The Strategy of Denial by Elbridge Colby

Why should Americans care about Taiwan? Some practical answers to that question are answered in The Strategy of Denial by Elbridge Colby, a book outlining a containment strategy for China. American economic prosperity is very much tied to the fate of East Asia, whose developed economies are closely intertwined with ours. China is the natural behemoth of Asia. But thanks to regional dynamics at the end of the Second World War, many of the key economies there are today under an American sphere of influence. Should the U.S. lose this influence to China, it would make Americans immediately worse off by severing them from access to supply chains that have become critical to their economy. Hegemony over East Asia would also transform China from the formidable nation it is today into a true imperial juggernaut – a power able to dictate global politics and economy that no one would be able to resist. Taiwan is in danger of being the first domino to fall on the path to a Chinese empire run by the CCP. That’s why people are so concerned about its fate today.

Colby is an international relations thinker of the realist school. Realism is a school of thought that is generally unsentimental about matters like human rights and democracy, though it is not necessarily hostile to those concepts. This book takes it as a given that it is better for Americans to be in control rather than China, and is written in a manner that is laser-focused on the “How?” of defending Taiwan, as well as other East Asian countries. The strategy is based on the simple principle that it is much easier to defend a territory to capture it. Colby advocates arming Taiwan to the teeth, and raising the costs of attacking it to the point where it’s simply no longer worth it for the Chinese to try. Similar measures should be extended to the many nearby countries that today are still willing to join an alliance against Chinese hegemony. The U.S. can’t contain China alone, but a coalition of powers probably could have a shot at balancing it. The most important thing for making such an alliance work is credibility. An attack against one must really be seen as an attack against all, and even the smallest incursion against one partner by the Chinese must be treated as a red-line. Without such unity, similar to NATO, China will be able to employ a salami-slicing approach that targets one Asian country at a time and causes the entire containment alliance to gradually crumble.

For those of us who’ve grown up in a world of relative peace, it’s hard to really imagine a U.S. war with China. Both countries have so much to lose from a conflict, and their economies are deeply interlinked. That sense of interlinkage, however, did not prevent WWI from taking place in Europe. And there really is a problem between the U.S. and China that doesn’t seem like it can be negotiated away: both China and the U.S. want to be the hegemon of East Asia. There are no half-measures that can square this circle, and Chinese public opinion is increasingly hawkish on the matter. A war with China would likely be fought on the ground by U.S. allies in the region rather than by masses of U.S. infantry, but it would also have a naval and aerial component in which large numbers of U.S. servicemembers would inevitably be killed. The U.S. would have to fight to keep supply lines open to Taiwan, a relatively defensible island that is likely to serve as a citadel for the pro-U.S. alliance in the region in a future conflict.

This book really helps you see in detail how such a regional war might go down. A lot of lives would be lost, easily rivalling the Korean War in its level of destruction. If it’s any consolation, it is almost impossible that a U.S.-China war would rise to the level of nuclear weapons use – a scenario that is actually more plausible in a U.S./EU conflict with Russia. While the stakes between the U.S. and China are very high, they are something less than an absolute that would be worth ending civilization as it exists for either party. That may be cold comfort, but it’s also a good step to framing what is really at stake.