Lawfare Daily: How China Might Coerce Taiwan

[Intro]

Toshi Yoshihara: We know that Taiwan has been penetrated by CCP covert agents, saboteurs, and compromised insiders, both within state and society. And that many of these operatives could bribe, intimidate, blackmail, or discredit Taiwanese political leaders or military commanders, of course, and even kill and assassinate them if necessary.

Daniel Byman: It's the Lawfare Podcast. I'm Daniel Byman, foreign policy editor of Lawfare, and I'm with Evan Braden Montgomery and Toshi Yoshihara, who are at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments.

Evan Braden Montgomery: Individually, a lot of these coercive efforts are, are, are not new and in some cases don't even have a particularly good historical track record, but if you start thinking about how they might be employed in combination and because you have a series of at least three, you know, frankly more, but three main targets, if you think about Taipei, Tokyo, and Washington, D.C., that creates an opportunity for those different coercive efforts to kind of work in tandem, in potentially a very powerful way.

Daniel Byman: We are talking about how China might coerce Taiwan.

[Main podcast]

Your piece is very provocative. You are arguing that invasion might not be the best scenario to plan for. In fact, there's a whole host of other dangerous ways that China might be menacing Taiwan. Let me start by asking you to explain why if China wants to regain Taiwan, it might not go to war, that invasion might not be a good idea from Beijing's point of view.

Evan Braden Montgomery: You know, basically the argument that we make is that there are a lot of frankly common sense reasons why invasion may not be the optimal route for China if it does indeed want to forcibly reunify with Taiwan.

I think there's a kind of a prevailing assumption that if China does decide that it needs to take Taiwan by force, invasion is the route it will go down simply because it offers the most kind of certain path to victory, if you will. But even if that were true, that would be victory at an extremely high cost.

Despite criticism of Taiwan's defensive capabilities I think it's reasonable to assume that Taiwan—just simply given the geography of the theater—could impose some significant costs on the PLA; that despite the fact that the PLA can impose a heavy toll on the United States given the vulnerability of its forces and posture in the region, that would still be a case in which the United States could impose a heavy toll on the PLA, and would probably be the start of a protracted conflict between China and the United States.

So there are kind of reasons, I think, in our view, for the PLA and the CCP to kinda look for alternatives to invasion, and the fact is that, you know, as China has been building out its capabilities in a variety of forms—its kind of capabilities that would enable it to engage in subversion, capabilities that would enable it to impose an air and maritime blockade quarantine around Taiwan, its nuclear buildup, which it can use as a coercive tool.

It has a broader set of options than just invasion. And it has a set of options that it can actually combine in ways that would be extremely problematic for leaders in Taiwan, for leaders in Tokyo, and for leaders in Washington, DC.

And so the, the thought behind this from our perspective, and the concern is that now that China has or is developing this wider set of capabilities, it can frankly probably tell itself a story that there is a much quicker and potentially much, much cheaper route to victory over Taiwan over the United States than invasion with all the costs that that would entail.

Toshi Yoshihara: Yeah, and I think it's also worth pointing out to think about the risks and costs of invasion in terms of what China wants over the long term. So, Xi Jinping has been following the slogan, the so-called China Dream, or the great Rejuvenation of the Chinese Nation. And I think some of the sub goals within the China Dream are in fundamental tension.

So one of the sub goals, of course, is for China to become a great economic superpower, to become a great high tech power because fundamental to China's revival is of course economic growth. And yet that particular objective runs, potentially runs in opposition to China's objective of taking Taiwan, especially if a war over Taiwan were to go sideways. You know, a war over Taiwan that protracted, that horizontally escalated could be extraordinarily costly from an economic financial perspective. One can imagine a coalition of Western powers imposing significant sanctions on China.

You can also of course, imagine a scenario where even if China were to win a war over Taiwan through invasion that its military would be significantly damaged. And I think we should, you know, also remember that Xi Jinping has this as a part of the China Dream—constructing a world class military. So if the PLA suffers significant losses, the dream of establishing a world-class military could potentially be set back.

So I think there are these inherent tensions between these subsidiary goals within the China Dream, and I think Xi Jinping and his subordinates might be tempted to consider alternative options that reconcile some of those tensions. And it may be that that, that might lead them to consider these alternative options that we highlight in our article.

Daniel Byman: So your work looks at at least three different kind of general categories, of course, of strategies that China might use. One is blockade, one is, I'll say subversion, broadly defined, and another is nuclear signaling.

I'd like to kind of drill down on each and then talk about them in combination, so let's go one by one and let's start with blockade. Explain kind of the logic of blockade and how it might work from, in any future scenario.

Evan Braden Montgomery: Sure. I mean, just to start, and then I think you know, Toshi has done a lot of work on this issue in particular, but the blockade is certainly an option that is much discussed as a, you know, potential alternative to invasion for the PLA.

So it's, it's, you know, not new, I think at all to, to kind of highlight the risks associated with the blockade. China's ability to actually implement a blockade stems in large part from it just frankly the growth and the number of platforms that it has—the growth in the PLA Navy, the growth in the People's Liberation Army Air Force. It's something that can be complimented with Chinese Coast Guard or other irregular and paramilitary forces.

You know, I think from our perspective, you know, the blockade has, you know, a, a couple virtues either alone or in combination with the other coercive methods we outlined. Alone, I think it has the virtue of being something that can be implemented with perhaps a little less in the way of indications and warning.

You know, it's a little bit more plausible, I think, that the, the PLA could turn a large scale exercise like the ones conducted recently, and use that as kind of the jumping off point for a blockade and catch the United States, Taiwan, Japan, others, perhaps a bit more off guard than in the case of a large scale amphibious assault which would be very difficult to, to hide.

And certainly one of the big lessons from, you know, Russia's conflict with Ukraine is that, you know, building up to invade your neighbor is, you know, a very visible effort in most cases. So I think that, you know, surprise or near surprise operational surprise factor, it's important.

You know, I, I think the other factor that we, we discuss and that we highlight is that I think usually the idea behind the blockade is that it's about inflicting deprivation against the Taiwanese, that given, you know, shortages of food and fuel and other supplies, that this is really just kind of a way potentially for China to, to pressure and grind down the Taiwanese over time.

You know, I think our view is that kind of in concert with some of these other coercive methods, you know, the blockade may be really about demonstrating to Taiwan that it is alone and that impact it could have—or that you could imagine the PLA and CCP leaders calculating it this way—that the impact it could have is almost more psychological and therefore has the potential to, to work much more quickly than a blockade that's really just designed to starve out the target.

Toshi Yoshihara: You know, there are some mechanics specific to the quarantine option, for example that might produce effects that would go towards this, this aim of coercing Taiwan.

So you can imagine a quarantine that involved Coast Guard vessels, maritime militia vessels. You can imagine Beijing employing a customs inspection regime, so sort of a regulatory regime to reroute shipping headed for Taiwan. And of course China could diplomatically claim that this was, in essence a domestic law enforcement activity, and to create a significant amount of ambiguity about exactly what China is doing, making it very difficult for the United States and its allies to discern exactly what's going on. That might have the virtue of buying more time for Beijing to have some of these actions take effect on the island.

And I think one of the largest effects that a quarantine operation could produce is to place the onus on the United States and its allies to escalate and to intervene. And this could be particularly problematic if, say, U.S. allies like Japan have a hard time justifying. Intervention or counter escalation when it, it does not really know exactly what's going on and it can't come up with a political rationale for the domestic political audience about why Japan should be intervening on behalf of Taiwan. And again, that might potentially by time for Beijing to put the squeeze against the island.

Daniel Byman: So let's go to a second possibility you raised for coercion, which is a campaign of subversion. You mentioned assassination. Again, play this out for us.

Toshi Yoshihara: So I think we typically think of subversion or decapitation as you know, sort of in higher end uses of force, you know, using say missile and air bombardment to take out the enemy's military command centers or, you know, political centers and so forth.

But we believe that the CCP and the PLA have more subtle options through subversion, through the use of fifth column forces. We know that Taiwan has been penetrated by CCP covert agents, saboteurs, and compromised insiders both within state and society. And that many of these operatives could bribe, intimidate, blackmail, or discredit Taiwanese political leaders or military commanders of course, and even kill and assassinate them if necessary.

And the effect here in terms of subversion is to create division, say between the political parties, to again sow seeds of confusion, chaos, and debate between political parties in Taiwan. It could be used to divide the politicians from the military commanders, and in the worst case it's even possible that the CCP could convince operational commanders in Taiwan to stand down and to refuse to fight.

And the big effect coming out of subversion is what we've described as a reverse Zelenskyy effect, which is that the, the goal here is to create doubt in the minds of decision makers in Washington and in Tokyo and elsewhere about Taiwanese will to fight. You can very easily imagine narratives being spun, that if we're seeing, you know, this political infighting within Taiwan and military commanders standing down, this storyline that, you know, if the Taiwanese aren't willing to fight, why should we? Right. You know, why should we risk blood and treasure if it's clear if the local commanders and politicians aren’t willing to defend themselves?

Evan Braden Montgomery: I mean, I, I think as you, you kind of look at this case, you know, you need to be attuned in the case of Taiwan and its vulnerability to domestic level differences, you know, seams within society writ large between political parties, between civilian and military leaders, and that China, you know, may and, and, and certainly does have a lot of tools to exploit that.

You know, there's also the important role as we've seen as to mentioned in the case of Ukraine—and as you've written about, you know, very eloquently—the role of individuals and that sometimes can be hugely important, and this is, you know, potentially taking that option off the board. And so that's something that we've been you know, we were attuned to.

And you know, again, just to kind of footstomp something Toshi mentioned, it's very difficult politically for the United States, for Japan, for other states to come to the defense of a state that does not seem able or especially willing to defend itself. And so if, you know, China can take steps to create that image or bring that scenario about, it's certainly gonna make any political debate about the risks and rewards of military intervention in defense of Taiwan just that more precarious in the United States and in the capitals of U.S. allies.

Toshi Yoshihara: And I think there are two additional points to make about why subversion is so problematic for the United States and its allies. And that's, firstly, it's just very difficult to discern or understand exactly what's going on in terms of the complex internal political dynamics, the personalities that are involved or the people behind the scenes that, that are pulling these levers. And so I think it, it would be very difficult for policymakers and strategists to diagnose exactly what's going on, which would of course complicate decision making and, you know, cause more delays in decision making about what to do.

And I think the second set of problems is just that we have very little policy options, right? There's very little that we can do when it's something that's happening internally—that, that, that there are people within Taiwan that are making these decisions that are beyond the control of the United States and of its allies. And, you know, and I think a, a related point to that is that I'm not sure that we have the right instruments or even the right kinds of people looking at this problem set to try to discern exactly what's going on.

Daniel Byman: Let's switch to the other end of the spectrum, which is nuclear signaling. We often think of that really as its own category, but your article points out it could be integrated along with a set of other coercive measures. How might that work in a crisis as a way to coerce Taiwan?

Evan Braden Montgomery: So I, I think the nuclear coercive aspect of this, of this argument is the one that's a bit eye-opening, quite scary, and a lot of it really just stems from just assessing the trajectory and the scope of China's nuclear modernization over the last few years.

So for a long time, we've kind of become accustomed to the idea of China having a, a minimal nuclear deterrent—you know, very small, focused, at least in, in more recent years on, you know, strategic targets, not at a high level of readiness. And that all seems to be changing in the last four or five years. There've just been increasing reports and projections of the, you know, current and then expected growth in Chinese nuclear modernization, the size of the Chinese nuclear arsenal. We've seen numerous reports about the diversification of that arsenal to make it, you know, readier, more accurate, multimodal.

And so the, the situation that we, I think unfortunately envision and are concerned about is one in which China has the ability to engage in relatively limited and therefore increasingly credible nuclear threats, which could be directed against the United States, U.S. territories, forward operating use forces, and perhaps most likely U.S. allies like Japan, to get them to either avoid intervention to avoid providing support, or restrict their support to the United States or to back down during the crisis.

Again, a lot of this is enabled by the apparent interest that China has in developing non-strategic or theater nuclear weapons. You know, something they haven't really done before, but if you, you know, again, look at the growth of the Chinese arsenal, if you look at reports from the U.S. government, national security strategy, nuclear posture of view, national defense strategy, all of the China military power report, all of them mention, highlight, or obliquely reference the fact that China is developing a more diverse nuclear arsenal and is developing precise nuclear weapons that it might be willing to threaten or even use in the early stages of a crisis or conflict.

You know, and so that gives them a set of tools that they use to put enormous pressure on the United States, on perhaps Japan in particular to sort of kind of pull the rug out from U.S. power projection. If you could get the Japanese to obviously put significant restrictions on what the United States can do militarily from their territory it would be an enormous burden on the United States to conduct operations in the region.

You know, and so, you know, more broadly, I guess the way that, you know, I, I've, I've thought about this, is you know, for a number of years there's been this concern you know, pre-2022 about, you know, Russian escalate-to-deescalate doctrine, the ability of Russia to kind of threaten or potentially even use its very large, non-strategic nuclear arsenal against NATO and the United States to get them to back down in a crisis.

And what you could see—or what I think we're on the path to see—is a situation in which China may be in the position to pose that kind of risk to the United States and its allies because it is developing what could be viewed as a asymmetric advantage in non-strategic nuclear capabilities with its missile forces in particular.

Toshi Yoshihara: And to say a few words about the mechanics of this, again, one can imagine in a crisis that the PLA rocket force would increase readiness levels of its forces or move various nuclear capable units out of garrison. They can raise alert levels or even issue public statements about China's so-called red lines to significantly raise the stakes of the crisis.

And we have some preliminary evidence that you know, China now, increasingly, China has fewer qualms, if you will, about showcasing particularly its theater level capabilities. So you have, you know, state-owned television shows showcasing, you know, inspections of their theater level nuclear capabilities, or, you know, showcasing reloading of some of their missiles in the western deserts of China or even test firing their theater nuclear capability. So you can, you know, you could see some evidence that they might be able to use these types of methods to demonstrate the CCP’s resolve in a crisis.

And one other thing worth noting, and it's something that I've been doing, is, is, you know, reading the Chinese language literature and I, I found evidence of growing interest in looking at the Soviet attempts at decoupling during the Cold War using its theater range capabilities, and so I think there is at least some evidence among strategists and scholars exploring the past in order to inform Chinese nuclear strategy in the present and in the future.

Daniel Byman: We've talked about this a little, but let's now talk about the combination of these tools. And one thing your article makes clear is that it's not that China would necessarily be taking one of these out of the closet and using it, but that it's gonna use different instruments in combination and the effect is gonna be disproportionately greater.

Talk us through a scenario or some way of illustrating this point, because I think it's a very important one.

Evan Braden Montgomery: I mean, I think the, the easiest way to kind of, to illustrate this and think through the logic is to consider how all of these coercive lines of effort could be interconnected and could enable and magnify one another.

You know, if a blockade is put in place and it increases the likelihood—on the part of the Taiwanese, it increases their sense that they are isolated and cut off from outside support to the, any military effort they would need to mount to restrict that blockade, that increases the likelihood that they might fold, right.

That in turn increases the likelihood that Japan and the United States, for instance, would be perhaps more skeptical about the merits of, of intervention. If Japan, for example, is targeted with nuclear threats and it demonstrates politically and publicly that it has doubts about its willingness to support U.S. operations to break a blockade, you know, that in turn is going to create doubt in Taiwan about whether they can resist a blockade.

If there is a subversive effort underway in Taiwan that creates doubts in Washington about the extent to which the Taiwanese civilian leadership or military leadership is up to the task of enduring a blockade, that is going to, you know, magnify the political debate and, and debate over risk of intervention in Washington, which in turn is gonna have an impact in Tokyo about the extent in which Japanese leaders want to be forward-leaning in their support for the United States.

And so I think the way that we have, have kind of thought through this, and the concern we have is that individually, a lot of these coercive efforts are, are, are not new and in some cases don't even have a particularly good historical track record.

But if you start thinking about how they might be employed in combination and because you have a series of at least three—you know, frankly more—but three main targets, if you think about Taipei, Tokyo, and Washington, D.C.—three capitals where you're trying to influence the debate over the risks of military intervention, and because all three are looking at one another and trying to gauge how resilient they are, how forward-leaning they're likely to be, how reliable they can be expected to be, that creates an opportunity for those different coercive efforts to kind of work in tandem, in potentially a very powerful way.

Toshi Yoshihara: Yeah. And you know, there, you know, there is, you know, fairly significant evidence that both Taiwan and Japan hold these sorts of doubts and concerns about U.S. reliability. We highlight in the article how Taiwanese debates about the so-called America skepticism theory.

This theory has sort of, you know, taken hold and the theory holds that the United States would be willing to abandon Taiwan if it suited America's narrow national interests. That has gained traction in Taiwan, and, and it's a theory that the Chinese Communist Party has also sought to exploit by inflaming those concerns within, within Taiwan, through political warfare and so forth.

Japan, of course has always been really skittish concerned about U.S. extended deterrence. One only need to think back to the Obama administration's decision to withdraw the submarine launched a nuclear capable cruise missile, and the debates and the, and, and the concerns that that raised among Japanese policy makers. And I think, you know, Japan has become even more skittish after what's happened with the, with the outbreak of the war in Ukraine. So it seems to me that there are these underlying concerns, beliefs, and so forth that these options might be able to exploit.

Daniel Byman: Toshi, let me ask you a bit more on Japan. Your article talks a lot about triple coercion, so there's Taiwan, there's the United States, and then there's Tokyo. Why are you singling out Japan so much as opposed to other U.S. allies and partners in Asia or other countries that in, in theory at least, might be useful in the Taiwan contingency?

Toshi Yoshihara: Yeah, we, we focus in part on Japan so much because Japan is in many ways the linchpin of U.S. forward operations. You know, Japan's cooperation is absolutely essential for the United States to have access and use of the many forward bases that would be critical for the United States to remain responsive and effective if the allies were to decide to intervene.

And so it seems to me that a, you know, a strategy that's designed to split that particular alliance would have an outsized effect on the U.S. ability to respond quickly and to respond in force.

I also think that one of the reasons why China would want to focus on Japan is, I think a belief that China's path to regional hegemony is to break regional alliances, and so this is certainly one way that that would reinforce this option of trying to drive a wedge in perhaps probably the most important bilateral security alliance in the region.

Daniel Byman: Let me kind of reverse our focus now, which is, and talk about what Taiwan might do and what the United States might do.

And let's start with Taiwan. As they're preparing not only for an invasion possibility, but also for a coercion scenario or a set of scenarios, what should they be doing differently from their current approach?

Evan Braden Montgomery: I don't know that there's actually a radical, a radical difference in what we—and I don't wanna speak for Toshi—but I think what we would recommend that Taiwan do. I mean there has been a pretty, I don't wanna call it the school book solution, but there's been a kind of standard set of recommendations that has been going around for the Taiwanese for many years that kind of builds on some of the original kind of porcupine strategy work, and kind of expands beyond that and looks at smaller, cheaper, more numerous, less vulnerable assets that could be used to help Taiwan resist an invasion, but in many cases that I think could also have some utility, certainly, in trying to resist a blockade.

Would also have the added value of kind of demonstrating a level of kind of seriousness about the threat, which frankly has—one of the undertones, I think about, you know, the U.S. position vis-a-vis Taiwan, and the extent to which the United States is willing and able to come to the defense of Taiwan in almost any scenario, is the extent to which there is doubt about Taiwan's resilience.

And so I think kind of transitioning towards some of these kind of common sense, well-known recommendations—be it for anti-ship missile capability or defense capability, civil defense capability, you know—would help to kind of ameliorate that and address one of the, kind of the underlying targets of coercion in the sense that, you know, China wants to not only get Taiwan to fold but China wants the rest of the world to be convinced that Taiwan is going to fold. And so kind of standing a little bit taller in that regard, I think is ameliorative in almost kind of any scenario that China might, or any threat that China might pose to Taiwan.

You know, it does create some potential issues I think when you talk about the specifics of the capabilities that Taiwan needs, especially when you think about longer range systems that might have a little bit more utility against a blockade depending on where, where China sets up, but again, given the relatively constrained geography of the theater, I tend to think that the recommendations overlap quite a bit.

Toshi Yoshihara: You know, so I think, you know, one of the things that, you know, Taiwan needs to probably focus on is, you know, you know, whatever it can do in peacetime to demonstrate its will to resist Chinese coercion. And that can come in many forms, whether it's the strengthening of Taiwanese civil defense—which there's evidence that they're doing that—efforts to stockpile materials in case of a blockade or of a quarantine so that Taiwan would be able to withstand long-term isolation or longer term isolation.

Taiwan also needs to probably do more to go after a Chinese political warfare operatives to root them out, and that's more of a political legal process, but I think if there's a way to demonstrate that you know, Taipei is very serious about taking care of or resolving these threats of compromised insiders, fifth column forces, I think that too would go a long way to show that, you know, Taiwan is serious, not just on acquiring military capabilities to resist Chinese coercion, but you know, employing these more non-military, non-kinetic options to defend the island against these more nefarious subversive activities.

Daniel Byman: Let me ask a, a two-part question on the United States to wrap this up.

So part one is just a simple, you know—isn't coercion, you know, something that main planners would consider a lesser included case? So if the United States and Taiwan can handle invasion, you know, they can handle blockade, right, they can handle things that aren't as massive.

And then assuming that's wrong, what should the United States be doing differently to prepare for coercion, even as it prepares for the possibility—even if lower than expected—of a more massive all out war over Taiwan?

Evan Braden Montgomery: So I do tend to think that you are right that it does tend to be viewed as a, a lesser included case. You know, and I think that is the kind of underlying logic of U.S. defense planning. If the United States can, you know, build and design a force and field, a force that is capable of handling the invasion threat, it can handle any other threat.

I'm not sure that's either A) that we're necessarily on the track to build the force that can stop the invasion threat, but even if we are, I think it's a huge question mark about whether that force is well suited for dealing with the blockade. In part because the blockade scenario and, and a kind of lower level forms of coercion, raise a lot of political issues that I think are highly problematic in terms of, you know, deployment of assets, in terms of timelines. You know, if you are planning to very rapidly mass forces and conduct large scale kinetic operations against adversary, frontline military units in a very small geographic box, that is not necessarily what you're going to be doing in the case of a blockade.

I think the natural temptation on the part of political leaders when faced with kind of a ostensibly lower level form of coercion is to respond symmetrically, maybe not through a blockade, but symmetrically in terms of not escalating to high levels of kinetic force in the hopes of trying to find an off-ramp for the conflict, which is kind of at odds with how you would think about military planning and defense planning for stopping an innovation, which needs to be basically disrupted very, very rapidly before Taiwan would fall and then be in the hands of an adversary, and then you'd be forced to be kind of, to tackle a rollback situation if necessary. So I think that's, that's kind of one of the, the big challenges for the United States.

You know, I think the other one really kind of gets to the, the nuclear coercion dimension. I mean, you know, to the extent that you take more and more seriously the prospect of Chinese nuclear coercion, be it directed against the United States or Japan, or, or another U.S. ally or partner in the region, you know, it does raise or, or highlight some kind of fundamental tensions with extended deterrence. It does raise questions about whether the U.S. nuclear arsenal as it's sized and structured, is kind of adequate to provide a, a credible deterrent to those types of threats.

And so again, a lot of the debates that you saw in the context of Russia in say, you know, 2014 to 2019 in particular, you know I think we’re kind of due to have, you know, revisit some of those debates in the Asia Pacific context. And, you know, again, that raises questions about in particular theater nuclear weapons.

Does the United States have, you know, the right capabilities and enough of them sufficiently ready to dissuade China from engaging in nuclear coercion or to kind of match its threats if it does go down that path? And then what does the relationship look like with us allies like Japan that rely on the extended nuclear deterrence umbrella?

If one of the big concerns here is Tokyo getting essentially afraid and shocked out of, you know, participating in the military defense of Taiwan, the United States is as it has many times before, it's gonna have to think about how it can shore up extended deterrence relationships with allies like Japan, and then, you know, that may be a, there may be a capability solution.

We used to rely, as, you know, kind Toshi hinted at earlier, we used to rely on the nuclear arm version of the, of the sea launch Tomahawk. There may be kind of comparable capabilities that could help ameliorate concerns in Tokyo about U.S. reliability. And maybe more extreme options in the sense of pursuing nuclear sharing arrangements like we have with some of our select European allies, which is something that, you know, that Toshi and I have worked on and, and talked about in this context as well, but steps to kind of shore up those alliances in the face of that one particular aspect of coercion we highlight.

The nuclear threat, I think is the other kind of big piece of it that hasn't been getting as much attention, certainly as we've been kind of to date focused on the rapid invasion threat.

Toshi Yoshihara: You know, and I think the, the three options that we highlight, actually get at the asymmetries in terms of a lack of an, an in kind or direct in kind capability on the part of the United States and its allies.

If you're thinking about a quarantine where we are talking about non-military paramilitary forces engaging in law enforcement action, would we in fact, you know, conduct a, you know, a, a naval supported convoy to relieve Taiwan, and are we actually structured and postured to do something like that over a protracted period of time? So I think that's, that's certainly one question worth debating.

The second option, when it comes to subversion—we simply don't have, you know, an in kind military response to those types of activities that are happening on the island. We just, we just don't, you know. We don't have the tools available to deal with that, whether it's in, you know, you know, support of Taiwan or even to diagnose what's, what's happening as I mentioned earlier.

The third option, I think also gets into not just, you know, capabilities in terms of the, the escalation ladder that we might have vis-a-vis China's theater capabilities, but it also has a lot to do with our institutional muscle, our institutional memory. You know, it's been a very long time since we've had to think very seriously about things like nuclear brinkmanship or crisis management under the nuclear shadow.

So part of it has to do with, you know, the fact that some of that institutional muscle have atrophied and that we, we really need to, in some ways get back into the game to think much more seriously about the prospect of something like nuclear threats taking place in Asia.

Daniel Byman: Evan, Toshi, thank you both very much.

Evan Braden Montgomery: Thank you.

Toshi Yoshihara: Thanks for having us.

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