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Even Realists Overstate the ‘China Threat’

By Joseph Solis-Mullen | The Libertarian Institute | March 26, 2025

Perusing the most recent edition of Foreign Affairs, which was typically dreadful, one piece caught my eye. In “The Taiwan Fixation,” Stephen Wertheim and Jennifer Kavanagh argued that a full-scale U.S. military intervention over Taiwan would be catastrophic, and that Washington should seek to balance building up Taiwan’s defense while insulating its own broader Indo-Pacific strategy from Taipei’s fate.

Their critique of full-blown interventionism is, of course, well-founded, and was a welcome sight, but their core assumptions remain unfortunately rooted in the flawed logic of American primacy. Even as they downplay alarmist rhetoric, they still accept an overstated vision of China’s potential threat and Washington’s supposed stake in Taiwan.

At its core, “The Taiwan Fixation” fails to escape the same errors that underpin most discussions on U.S.-China relations. It assumes that Taiwan is of critical strategic importance to American security, that China’s control of the island would be an unacceptable shift in the regional balance of power, and that some level of U.S. intervention remains necessary. But as I argued in The Fake China Threat, these claims are fundamentally weak. The United States has no compelling strategic interest in Taiwan, Beijing has little incentive to disrupt regional trade routes, and Taipei itself seems far more interested in lobbying Washington for protection than in seriously investing in its own defense.

Wertheim and Kavanagh attempt to position Taiwan as strategically valuable but stop short of the full-blown liberal internationalist and neoconservative argument that its loss would be a geopolitical catastrophe. Instead, they argue that while Beijing’s control over Taiwan wouldn’t transform China into an immediate hegemon, it would complicate U.S. military operations and potentially embolden China in the region.

This claim doesn’t hold up under scrutiny. Taiwan is not a vital interest of the United States. The U.S. does not need Taiwan for trade, military positioning, or economic security. As Wertheim himself concedes, Taiwan’s loss wouldn’t fundamentally alter the balance of power in Asia. The idea that China could use Taiwan as a springboard for wider expansion is speculative at best—especially when Japan, India, and other regional actors already have strong incentives to counterbalance China regardless of what happens in Taipei.

One of the article’s weakest points is its flirtation with the classic “credibility” argument—the notion that if the United States fails to defend Taiwan, allies like Japan or the Philippines will start doubting Washington’s commitments. This argument has been trotted out since the Cold War to justify interventions from Vietnam to Afghanistan, and it remains just as flimsy today.

Japan’s leaders have already signaled that Taiwan is not a make-or-break issue for them. Despite constant American warnings, no Asian country is poised to abandon its alliance with Washington over Taiwan’s fate. India and Japan, the two regional powers most capable of countering Beijing, already have their own deep-seated strategic reasons to oppose Chinese expansionism. Their security policies aren’t contingent on what Washington does in Taiwan.

If anything, it’s the United States that risks undermining its own credibility by committing to a fight over Taiwan. The more Washington signals an absolute commitment to Taipei’s defense, the more pressure it creates for itself to intervene—setting up a scenario where its own rhetoric forces it into an unnecessary war.

Wertheim and Kavanagh advocate for the “porcupine” strategy—arming Taiwan with asymmetric capabilities like sea mines, missile batteries, and drone fleets to make an invasion costly for China. Superficially, this seems like a clever alternative to direct U.S. intervention. In reality, it risks provoking the very war it is meant to prevent.

If Washington floods Taiwan with weapons and escalates military cooperation, Beijing may conclude that peaceful reunification is no longer viable. As Wertheim himself acknowledges, Taiwan arming itself “too well” could force China’s hand, making an invasion more likely rather than deterring it. This isn’t just theoretical. The logic follows from the same security dilemmas that have fueled arms races throughout history: the more one side hardens its defenses, the more the other feels compelled to strike before it loses its window of opportunity.

This isn’t just a U.S.-China issue—it’s also a question of Taipei’s own incentives. Taiwan has consistently underinvested in its own defense, spending only about 2.5% of its GDP on the military, despite claiming existential threats from Beijing. Why? Because it has calculated—correctly—that lobbying Washington is far cheaper than paying for its own defense. As Ben Freeman has pointed out, Taipei has spent tens of millions lobbying Congress and funding think tanks that push for greater U.S. military commitments. Why spend hundreds of billions on weapons when you can spend a fraction of that buying influence in Washington?

Wertheim and Kavanagh criticize Taiwan for failing to reorient its defense spending but still assume that Washington should step in and “encourage” (i.e., coerce) Taipei into adopting a more robust posture. But if Taiwan itself is unwilling to make the necessary sacrifices, why should American taxpayers foot the bill? The answer is simple: they shouldn’t.

Perhaps the most glaring omission in “The Taiwan Fixation”—one that even realists like Wertheim often overlook—is that Taiwan is not a separate state in the conventional sense. It remains, officially and historically, a part of China. The Chinese Civil War never formally ended, and U.S. intervention in the Taiwan issue has always been an act of interference in a domestic Chinese conflict.

Imagine if, at the height of the American Civil War, Britain had not only recognized the Confederacy but armed it and promised to fight the Union on its behalf. That’s essentially the position Washington has taken with Taiwan. The United States has no legitimate role in deciding the island’s future. Every time it sells weapons to Taipei or conducts military exercises in the Taiwan Strait, it is actively inserting itself into a conflict where it has no rightful place.

The logical conclusion of this reality should be clear: Taiwan is China’s problem, not Washington’s. Wertheim does acknowledge that American policy should aim for “competitive coexistence” rather than outright confrontation. But he stops short of drawing the real conclusion, one that follows naturally from his own arguments: the United States should be preparing to disengage from Taiwan entirely, not reinforcing its involvement.

Wertheim and Kavanagh offer a more grounded view of Taiwan policy than the usual Beltway hawks, but their analysis still rests on faulty assumptions. They recognize that Taiwan’s fate doesn’t justify war, yet they continue to insist that some American involvement is necessary. They acknowledge that China wouldn’t become a global hegemon even if it took Taiwan, yet they still assume that its loss would significantly damage U.S. interests. They see the dangers of arming Taiwan too aggressively, yet they continue to endorse the porcupine strategy.

Ultimately, their view of Taiwan remains a product of Washington’s obsession with maintaining primacy rather than accepting a multipolar reality. The United States does not need to “fix” Taiwan policy—it needs to let it go. The alternative is continued entanglement in a conflict that serves no vital American interest and risks dragging Washington into an unwinnable war.

The real China threat isn’t a military one—it’s the threat of policymakers manufacturing crises where none need exist. If the U.S. truly wants to avoid war, it should stop making Taiwan a battlefield of its own choosing.

March 26, 2025 Posted by aletho | Book Review, Militarism | China, United States | Leave a comment