ChinaTalk: Preventing an Invasion of Taiwan

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Taiwan’s government agencies are battered by 5 million cyberattacks every day. China is holding invasion drills at a replica of Taiwan’s presidential palace in Inner Mongolia. Last week, the PLA openly rehearsed an encirclement of Taiwan in so-called “punishment drills.”

What happened to deterrence in the Taiwan Strait? Can the status quo be saved?

To discuss strategies for avoiding WWIII, ChinaTalk interviewed Jared McKinney of the Air War College and Peter Harris of Colorado State University, who recently co-authored a monograph entitled, “Deterrence Gap: Avoiding War in the Taiwan Strait.”

Co-hosting today is ChinaTalk’s resident Taiwan consultant, Nicholas Welch.

We discuss…

• Evidence of deterrence decay in the status quo;
• The difference between constraints and restraints, and how they fit together to form a lattice of successful deterrence;
• Whether symbolic solidarity with Taiwan does more harm than good;
• The values and costs of strategic ambiguity;
• How Taiwan can optimize its deterrence posture;
• Lessons from the dance of death between Iran and Israel;
• Objective factors for measuring invasion risk, and whether the world should be scared about 2027;
• How to analyze decision trees for fundamentally irrational decisions;

... and more!

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