Earlier this month, the Senate Armed Services Committee considered the nomination of Elbridge A. Colby to become under secretary for defense policy. Colby led the team that wrote the 2018 National Defense Strategy in Trump’s first term. If confirmed, his first task this time around will be to oversee the creation of a new defense strategy.
Colby is well known for his laser-like focus on the rise of China. His 2021 book, A Strategy of Denial, describes a strategy to deter China from attacking Taiwan in a bid for regional hegemony. Under his tenure, it seems likely the U.S. Department of Defense will adopt a similar focus. As Colby described in a prepared response to a hearing question about relations between China-Taiwan relations:
I believe there is an increasing threat of a Chinese assault on Taiwan. . . . If confirmed, I would see it as a cardinal responsibility to ensure the success of President Trump’s policy that China will not attack Taiwan during his tenure. To do this, America must prioritize denial defense of Taiwan and focus its military assets and resources on that objective. . . . At the same time, the United States should stick to its “one China” policy while seeking to engage Beijing from a position of strength.
This statement captures the view held by many in Washington that Beijing is planning to pursue what it calls “reunification” with Taiwan by force, sooner rather than later—and the best way to prevent this is with a strong and resilient U.S. forward posture of denial in the Western Pacific. Advocates suggest this strategy is compatible with the longstanding U.S. policies of “one China” and “strategic ambiguity.”
But there is a risk that a credible military strategy of denial could undermine the wider policy of strategic ambiguity. This could occur if Beijing views Washington’s rush to denial in the Western Pacific as an undeclared shift to “strategic clarity.” This risk is worth considering even if it is small given the magnitude of the consequences.
The classical deterrence paradigm of denial or punishment means this risk is often overlooked. Denial, typically advocated in contrast with punishment, is too easily conflated with stability, thereby obscuring escalation risk.
A better way to frame U.S. policy is the distinction made by the deterrence scholar Patrick M. Morgan between general and immediate deterrence. The former applies when war is distant but conceivable; the latter when crisis is imminent. The transition between them is a moment of great peril and high stakes. The rush to denial in the Western Pacific has the potential to be such a moment, intended or otherwise.
U.S. leaders will have to mind this gap if Colby’s nomination presages a new focus on a U.S. strategy of denial. They should make sure their chosen military strategy supports, rather than undermines, their political strategy.
A Strait of Flux
The Taiwan Strait is the most likely place for U.S.-China competition to boil over into outright conflict. To avoid this, both nations have long relied on deterrence. Yet recent events suggest deterrence in the Taiwan Strait is not as strong as Washington or Beijing might wish.
Since 2022, China’s President Xi Jinping has felt the need to drastically ramp up China’s efforts to deter both Taipei and Washington through a sustained campaign of military pressure serious enough to be labeled the “fourth Taiwan Strait crisis.” Many in Washington view the same events as a sign their own deterrence is eroding. President Biden even felt the need to break with the convention, stating that U.S. forces would defend Taiwan (before later walking back his position).
At first glance, the cross-Strait situation seems durable. Decades of careful balancing have ossified into an equilibrium that, apart from the odd crisis, has appeared stable over the long term. But like the eponymous “three-body problem” of chaos theory, this balance could unravel at any moment. Small changes in the complex world of international politics can have large consequences.
This situation is now in a state of flux due to another law of physics. China is experiencing Newton’s third law that every action has an equal and opposite reaction. Washington long ago decided it could not ignore Beijing’s growing power. In 2001 President Bush committed to “deter forward” in East Asia, before Obama’s pivot to the region—a policy Trump maintained during his first term.
The Biden administration doubled down on this policy amid the “fourth crisis.” Funding for regional deterrence tripled to nearly $15 billion between 2021 and 2024. Officials called 2023 “the most transformative year for U.S. force posture in the Indo-Pacific in a generation.” Meanwhile, the military services buttressed their force build-up with newoperatingconcepts designed to implement a strategy of denial. According to Hal Brands and Zack Cooper: “As the danger of war rises in the Western Pacific, the United States is racing to reset its military strategy.”
This race is far from being run. In his own hearing last year the United States Indo-Pacific Command Commander, Admiral Samuel J. Paparo, confirmed the United States will enhance its focus and resources on strengthening its forward-based regional posture and resilience. Some analysts think this transformation is not happening “with the speed, resources, or urgency needed to outpace a rapidly maturing Chinese military threat.” Last year’s congressional defense commission was “concerned by continued underinvestment in new and updated facilities in the First and Second Island Chains, as well as the lack of new forces postured west of the International Date Line.”
The Hidden Risks of Rushing to Denial
The rapid, ongoing transformation of the U.S. forward posture in the Indo-Pacific is often described and justified as a shift from deterrence by punishment to denial. In his book, Colby argues for denial over punishment because the latter would lead to a dangerous game of brinksmanship in the region which the United States might lose. Denial, on the other hand, would level the playing field and put the onus of escalation on Beijing.
Conventional wisdom suggests denial is less threatening than punishment because leaders are more likely to gamble when faced with costs or losses. Unfortunately, conventional wisdom does not hold up in the Taiwan Strait, the 100-mile-wide crux of the precarious U.S.-China-Taiwan three-body problem. The security and actions of each party are so deeply intertwined each cannot take steps to alter the delicate status quo without triggering counteractions. The United States’ rush to denial, China’s dramatic military posturing, and political sentiment in Taiwan all hold the potential to tip the balance.
Classic security dilemmas between two parties can be lessened by disavowing offensive intent. But Washington does not have this option in the fragile security “trilemma” across the Taiwan Strait where the defensive strategy of denial most threatens Beijing’s core interest of Taiwan’s “reunification.” Strategic ambiguity helps keep the wolf from the door but does not solve the problem entirely because intent can change suddenly (at least much quicker than capabilities). Neither does it remove the possibility of a decisive response by Beijing short of an overt change in U.S. policy—which could happen if a U.S. denial force becomes sufficiently potent to change the facts on the ground.
Meanwhile, the risk of unintended escalation is heightened by the perception problem. Whether the strategy is denial or punishment, there is no guarantee Washington’s adversaries will discern its carefully calibrated strategy and act accordingly. Errors of judgment have been responsible for many deterrence failures over the years and will doubtless contribute to many more. It is unlikely President Xi will manage to evade the same problems that have blighted authoritarian and personalist regimes throughout history. (Of which Vladimir Putin’s severe misjudgment in Ukraine is just the latest example.)
General and Immediate Deterrence
The upshot is that Washington’s rush to denial in the Western Pacific could be more perilous than many analysts and U.S. leaders expect. A better way to consider the risks of strengthening the U.S. forward posture in the Western Pacific is the distinction between general and immediate deterrence, first made in 1977 by the political scientist Patrick M. Morgan.
According to Morgan, immediate deterrence operates during crises when the threat of attack is severe and imminent. Otherwise, general deterrence reigns. This is not a semantic distinction but a matter of war and peace. The factors governing deterrence success or failure depend on the situation. Strategists must know when to switch, just as physicists use classical or quantum theory depending on their scale of inquiry.
General deterrence sets the scene for states to develop the forces and posture required to abate crises and confrontations. One problem is that states go into immediate deterrence situations with the general deterrence forces they already possess. This means rapid adjustments in posture can turn stable situations into severe security dilemmas. This transition can have the quality of a vicious cycle and provides fertile ground for misperception.
Since 1949 U.S.-China relations have defaulted to general deterrence with episodes of immediate deterrence during crises. But crises in the Taiwan Strait are getting steadily more dangerous. That no U.S. forces were directly involved during the height of the fourth crisis in August 2022 limited the potential for escalation. Yet despite the intensity of its campaign of intimidation, China’s military left something in the tank: it did not use the “cautionary military strikes” called for by its own guidance.
The same outcome is not guaranteed next time. The key question for U.S. leaders is thus how to avoid a fifth crisis—or worse.
The solution, according to Morgan, is to strengthen general deterrence. But this is easier said than done as it requires clarifying the interest concerned is a vital one. In the Taiwan Strait, this implies a policy of “strategic clarity” to which Beijing—judging from its actions since 2022—would feel compelled to issue a dramatic response.
U.S. leaders could solve the vital interest problem by using the potential for uncontrollable escalation to maintain stability. But this would create a new problem: Taiwan would become a hair trigger that could be exploited by Beijing for the purposes of brinksmanship—just as Khrushchev did with Berlin in the Cold War.
A more viable route to stronger general deterrence is via U.S. allies and partners in the region. For example, Jennifer Kavanagh and Stephen Wertheim urge Washington to “bolster the self-defenses of its other Asian allies and partners, blocking any path for China to convert a successful bid for Taiwan into regional dominance.” This policy could strengthen regional general deterrence without fixating on Taiwan, but it runs counter to the Trump administration’s “America First” focus away from its allies.
Mind the Gap
There are not many good options for strengthening general deterrence in the Taiwan Strait. One conclusion is that it might have been better to act sooner when doing so would not have risked a crisis. But this is misleading given the difficulty of justifying a major force build-up in the absence of imminent threat. The inevitable result was described many years ago by Lawrence Freedman: As general deterrence situations break down, “there is a risk of even a mild crisis being aggravated by a frantic rush to get forces in place.”
If Washington now doubles down on its rush to denial, U.S. leaders will need to mind the dangerous gap between general to immediate deterrence as they transition between them. They can mitigate this risk by focusing on five dimensions of this challenge.
The first dimension is U.S. force posture. The specific trade-offs between different forward postures are crucial. For example, a more survivable force may be less lethal, while a close-in force offers different benefits and risks than a stand-off force. Each choice also comes with a wider trade-off between military efficacy and escalation risk. As Freedman points out: “At times of immediate deterrence these postures become much more important.”
The second dimension is perception. The choices made by U.S. leaders about the nature and timing of any changes to its force posture in the Western Pacific will be closely scrutinized in Beijing. These changes could be under- or over-interpreted by China’s leaders. Either could compel Beijing to act decisively, either to take advantage of weakness or preempt a U.S. fait accompli. If several Chinese scholars have already had these thoughts, China’s leaders probably have too. The key question for U.S. leaders is: What does any change to our posture or strategy look like from Beijing?
Third, U.S. leaders could hedge against uncertainty over Beijing’s perceptions and intentions. This is what Admiral Paparo and others mean when they say the U.S. military should be “prepared to fight and win should deterrence fail.” This logic makes sense on paper but in reality, it depends on what Beijing thinks. Hedging can be prudent, but if China’s leaders are sufficiently “rational” (i.e., they share basic perceptions of the costs and risks of war), then actively preparing for deterrence failure—especially while transforming homeland missile defense—could do more harm than good.
A fourth task is to better understand Chinese deterrence doctrine, which reflects China’s own “way of deterrence.” For example, the People’s Liberation Army’s guidance on deterrence advocates demonstrative “small scale attacks” using missiles or long-range artillery strikes. While these “are not aimed at war but intend to deter,” any such use of force would doubtless be interpreted by the United States and its allies as an act of war. Recent studies raise this apparent cognitive dissonance as a serious concern that needs addressing, “lest the judgment be tested for the first time in the midst of a real crisis.”
Finally, U.S. leaders can mitigate the risk of unintended escalation through improving communication with Beijing, in competition and crisis. The resumption of “high-level military-to-military communication” might yield some results but it is the bare minimum required. A military hotline for emergencies—like the 2001 Hainan incident—is badly needed. Dialogue is also urgently required on space, cyber, AI, and biothreats where novelty and rapid change threaten stability and pose existential risks.
Peace Through Strength?
How to deal with China is one of the most consequential questions for the new Trump administration. With a presidential meeting on the horizon, President Trump could double down on deterrence in the Taiwan Strait under his foreign policy rubric of “peace through strength.” So far he has maintained a policy of strategic ambiguity, even if his version is more transactional in tone. While this approach—general deterrence and political ambiguity—has helped avoid conflict for decades, times are changing. China’s growing military power and belligerence has produced an equal and opposite reaction from Washington. The latest development in this longstanding policy shift is the rush to denial by U.S. forces in the Western Pacific. There is a small but significant risk that this strategy could undermine deterrence, not strengthen it. Leaders in Washington must be sure that their chosen military strategy supports their political strategy. As Henry Kissinger reminds us about the causes of World War I: “In the end, military planning ran away with diplomacy. It is a lesson subsequent generations must not forget.”
Sean Monaghan is a visiting fellow in the Europe, Russia, and Eurasia Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C.