Can China Be Deterred From Attacking Taiwan?
By Donald Stoker
June 30, 2023AFP Pool
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Before tackling this question, we must set the analytical stage by understanding the parameters for US action: the political aims and grand strategy of the Joseph Biden administration. Secretary of State Anthony Blinken made clear in May 7, 2021 remarks to the United Nations Security Council that the US political aim is maintaining the “rules-based international order.” This is the international system of diplomatic and economic organizations, norms, and responsibilities under which nations have interacted since the Second World War but particularly since the end of the Cold War. Additionally, Biden’s Indo-Pacific Strategy says the administration seeks a free and open Pacific and specifically calls-out China as a threat, saying: “The PRC’s [People’s Republic of China’s] coercion and aggression spans the globe, but it is most acute in the Indo-Pacific.”
It is important to remember that deterrence is not a political aim but a grand strategy. Combining usage of facets of national power can produce a grand strategy of deterrence. Success here can enable achievement of the administration’s aim of preserving the “rules-based international order.” Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin tells us in the new National Defense Strategy that China is a “pacing threat” and that America’s strategy—really grand strategy—is “integrated deterrence,” described as “using every tool at the Department’s disposal, in close collaboration with our counterparts across the U.S. Government and with Allies and partners, to ensure that potential foes understand the folly of aggression.”
But can “integrated deterrence” prevent China from invading Taiwan? We tackle this by examining two significant US interactions with the Chinese Communist regime: the Korean War and the Vietnam War.
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