THE PARADOX OF UNCERTAINTY: DETERRENCE IN THE TAIWAN STRAIT
Kristofer Seibt April 24, 2025
Even as China’s military capabilities are rapidly advancing and its determination to achieve reunification appears to be hardening, the military ability and desire of the United States to defend the island are increasingly in doubt.
Credibility—having both the power and will to use it—is essential to coercion and deterrence. Yet in relation to Taiwan, the trajectories of China and the United States are diverging. Even as China’s military capabilities are rapidly advancing and its determination to achieve reunification appears to be hardening, the military ability and desire of the United States to defend the island are increasingly in doubt. Even a wargame that found the United States could prevail cast doubt about whether the cost would be worth it, particularly when reunification is such an important issue for the Chinese Communist Party. Geographic distance and policy asymmetry seem to fatally undermine U.S. deterrence.
The challenge echoes a paradox that strategic thinkers confronted during the Cold War—that in an age of devastating weapons, stability might emerge not from absolute control, but from carefully managed uncertainty. This apparent contradiction lies at the heart of one of the most influential frameworks in deterrence theory. In a 1959 internal paper at RAND, subsequently published in his 1966 book Arms and Influence, Thomas Schelling advanced a counterintuitive proposition: that introducing an element of chance into strategic threats could make them more credible and therefore more effective at preventing conflict. Now, nearly sixty years later, as the United States seeks to deter Chinese aggression without triggering a catastrophic war, Schelling’s concept of a “threat that leaves something to chance” offers a compelling solution to perceptions of eroding U.S. credibility. This essay illuminates how a threat that leaves something to chance could positively affect key escalation pathways by altering the perceptions and beliefs of Chinese leaders, even while acknowledging the limitations and potential instability of such an approach to deterrence.
The Paradox of Uncertainty
https://warroom.armywarcollege.edu/articles/deterrence-in-taiwan/
