"Avoiding War Over Taiwan" A New Report Signed By CWP Co-Director Thomas Christensen & 2 CWP Alum

The People’s Republic of China’s (PRC) assertive military exercises in response to Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan on Aug. 2-3, 2022 — and the PRC’s continued military actions in the air and maritime space around Taiwan since then — have brought heightened attention to the risk of military conflict between mainland China on the one side and Taiwan and the United States on the other. This policy brief argues that despite rising tensions, it is both essential and possible to avoid war in the Taiwan Strait. None of the three governments wants war. But to avoid war, all three governments must avoid steps that force the other side to launch a military conflict. 

As tension rises between the PRC and the United States over Taiwan, strategists on both sides seem to have forgotten the lesson taught years ago by Nobel Prize-winning American game theorist Thomas Schelling: deterring an opponent from taking a proscribed action requires a combination of credible threats and credible assurances. Thus, key for United States policy is to understand that effective deterrence of the PRC requires not only the credible threat of a forceful response to an attack on Taiwan, but also the credible assurance that if the PRC refrains from attacking Taiwan, interests considered vital to Beijing will not be damaged anyway. This second requirement would be violated if Washington were to heed recent calls for a change in its long-standing policy that refrains from supporting statehood for Taiwan or appears to restore the U.S.-Republic of China (ROC) alliance that was scrapped as a prerequisite for the establishment of U.S. diplomatic relations with the PRC. 

Avoiding War Over Taiwan: Policy Brief by the Task Force on US-China Policy - https://asiasociety.org/center-us-china-relations/avoiding-war-over-taiwan

Signed by Members of the Task Force on U.S.-China Policy:

Thomas J. Christensen, James T. Shotwell Professor of International Relations and Director of the China and the World Program, Columbia University

M. Taylor Fravel, Arthur and Ruth Sloan Professor of Political Science and Director of the Security Studies Program, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Jessica Chen Weiss, Michael J. Zak Professor for China and Asia-Pacific Studies, Cornell University

Photo Credit: https://asiasociety.org/sites/default/files/styles/1200w/public/2022-10/banner-with-logos.png