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Notes -
You’re right. I’m used to seeing “security dilemma” deployed in reference to existential threats, since that’s usually when people are most motivated to find an excuse. It seems clear that the academic definition includes any sort of military advantage.
Would you agree that Ukraine reaching out to NATO was driven by a security dilemma? Or that Western support for Ukraine was likewise justified by the tangible security benefits of thousands of dead Russians?
There’s also the Taiwan situation. Increased Chinese influence in the Pacific is, of course, a threat to American hegemony. Does that make a preemptive deployment to Taiwan rational?
I appreciate you taking the time to engage seriously. That said, I think there’s a key distinction you’re missing.
First, it’s natural that I focus more on China’s actions. I’m Chinese. If a war breaks out across the strait, it could directly disrupt my life, my plans, my family’s future. Of course that weighs more heavily on my mind than the tragedy of Ukraine, which, while terrible, doesn’t immediately threaten me.
Second, I think you’re conflating very different dynamics under the umbrella of the “security dilemma.”
• Ukraine reaching out to NATO was a small country trying to secure its survival against a regional hegemon.
• U.S. deployment in Taiwan would be a global superpower extending military infrastructure directly into another major state’s core security zone.
These aren’t symmetrical. The actors, scale, and power dynamics are fundamentally different. Equating them as the same type of rational move erases the imbalance of power involved.
Lastly, when you frame Western support for Ukraine in terms of “the tangible security benefits of thousands of dead Russians,” it exposes a very narrow view of security—focused on enemy casualties rather than long-term strategic stability.
Real security gains aren’t about counting corpses. They’re about shaping the regional balance, undermining adversaries’ capacity for future aggression, and stabilizing your own influence network.
If we can’t differentiate between those layers, any discussion about security dilemmas risks collapsing into just “whose kill count is higher,” which I think we can both agree is an inadequate model for understanding international relations.
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