How not to prevent a war over Taiwan

As the Trump administration seeks to steady U.S. relations with China , the issue of Taiwan has once again made its way to the front pages.

Skeptics of a U.S.-China detente worry that any attempt to cozy up to Beijing will undermine hopes of maintaining Taipei’s independence. So what alternative approach would these China hawks provide? In the new book “ Defending Taiwan: A Strategy to Prevent War with China ,” Eyck Freymann of the Hoover Institution offers a comprehensive, if not altogether convincing, answer to this question.

Meticulously researched, boasting over 1,000 citations for fewer than 300 pages of prose, Freymann’s book draws together the political, military, strategic, and economic aspects of preventing various levels of Chinese aggression against Taiwan – up to and including a full invasion. Further, the book presents a variety of possible policy responses to deal with the range of scenarios that could follow if deterrence fails.

While Freymann’s work deserves plaudits for its ambitious scope and detail, including its treatment of the oft-neglected subject of potential nuclear exchanges, the book contains several serious flaws — flaws that are potentially all the more serious since the book is aimed directly at policymakers.

Before dissecting these worrisome errors, it is necessary to present Freymann’s arguments regarding why Americans should be willing to risk war with Beijing on behalf of Taipei, and what Freymann believes is the optimal policy prescription for preventing such a war in the first place.

Freymann writes at the outset that “Taiwan matters mainly for reasons relating to regional and global order” and argues that Washington has interests in “maintaining a free and open Indo-Pacific, protecting U.S. technological security through AI primacy, fostering regional alliances, preserving global geopolitical stability, and, to a significant but lesser extent, preserving Taiwan’s democracy.” In a new iteration of the Cold War-era domino theory, he argues that, “if the Indo-Pacific is not free and open, the Western Hemisphere and American homeland cannot be kept secure.”

Having defined Taiwan as a key component of American security, Freymann proceeds to lay out all the likely ways Beijing might try to pressure Taipei to join the mainland, from gray zone pressure to outright blockade or invasion. He then lays out all the possible U.S. responses, including a blockade of the Malacca Strait, sweeping economic sanctions, attacks on mainland China, or an effort to break through a Chinese blockade with force.

Freymann’s book starts from the point that preventing a war with China over Taiwan is the goal, so he spends relatively little time speculating on the outcomes of a horrifying and self-defeating conflict that neither side really wants. Instead, he largely focuses on explaining the various elements of political, military, and economic deterrence that he thinks are most likely to prevent Beijing taking steps that might lead to said conflict.

Freymann argues for building up a coalition of states to support Taiwan and develop joint military and economic responses to developments between China and Taiwan. One proposal is to pursue “structured ambiguity,” whereby Washington clearly communicates to Beijing how the coalition would respond to different kinds of gray zone efforts vis-a-vis Taiwan. On the sharper end is so-called “avalanche decoupling,” which Freymann recommends in the event of a Chinese attempt to seize Taiwan by blockade or invasion: the initially slow but gradually accelerating decoupling of Washington and its core coalition from Beijing.

Here, Freymann’s argument shows its first cracks. Noting that China is well positioned to withstand economic pressure from the U.S., and that Washington’s attempt to use sanctions and other forms of economic pressure have been largely counter-productive, Freymann outlines a rather outlandish plan whereby Washington would immediately form a new trade group sans China, whose central position in the global economy would gradually be eroded as its trading partners in Europe and South East Asia abandoned it for the new Economic Security Cooperation Board (ESCB). While better than a rapid push to war, this approach represents yet another highly unrealistic effort at decoupling. And even if the U.S. succeeded in creating the bloc, there is good reason to believe that trying to force China (along with Russia , Iran , and North Korea) out of the global economy would provoke hostilities with Beijing rather than deter them.

With regard to the errors that seriously detract from the book, the most worrying comes from the following paragraph:

“The United States would have a legal basis for escalating politically and militarily if China tries to seize indirect control over Taiwan. The Taiwan Relations Act states that ‘the United States shall maintain the capacity to resist any resort to force or other forms of coercion that would jeopardize the security, or the…