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Xi Jinping boards an aircraft carrier in China’s Hainan Province on December 17, 2019. (Photo by Li Gang/Xinhua via Getty Images)
The United States and its Indo-Pacific partners and allies urgently need new approaches to deter the Chinese Communist Party from taking Taiwan by force.
John Lee and Lavina Lee lay out why a static deterrence-by-denial approach is no longer sufficient and explain how the US can impose nonmilitary costs to deter the People’s Republic of China. Read the full report, or see his key points below.
Also, join John Lee and Hudson’s Thomas Duesterberg and Aaron MacLean this Monday, June 17, at 3:00 p.m. for an in-person discussion of the report. Click here to RSVP or watch online here.
Key Insights
1. Deterrence efforts should focus on Xi Jinping.
Given Xi Jinping’s centralization of power and decision-making when it comes to forming objectives and strategy in the Chinese system, efforts to deter China should focus on ways to specifically deter Xi, that is, to change his personal calculations. He has demonstrated that other leaders can put him under pressure and that he will change direction quickly and decisively when he feels sufficient pressure. Costs should maximize the political pressure on Xi to compel him to reassess and recalculate. Each tit-for-tat cost that the US and its allies impose on China should incrementally increase damage to Xi’s political and economic objectives and plans.
2. The US and its allies need to impose costs on the PRC to change Chinese calculations when it comes to coercion and aggression in the gray zone.
These costs should be nonmilitary to avoid overly dangerous kinetic escalation. The US and its allies need to get to the point where China, and other regional countries, expect ongoing cost imposition retaliations from them. Just as China benefits from a situation in which other countries have normalized and internalized Chinese coercion and aggression, other countries need to accept US and allied cost imposition retaliation as a fait accompli and part of the strategic and tactical architecture in the region. In particular, the US should target three of China’s insecurities: energy insecurity, food insecurity, and reliance on the US dollar.
3. There need to be clear signals to Xi that in the event of an invasion of Taiwan, the US and its allies will consider extreme measures that could lead to immense social and political instability for the CCP.
Foremost in Xi’s mind will be the US and allied military response to a Chinese military action. The Chinese leadership will also assess the prospects of devastating nonmilitary responses by the US and others. In this context, Xi would likely assess the three insecurities mentioned above that the US and its allies could target to cause immense turmoil and social instability within China. Analysts have suggested the US and its allies ought to signal that they would consider moving against these three areas in extreme circumstances. They can do so by letting China know that they are gaming options to exploit these weaknesses and by putting resources and policies in place to do so in the event of war.
Quotes may be edited for clarity and length.
Go Deeper
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China’s Economic Weakness and Challenge to the Bretton Woods System: How Should the US Respond? Thomas J. Duesterberg identifies five ways Washington can take advantage of Beijing’s economic weakness and dependence on US financing and trade to combat Xi Jinping’s aggressiveness and maintain the Bretton Woods system. |
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It’s Time We Tried to Win This War Distinguished Fellow Mike Gallagher appears on the Wall Street Journal’s podcast Free Expression to discuss how the US can win against China rather than merely managing the competition. |
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How the US Can Win the Cold War against China in the Twenty-First Century On Arsenal of Democracy, host Marshall Kosloff sits down with Dmitri Alperovitch to discuss why America needs to act now to win the new cold war with China, and how the US can keep the competition “cold.”
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