How to Strengthen Deterrence for Taiwan Without Abandoning Ambiguity

For all the chatter of think tank experts, a policy article alone is unlikely to change the United States’ long-held practice of strategic ambiguity towards Taiwan. Rather than seeking to change the policy, we should better spend our time asking: “What does it really mean?”

The surface-level answer is that under this policy orientation, Washington refrains from articulating exactly what it would do if the People’s Republic of China invades Taiwan — neither making a clear commitment to defend Taiwan with force, nor ruling out that it might do so. While strategic ambiguity is frequently maligned, it has real advantages: It can theoretically signal to Beijing that Washington will likely defend Taiwan, while also dissuading Taipei from dragging the United States into a war that America hasn’t promised to join.

However, there might be more than one way to interpret this policy of strategic ambiguity. Indeed, there are two possible ways to treat it.

The first is an assumption that the United States has made a decision to defend Taiwan with force if China attacks, but simply won’t admit it. The second interpretation is that Washington maintains a variety of options at its disposal — from full-scale intervention to non-kinetic responses — and will select one of these options in the event China attacks Taiwan.

Why is such a distinction important? The difference might seem trivial, but it has significant consequences for how the United States positions itself in advance of a potential Chinese invasion of Taiwan.

At present, the Pentagon refuses to publicly outline intervention plans involving Taiwan. As a consequence, U.S. defense planners struggle to establish a clear and open division of responsibility as to how the U.S. military, foreign allies and defense contractors would contribute to Taiwan intervention if required. This harms preparedness, as needed participants in the defense of a Taiwan defense — ranging from Japanese air defense units to American drone manufacturers and even the Taiwanese military itself — cannot be clear on U.S. operational strategies to defend the island. The result is that the deterrent power of strategic ambiguity towards China is weakened, elevating the risk of an attack by Beijing.

Nonetheless, if the Pentagon’s conception of strategic ambiguity is that America has decided to defend Taiwan with full force, but won’t admit it (the first of the two interpretations outlined above), then this strategy of reticence is unavoidable, even logical. If this is the case, outlining too clearly how the United States would come to Taiwan’s defense would undermine the notion of “ambiguity” entirely, and sacrifice America’s ability to deter both China and Taiwan from changing the status quo. Meanwhile, publicly describing any other intervention option — especially involving less-intensive or non-kinetic responses — would undermine the calculated hint of possible full-scale involvement that the United States is trying to relay.

Given the Pentagon’s silence regarding intervention plans, it probably finds itself to be caught in the bind resulting from this first interpretation of strategic ambiguity. When pressed, defenders of the strategic ambiguity policy tend to equivocate with a common refrain: “Beijing already assumes” that the United States will intervene, so strategic clarity is not necessary. Such a refrain indicates that many indeed intend strategic ambiguity to be interpreted as a posture under which America has decided to intervene, but just won’t admit it.

But what if strategic ambiguity could be practiced differently — in such a way that doesn’t hold back the Pentagon from forthrightly engaging in preparations to defend Taiwan? The way to achieve this would be to adopt the second of the working interpretations of strategic ambiguity outlined above — that the United States possesses a variety of possible plans for coming to Taiwan’s aid, ranging from full-scale kinetic intervention to non-military responses, and that the U.S. president is poised to choose any one of these options should China invade, blockade or embargo Taiwan. This approach would open the door to clear and straightforward coalition-building regarding possible interventions in a Taiwan contingency.

Under this approach, the Pentagon would identify a “menu set” of intervention operations available to the U.S. president, ranging from kinetic to non-kinetic ones. These could be arranged in a narrow set of categories, possibly including no more than four or five:

• The strongest scenario would be a full-scale armed intervention by U.S. military assets in the Indo-Pacific, incorporating willing allies.
• Middle-tier interventions could be purely focused on defeating a Chinese blockade of Taiwan that might accompany an invasion, or the use of air power and long-range fires alone to engage the People’s Liberation Army from afar.
• One non-kinetic engagement scenario could involve noncombatant evacuation operations, or NEOs, in partnership with stakeholders like Japan and the Philippines.
• Finally, Washington should map out the use of comprehensive trade and financial sanctions to punish the Chinese Communist Party for an attack on Taiwan — either executed alone or paired with one of the more potent, kinetic options laid out above.

Outlining a limited set of possible intervention scenarios would allow the U.S. government and its partners to openly plan for Taiwan’s defense without necessarily undermining strategic ambiguity or committing Washington to any one response. Under this approach, Washington should simultaneously schedule exercises for each of these intervention types, so as to allow the United States to properly rehearse each one without implicitly designating any as the preferred or intended option.

Such an approach would necessarily raise U.S. deterrence — as allies and adversaries could witness the U.S. military openly preparing to defend Taiwan with kinetic and non-kinetic means. Meanwhile, this course of action would align with existing policy, such as the Taiwan Relations Act — which calls on Washington to “maintain the capacity of the United States to resist any resort to force or other forms of coercion” against Taiwan.

Some may argue that explicitly rehearsing Taiwan intervention scenarios is unnecessary as the United States is already conducting dozens of military drills in the Indo-Pacific region on an ongoing basis. This is indeed true — and many of these exercises are unmistakably pointed at the Chinese military — yet the drills fail to specify which territory they intend to defend. This creates a dynamic of plausible deniability, where the Pentagon and allies can contend that these drills are not actually a rehearsal for Taiwan’s defense. But plausible deniability is not a friend of deterrence. Rather, the unwillingness to explicitly identify the defense of Taiwan as the drills’ mission risks being misconstrued as a reluctance to confidently defend Taiwan.

Meanwhile, others may counter that it would be counterproductive for the United States to carry out military exercises explicitly aimed at the defense of Taiwan, as this could drive away nascent cooperation with key partners such as Australia and the Philippines — who may be reluctant to provoke the Chinese by engaging in such drills. This is a valid concern, yet Washington should not forgo critical preparations to defend Taiwan out of a desire to get as many partners on board as possible — particularly partners who may ultimately not join the United States in more intensive engagement scenarios. By coaxing hesitant allies into a nebulous international coalition that may not even solidify in a contingency scenario, the Pentagon may sacrifice decisive preparations that would ultimately be a greater deterrent to Beijing. 

Outlining a set of Taiwan intervention scenarios, ranging from full-scale military engagement to non-kinetic responses, would allow the Pentagon to sidestep the limitations on overtly discussing how and what it needs to defend Taiwan. Simultaneously rehearsing for a range of interventions would allow the Pentagon to address its strengths and weaknesses and muster allies, without committing to one particular option. Such a policy would enhance U.S. preparedness but, crucially, raise deterrence — as Beijing would witness the United States and partners aligning their components of national power for various intervention plans designed to firmly punish China for an attack on Taiwan.

Benjamin Sando is a research fellow at the Global Taiwan Institute, and a former fellow at the Doublethink Lab NGO in Taiwan. The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not represent the positions of the Global Taiwan Institute.