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We need to dramatically increase our advanced missile stocks and production capacities. We should probably just buy ships from e.g. South Korea and Japan, because boy did we fuck up there. We should also make Anduril a very valuable company by having enough autonomous capacities to make the Chinese realize that even if our carrier battle groups can be taken out, Taiwan would effectively be a minefield.
No, it's not, because the actual proportion of our commitment of resources matters and you are failing to recognize second-order effects of priming the pump of the defense-industrial complex. As well as the signal of Western resolve and military competence. The best way to deter China is not to have a bunch of missiles in a warehouse. The best way to deter them is making them fear the resolve of the US in defending its friends and allies in the face of risking WWIII.
Since we aren't giving Ukraine any nukes, we have plenty of those laying around. Which is why the question of "will they/won't they" is more important than "just how long will US missile stocks last."
Sure. None of these, frankly, seem all that far-fetched.
Look, China can do math. All the "resolve" in the world doesn't do us any good without missiles in the warehouse.
If we are confident nuclear madman theory alone is sufficient to deter China, we don't need to do any of the above. But I don't actually think anyone wants to die in nuclear fire for Kiev or Taipei and as such the threat of a nuclear madman is unlikely to be persuasive and, even if persuasive, unlikely to be consistent in a democratic society (note the difference in Russian foreign policy towards Ukraine after the election of President Biden!) So one concern with the nuclear madman threat is that it will simply result in waiting out the madman. (Another concern is that two can play that game, of course!)
We have the USN and USAF and a nuclear triad ready for a full-scale confrontation with North Korea and/or China on any given day and have for decades. We can and should do more on that, but it's not like we don't have a lot of combat power in the region.
Resolve, on the other hand, is trickier. China won't care about escalation risk if they think we don't have the balls to put it all on the line for Taiwan.
I'd say we need to do both to maximize the chance of deterrence. In the US, we do not democratically launch nuclear weapons. Trump has lost his "madman" edge with respect to China, I think. Not that he couldn't get it back in short order.
But this is why, yes, I think Taiwan is a foregone conclusion if China waits and it's obvious to everyone what cards are on the table and who's bluffing. The Cuban Missile Crisis was about the Soviets parking missiles way closer to the US than we were willing to accept, so we engaged in a bit of brinkmanship and it wasn't a bluff.
But risk it all for Taiwan? For South Korea, in comparison, we have treaty obligations and troops deployed that will act as a tripwire.
I don't think this is true. We can actually help deter China without threatening nuclear war if we have the tools needed to fight a conventional war. Perhaps this means that China will always have "escalation dominance" over Taiwan, as Russia will have over Ukraine. But US interest in the region creates an additional deterrent effect (although it needs to be combined with Taiwanese resolve, which arguably matters much more than US resolve!)
My personal opinion is that Taiwan likely becomes harder and harder over time. Part of this is due to demographic shifts in Taiwan. Part of it is due to increased US investment in procurement programs clearly aimed at China, at US onshoring and containment efforts, and at clear and increasing bipartisan focus on China as a serious threat to US hegemony. Part of it is due to internal Chinese social and economic issues (while I don't think China is going to drop dead in 10 years due to an aging populace, it is true as I understand it that they will never have as many military-aged males as they do today – I think this is less relevant for actual force generation and more relevant for societal casualty acceptance).
I think this is overstated. For all the scary "brinksmanship" the public watched, the Cuban Missile Crisis ended in tit-for-tat negotiations, and the United States (secretly) agreed to withdraw its own nuclear missiles from Turkey as part of the deal. I'm not sure how the Politburo viewed it, but from a certain point of view it was a success for the Soviet Union, as its attempt to park ballistic missiles in Cuba to gain strategic parity with US missiles in Europe ended with regaining at least some of that strategic parity (by forcing the withdrawal of US missiles).
I'm not arguing against the need for better conventional deterrents. But in any real conflict between nuclear powers, the willingness to go all the way up the escalatory ladder has to be symmetrical, or at least perceived as such. Otherwise one side is going to get its way.
If China goes for Taiwan, does the USN put itself in harm's way and fire upon Chinese assets? How do we respond if they sink a ship? Hit a regional base? Will we attack the mainland?
As with economics, the expectations matter almost more than actually what happens. If China thinks we'll back off because we are not fully committed to the fight then they will be emboldened to test our resolve. "Strategic ambiguity" was a clever means of not having a formal commitment but still making sure the Chinese were sufficiently worried to not try anything. I don't think that's going to work much longer. Either we gotta put a tripwire there as we have in South Korea, or it's going to become more and more clear the US will not risk a full confrontation.
The public did not "watch" most of the actually scary part. The JCS told Kennedy we should invade right off the bat. Kennedy later on was convinced it was necessary and preparations were made. Luckily, the Soviets were not willing to go down that path. Shooting down the U-2 or spooking the Soviet submarine (for which a single person stopped the launch of nuclear torpedoes) or any other incident could have set things off.
Per Wikipedia, that's not how the Soviets felt:
Sure, but there's also a question of who is having to make which choice. I don't want the situation to be the US threatening nuclear escalation because we've lost the conventional war and that's the only ace up our sleeve. I want the situation to be "the US has destroyed the combat effectiveness of the Chinese Navy in 24 hours and now China has to decide if it wants to wave its nuclear weapons around." This is particularly true since if China can occupy Taiwan quickly and successfully, US nuclear threats are meaningless. What are we going to do, nuke Taiwan? We need to be able to defeat China conventionally, if we want to play this game at all. That makes their nuclear threats close to meaningless - what are they going to do, nuke Taiwan?
Right, and if don't actually have the capacity to sink the entire Chinese navy, China is more likely to think we are not fully committed to the fight. That's why dropping Ukraine and redirecting any aid money to more LRASMs would spook China. (Mind you: I am not saying this is the correct course of action, merely that it would spook China. As I understand it, we don't actually spend much cash on Ukraine, most of the value is in contributions.) It would be a significant sacrifice that would indicate the US perceives it would receive greater value from defending Taiwan and defeating China than it would from defending Ukraine and defeating Russia.
If the US invests to defending Taiwan at the cost of other admittedly important priorities, it creates expectations that the US intends to get a return from that investment.
This makes sense. But it's because they lost the PR game, not because they didn't get concession diplomatically. US brinksmanship didn't by itself carry the day for the US, the US had to make concessions.
I think we're in agreement here. But I don't think you're understanding how it might play out. If things start with fighting around Taiwan, but then the Chinese hit say Guam. Or Hawaii. Escalations are usually pretty messy. It's not about having to explicitly threaten nuclear escalation. It's the credible implicit threat of using "all means necessary" to preserve Taiwan's independence it tested.
My point is that I don't think we, or the Taiwanese, are going to do this. Or to be perceived as credible by saying it. And, even if we had conventional parity, I doubt the typical US president is going to really go up the escalation ladder. In the Cold War, we had a global contest with the Soviets and were at each others throats in a bunch of places. With China and Taiwan it's not the same dynamic on nearly any level. But like I said, a given US president could be particularly committed.
One nice thing for Taiwan is that it's very unlikely that "quickly" is in the cards, just based on how the island is. I guess there could be some kind of coup situation. What could be established quickly is Chinese battlespace dominance around Taiwan. And then the US would have to decide how much we want to confront that militarily. Ironically sort of a reverse Cuba Missile Crisis situation in terms of blockading an island.
That's just literally not an option. That's not how defense budgets work, mechanically. You can say things like "what if the US redirected all resources for Ukraine and/or Israel to Taiwan" and that's just not actually a thing that could happen. If you want to increase INDOPACOM's warfighting capacities, then great. Me too. But it won't be meaningfully done by taking our support away from Israel and/or Ukraine. It's not like we balance our defense budget.
If signs were that China is going to make a move ASAP, then sure, do what it takes to meet top priorities. But that's not the case.
And, as I've stated, what spooks China more than anything is realizing "oh shit the US really will put skin in the game and isn't just making empty promises."
You're stuck on a zero-sum view of US defense priorities. On some level that's true, finite world and all that, but Taiwan is not a hot war. We are not permanently committing military assets to either Ukraine or Israel (yet, so long as the Iranians don't provoke us). We can walk and chew bubble gum simultaneously. We can make more munitions. (Nothing is funnier than when people remark that the US won't have enough 155mm artillery shells for China; as if that round would make any difference.) If the US committed to really fucking Russia over by giving Ukraine every edge we could then that's the strongest way to deter China because we are demonstrating capacity, will, and competence.
I agree. We should not rely on brinksmanship to deter China.
I think air assault is an underrated scenario (unironically: look at how well this worked for the Russians!), but I agree that a Chinese blockade is probably more likely.
Every Standard and Patriot missile we launch off in support of Israel and/or Ukraine is one we do not have stockpiled for a fight with China (and after how we've been moving around worldwide 155mm shell stockpiles for Ukraine, don't try to tell me those stockpiles aren't fungible! They are!)
I actually from a purely pragmatic perspective support some degree of stress-testing weapons, so I am less inclined to view limited battlefield expenditures as a waste. If we use 10 to improve the effectiveness of the other 1000 by 10%, it is clearly worth the cost. But you can't pretend like the weapons we are firing off now aren't relevant to a Pacific fight.
I mean - if the US should go full commitment for Ukraine, then by the same token it probably shouldn't screw around at all, we should just give Taiwan nukes. (Frankly, I trust the Taiwanese with them much more than the Ukrainians!)
We need to prime the pump and drastically increase production capacities. Almost certainly, we're better off for having had the stress test.
The vast majority of them are not. For those that are, we have fucked up by not having sufficient stockpiles or production capacities. Best time to fix that is now.
We have have multiple goals. We're a big country.
We do not hand over operational control of nuclear weapons. In 1979, we took our troops out and ended recognition of Taiwan as an independent country.
That's a major reason why it's basically a foregone conclusion that the US won't really put it all on the line to contest it with China.
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