Debating US’ approach to Taiwan

THE PEOPLE OF Taiwan recently received confirmation of the strength of American support for their security. Of four foreign aid bills that Congress passed and President Biden signed in April, the bill legislating additional support for Taiwan garnered the most votes. Three hundred eighty-five members of the House of Representatives voted to provide foreign military financing to Taiwan versus only 34 against. More members of Congress voted to support Taiwan than Ukraine, Israel, or banning TikTok. There was scant debate over whether the United States should provide greater support for Taiwan. It was understood and broadly accepted that doing so served America’s strategic interests.

There also has been very little debate on American support for Taiwan in America’s presidential election. This is even though many American commentators are expressing rising anxiety about the risk of conflict in the Taiwan Strait during the next four years. Instead, the public’s attention has been consumed by President Trump’s legal troubles, in addition to immigration, inflation, abortion, crime, Ukraine, and Israel.

Outside the bright lights of the presidential election, though, a policy debate is brewing in the United States over how best to support Taiwan. This debate is mostly occurring in America’s policy community, as well as in pockets of the US Congress.

To help bring these competing views into conversation with each other, the Brookings Institution, where I work, recently convened a debate on whether the United States should change its policies toward Taiwan. The debate occurred both in writing and in person at the University of Minnesota.

On one end of the debate, Ivan Kanapathy, a former White House’s National Security Council director for China, Taiwan and Mongolia as well as deputy senior director for Asian affairs from 2018-2021, argued that “to maintain peace, Washington must invest more in hard deterrence.” He suggested that America’s and Taiwan’s military advantage over China has been the primary protector of peace in the Taiwan Strait for decades.

From this vantage, China’s surge in military capabilities in recent years has called into question whether the United States and Taiwan would prevail in a cross-Strait conflict. Kanapathy warned that uncertainty about military outcomes invites instability. The more uncertain the outcome, the more tempted China would be to test Taiwan’s defenses. The solution, according to this logic, is to re-establish overmatch in military capabilities so that China remains aware of its inferiority and is deterred from using force to impose its will on the people of Taiwan.

Not so fast, argued Brookings military expert Michael O’Hanlon. O’Hanlon shared findings from his modeling of conflict scenarios in the Taiwan Strait. He said if there is a conflict, neither side could have confidence about who would prevail. The same is true for various blockade scenarios.

O’Hanlon assessed that any Chinese attempt at an amphibious invasion would be a dangerous gamble for Beijing. Allied forces in World War II barely prevailed in their invasion of Normandy, even though the

English Channel was one-third the width of the Taiwan Strait and precision munitions and sensor technology had not yet been invented.

O’Hanlon is far from sanguine about the risk of conflict in the Taiwan Strait. Yet, he did not subscribe to a view that deterrence could be achieved through a mathematical calculation of relative military capabilities. In addition to strengthening military capabilities, O’Hanlon also argued for Washington to make it “unambiguously clear to Beijing that, were it ever to attack Taiwan in a concerted attempt to coerce capitulation and reunification, the US-China relationship could never be the same.” He suggested China “should have no illusions that the rich, broad, mutually beneficial relationship that it built with the United States over several decades could survive such a scenario.”

Rorry Daniels, Asia Society Policy Institute managing director, warned against reducing Taiwan to a military problem with a military solution. She cautioned that such an approach risked “creating a path dependence toward conflict.” Rather than forecasting impending and unavoidable conflict, Daniels believed America’s generally consistent approach to cross-Strait issues had enabled a stable status quo to emerge in the Taiwan Strait — “one of no unification, no independence, and no use of force” — while protecting space for Taiwan to exercise considerable political, social, and economic autonomy.

Daniels advocated for the United States to remain neutral on the settlement of questions of Taiwan’s sovereignty. The more Washington leans into a preference for Taiwan independence, she warned, the more China’s threat of force against Taiwan would increase. A more productive way for Washington to support Taiwan’s security, in Daniels’ view, is to help

Taiwan deepen and strengthen its linkages with the rest of the international community. This would raise the cost and risk to China for breaking the peace. Ultimately, Daniels believes this approach would support America’s objective of peace and stability while also aligning with the wishes of Taiwan’s people for dignity, a durable status quo, and political autonomy.

For his part, Thomas Hanson, a former Foreign Service officer who is now diplomat-in-residence at the University of Minnesota Duluth, observed that China is overwhelmed at home with mounting domestic challenges. Additionally, the US-China relationship is under stress. In this context, Hanson argued, the most prudent course for America is active diplomacy with China to shrink space for miscalculation and avoid sleepwalking into war in the Taiwan Strait.

After watching this debate, I found the idea of America reestablishing military overmatch vis-a-vis China alluring but unrealistic. America does not have fiscal space to dramatically expand military expenditures. It also is not about to abandon its global presence and reduce itself to a regional power in Asia. Neither of America’s 2024 presidential candidates nor political parties support such an approach.

This means that a more comprehensive approach for preserving the peace and influencing China’s choices will be needed. Getting this strategy right will require frequent, close coordination and mutually reinforcing efforts by Washington and Taipei.

This will not be easy, but it sure beats the alternative.

Ryan Hass is a senior fellow, the Chen-Fu and Cecilia Yen Koo Chair in Taiwan Studies, and the Director of the China Center at the Brookings Institution.