The recent confirmation hearing for Austin Dahmer, US President Donald Trump’s nominee for assistant secretary of war for strategy, plans and capabilities, was potentially groundbreaking.
Asked how the US could help Taiwan deter or defeat a Chinese attack, Dahmer said: “The US strategy of denial complements Taiwan’s plans for layered defense by providing combat-capable forces on operationally relevant timelines, to provide a strong local defense that is difficult and painful to dislodge while bolstering allied confidence in our resolve.”
For the US to provide “combat-capable forces on operationally relevant timelines,” it would be necessary for Washington to implement an assertive forward defense, requiring the pre-positioning of naval and air assets, and the timely stationing of ground forces in Taiwan. These pre-emptive deployments would place the onus of initiating US-China conflict where it belongs, reversing the dynamic of the US having to send forces from afar to break a Chinese blockade and firing the first shot.
US forces would be able to quickly respond to a Chinese attack, not only on Taiwan, but on legally pre-stationed US assets. China would be guilty of contravening international law and it would be an act of war against the US.
Some would say the US’ forward posture is provocative and escalatory. Of course, but this ignores the reality that China has been escalating its aggression against Taiwan’s democracy for decades.
Chinese assertiveness and Beijing’s willingness to pour billions of dollars into preparing for war over Taiwan are not surprising, given the US’ quasi-official position of strategic ambiguity on defending Taiwan.
Asked the Taiwan question in a 1996 television interview, then-US secretary of defense William Perry approvingly quoted then-US assistant secretary of defense Joseph Nye’s answer to the same question: “It would depend on the circumstances,” saying it was the “perfect” response. No US administration has seen it fit to modify those words or their meaning.
Meanwhile, China has spent the past 30 years creating the “circumstances” that would deter the US from risking war with China over Taiwan. Its massive military buildup of attack submarines, aircraft carriers and anti-ship ballistic missiles established an area-denial and anti-access strategy that gradually changed the “status quo,” and restoring to the way it was would require the US to initiate a use of force. To preempt that eventuality, China’s military buildup was accompanied by periodic warnings of nuclear war — for example, “you care more about Los Angeles than Taiwan.”
Some people in the national security community have long advocated for a clear, unequivocal, officially vetted US commitment to defend Taiwan.
Trump is the latest US president to decline to embrace such a thing, but as the Dahmer testimony indicates, the administration is going one better than issuing formal declarations of intent. Rather than talking about it, the US is preparing to implement an early active defense of Taiwan, with naval vessels on and under the water, and boots on the ground.
The US has also finally ended months of delay by announcing its first arms sale to Taiwan since Trump’s return to the White House: a modest US$330 million worth of F-16 spare parts and other military support items.
It is hardly a game-changing infusion of advanced weapons systems that could threaten China itself — something Taiwan has not requested, and is presumably a task better left to its ally, the US.
The sale followed the US’ reluctance to provide Ukraine with Tomahawk cruise missiles that had the capability to strike more than 1,609km into Russia, deeper than any weapons system Kyiv has been able to deploy since Moscow first invaded in 2014.
If the Trump administration adheres to the new strategy of denial, it would present China with a powerful disincentive to initiate hostilities against Taiwan, knowing that it would certainly mean war with the US and a military defeat for China. That outcome would likely bring the demise of the Chinese communist regime and would be welcomed by the Chinese people, whom Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) and his cohorts fear more than any potential foreign adversary. A US information campaign should accompany preparations for possible conflict.
Joseph Bosco served as China country director for the US Office of the Secretary of Defense from 2005 to 2006, and as Asia-Pacific director of humanitarian assistance and disaster relief from 2009 to 2010. He is a non-resident fellow at the Institute for Corean-American Studies, a member of the advisory board of the Global Taiwan Institute and member of the advisory board of The Vandenberg Coalition. This article originally appeared in The Hill on Tuesday last week.
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