capacity at an unprecedented rate and scale and focusing on American operational weaknesses. He suggests allied industrial capacity could be tapped to increase the speed of modernization and expansion of U.S. capabilities—especially to help build the many thousands of aerial drones and related systems that will be needed. Similarly, he sees addressing submarine production and repair capacity, ensuring the resilience of our space systems, and developing a credible plan to resupply Taiwan in a crisis as critical to any future U.S. conventional military deterrent.

Freymann also believes strategic stability is weakening. Chinese doctrine, he asserts, treats strategic deterrence as inseparable from conventional conflict. In his view, Chinese strategic thought treats strategic deterrence as part of a continuum extending from peacetime coercion to full-scale nuclear war and, he assesses, China has developed capacities at each level to stymie American intervention. For instance, China’s nuclear force, Freymann observes, possessed just 100 warheads a decade ago and is expected to surpass 1,000 warheads by 2030 and reach 1,500 by 2035. He calculates China’s buildup of its nuclear arsenal has moved well beyond its former minimal deterrent strategy to a flexible and dynamic nuclear posture revealing a desire for escalation dominance in a potential limited nuclear conflict.

Meanwhile, Freymann criticizes the U.S. force structure as lacking the diverse arsenal of ground-launched, intermediate-range, nuclear-capable missiles necessary to meet China at each step of the escalation ladder. He lays out the ways in which Beijing is developing a range of other cross-domain strategic threats, including coast guard and maritime militia forces, cyber capabilities, containerized missiles, and artificial intelligence capabilities with the aim of providing flexibility in its strategic deterrence toolbox. He observes that Washington’s military modernization must include preparations for both nuclear brinkmanship and various flexible deterrence capabilities below the nuclear level to keep China deterred at each step of the escalation ladder.

The strongest contributions of “Defending Taiwan” are Freymann’s innovations as to how political and economic deterrence might remedy some of the deficiencies of military deterrence, at least while the United States revamps and modernizes its armed forces. That said, these contributions will be some of the book’s most controversial aspects.

Freymann argues, for instance, that political deterrence requires reconsideration of American political commitments to China regarding Taiwan. He bases this on the belief that credible military strength is the necessary foundation for diplomacy to succeed and, since American military power alone is not currently sufficient to provide a credible deterrent, the traditional political policy of ambiguity about what the U.S. would do in a Taiwan Strait crisis is no longer fit for purpose. Freymann does not go as far as those who have called for an outright change of policy, but argues “structured ambiguity” would be a better approach. Under structured ambiguity, U.S. policy would remain unchanged as long as Beijing refrains from precipitating a cross-strait crisis. But if a crisis threatens, U.S. leaders should threaten to reconsider the traditional policy of ambiguity by communicating that “any offensive move against Taiwan would be a flagrant violation of the Three Communiqués” that may require the president “to reevaluate the One China Policy at a fundamental level.” Structured ambiguity, Freymann argues, could also involve threats to engage in deeper military cooperation with Taiwan, strengthened diplomatic ties, or a reassessment of the status of U.S.-Taiwan relations. At the same time, Freymann insists Washington must privately and consistently remind Taiwan’s leaders that the United States strongly opposes any unilateral change precipitated by Taipei. He leaves unexplained, however, how threatening Beijing with upgraded relations with Taiwan and encouraging increased global support for Taipei’s autonomy might not push leaders on both sides of the strait toward the very crisis Washington seeks to avoid.

Woven together with aspects of political deterrence is Freymann’s fourth pillar: economic deterrence. Freymann’s plan for an economic contribution to deterrence involves an affirmative economic crisis response plan to sanction China without entirely shutting down global supply chains on day one of a crisis. He argues that Trump’s tariff war has revealed that while the United States and its allies are economically unprepared for a sudden rupture with China, China’s export-driven economy nonetheless makes it extremely vulnerable to a sensible decoupling plan. Accordingly, the United States requires “an affirmative strategy that promotes allied economic resilience while steadily constraining China’s room to maneuver.” To make this palatable, or even possible, Freymann recommends establishing an Economic Security Cooperation Board (ESCB) with membership open to all except Russia, North Korea, Iran, and China. The purpose of the ESCB would be to help its member countries manage the economic fallout of a crisis with China. He proposes that it be established first by the United States and its core allies—Freymann lists these as the United Kingdom, Japan, Canada, and Australia—to provide aid and economic support to member states and support the enforcement of national trade policies against nonmembers. Other states would be invited to join to take advantage of the ESCB’s support for their resilience during what Freymann calls the “avalanche decoupling” that would follow a China-provoked cross-strait crisis.

In some ways, much of “Defending Taiwan” is a long wind-up to its presentation of the concept of avalanche decoupling, which is a plan to cause no more economic disruption on day one of a cross-strait crisis than necessary, but to accelerate international decoupling momentum over time. The idea is to target China’s vulnerable export manufacturing base to deter China from initiating a crisis or to isolate and punish it after the fact. Freymann believes the combination of international cooperation through the ESCB plus policies of avalanche decoupling would lead to the establishment of a new, postcrisis, American-led international trading system that respects all countries’ need to balance their vital national interests with the benefits of members’ market integration.

In addition to providing time for ESCB states to reshore manufacturing from China, the plan would prioritize maintaining dollar hegemony, incentivize states to join by providing economic support, and enforce anti-China trade policies. Ideally, Freymann argues, the United States and its core allies should establish the ESCB now, before a Taiwan crisis occurs, to signal to friends that they have a plan to manage decoupling and to China that they have a plan with international backing to flexibly and decisively respond if Beijing crosses red lines. Ultimately, Freymann argues, the aim of avalanche decoupling would be to demonstrate to Xi Jinping that he cannot achieve “reunification” with Taiwan without jeopardizing the Chinese Communist Party’s broader ambitions.

These ideas are creative additions to the wider debate about how to perpetuate Taiwan’s separate status despite the growing military imbalance in East Asia. Nonetheless, astute readers will be left with questions. Is it too late for America to deter China, for instance? Freymann paints a bleak picture of intense Chinese resolve and declining American military advantage. How many states, including allies, would even be willing to decouple their economies from China’s, given the economic pain and domestic political fallout they would have to endure? Are there sufficient states committed to a separate status for Taiwan to make the plan work? Perhaps more importantly, might such a forward-leaning economic and political strategy precipitate or accelerate the very crisis it was meant to deter?

If U.S. leaders begin building a postcrisis architecture for an international system that marginalizes or ostracizes China, rather than deterring it from taking action, it might instead incentivize China to accelerate its plans to bring Taiwan under its control. Lastly, the book’s title is “Defending Taiwan.” But what exactly does defending Taiwan mean? Taipei controls island groups near the mainland coastline, each of which is uncontested Chinese territory, and an island in the Spratlys that is contested by several states. To defend Taiwan island is one matter. To defend territory that abuts the mainland and is clearly Chinese, or an islet in the South China Sea that is disputed by several states, is quite another.

Despite these questions, “Defending Taiwan” represents a useful contribution to the national conversation about how to deal with the most significant strategic challenge of our time. Its central ideas will need to be debated and discussed and further developed and integrated, but perhaps Freymann’s most significant contribution will be to spark a deeper national conversation about how to deal with China’s growing power and the future of American interests in East Asia.