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8 April 2022

Deterring China: A Victory Denial Strategy

Keith B. Payne and Matthew R. Costlow

The United States faces a deterrence challenge wholly unlike those of the Cold War—how to deter China, as a great power, from invading Taiwan. The United States and its allies confront a leadership in Beijing that has staked its legitimacy, to a large extent, on nationalism and the related promise of incorporating Taiwan into the political structure of the mainland.[1] The CCP leadership perceives this as an existential goal and failure to achieve unification as an existential threat. Correspondingly, China has worked for decades to shift the local balance of immediately-available military power for this purpose in its favor. Taiwan is significantly less militarily capable than China; its main ally, the United States, is geographically distant, and the extent of its deterrence commitment to Taiwan is intentionally ambiguous. Similarly, most U.S. allies in the region face the same problems of geographic distance and political sensitivities of interacting with Taiwan on defense issues. Finally, China’s prospective aggression would likely be met by an “international community”—much of which is heavily dependent economically on trade with China. Under these circumstances, the United States may be able to deter China from deciding to resolve the Taiwan Question forcefully, but the challenge is severe.

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