How the US should — and should not — respond to Chinese exercises in Taiwan’s waters

If the exercises, planned for Thursday through Saturday, do see the People’s Liberation Army enter or fire into Taiwan’s waters, it will mark a significant escalation by Beijing. China might even attempt to seize one or more smaller Taiwanese islands. This would force Taipei to choose between responding with force and risking escalation to possible war or suggesting that Taiwan lacks the resolve to defend its sovereignty.

Still, this kind of response was always likely following Pelosi’s visit. For Xi Jinping, Taiwan now carries both deeply personal and very important political significance. But where does this leave the United States?

A nominal ally, Taiwan has long relied on an unstated expectation of U.S. support in the event of a Chinese military attack. While the U.S. has no explicit obligation to provide that support, U.S. support for Taiwan is critical to the credibility of the U.S. democratic security architecture. Were the U.S. to allow Taiwan to fall, it would undermine the confidence of partners the world over. It would thus provide political space for Chinese and, albeit to a lesser degree, Russian efforts to displace U.S. global relationships with their own. The evolving relationship of America’s Sunni Arab allies with Beijing and Moscow evinces this concern. This dynamic threatens the prosperity and security of the U.S. and its allies.

So how should the U.S. respond to China’s drills?

Well, first off, don’t make war likelier. I note this point because some are now calling for a direct military reaction to the PLA’s drills. The respected analyst Nathan Ruser, for example, says that “the U.S. must make clear that Chinese live-fire into Taiwan’s territory will not be accepted, even by placing navy assets in its territorial waters.”

This is not a good idea. China would view such a deployment as a de facto declaration of war. Xi Jinping would also find it very difficult to back down and save face within the Communist Party or globally. At a minimum, it would mean an escalation curve with a very fine margin of error against sparking war. In a purely military practical sense, positioning U.S. warships within Taiwanese territorial waters would place those ships and their crews at extreme risk. The PLA of 2022 is not the PLA of 1996. Today’s PLA could saturate U.S. warships near Taiwan with air, drone, surface, and subsurface strikes. Oh, and cruise and ballistic missile strikes.

On the flip side, this is a wake-up call for Taiwan’s people and government. President Tsai Ing-wen has made progress with military readiness, but Taiwan at large continues to view its defense with lethargy. Defense spending is at least three times lower than it should be. Taiwan’s reserve forces remain largely incapable of performing even basic military operations. It would be in the U.S. interest to help defend Taiwan in the event of a Chinese invasion, but only if Taiwan first takes its own security seriously. The U.S. cannot fight faraway wars for nations that are unwilling to fight relentlessly for their own freedom.

Instead, the U.S. should rally the world in economic countermeasures against Beijing. The physical shredding of democratic sovereignty that the PLA drills would represent would be hard for European, Asian, and Pacific governments to ignore. The moment the drills begin, President Joe Biden could call for new sanctions to target PLA-servicing high-technology transfers from the West. He could also provide fuel to other legislative efforts, such as in the European Parliament, to restrict trade with China where issues of human rights and the rule of law are undermined. This would hold Xi’s much-sought bolstering of international prestige at risk, making him reconsider the cost-benefit analysis of further near-term escalation against Taiwan.

Unfortunately, it is likely that Xi’s long-term escalation against Taiwan is all but inevitable.

For reasons of Communist Party ideology and Xi’s own sense of destiny, war is very likely coming to Taiwan. Most U.S. military and intelligence analysts I have talked to believe that war will arrive before 2030. Pelosi’s trip has likely shortened that timeline further. The U.S. should thus massively ramp up the speed and scale of its arms sales to Taiwan. Washington should also be far more direct with Taiwan on its need to purchase weapons such as drones, maneuverable anti-air and anti-ship missile systems, and sea mines that could break the momentum of any PLA invasion. Taiwan continues to invest too heavily in prestige platforms that are likely to be overwhelmed by the PLA very early in any war.

The Biden administration should also work with Congress to get a grip over U.S. military readiness and procurement. Biden’s defense budgets are too low, and his new military deployments to Europe entirely jeopardize Pacific deterrence. Too many in Congress remain afflicted by unpatriotic cronyism. The Navy is living on planet cuckoo land with its continuing dependence on aircraft carriers. And defense manufacturers are failing to deliver platforms on time, at price, in quality, and at scale.

Pelosi’s visit marks a new era of escalation. Ensuring Taiwan’s survival will require hard choices from all sides.