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TAIWAN AND THE DANGEROUS ILLOGIC OF
DETERRENCE BY DENIAL
MELANIE W. SISSON
MAY 2022
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
What strategy should the United States use to deter China from using force against Taiwan?
Some argue that deterrence requires convincing China that it would lose in a military contest,
a strategy known as deterrence by denial. An alternative strategy, deterrence by punishment,
attempts to convince China that even if it could win, the costs of trying would be so great that they
would outweigh any possible gains.
Policymakers should choose a strategy by analyzing its costs and risks, balanced against the
extent of the U.S. interests at stake. This policy brief concludes that the costs and risks of
deterrence by denial are not justied on the basis of U.S. interests. Although there are many
compelling reasons to prefer that Taiwan remain democratic and retain its afnity with the West,
these outcomes are not so vital as to merit a strategy for which the immediate consequence of
failure is high-end war with a nuclear-armed adversary.
A strategy of deterrence by punishment, by comparison, is pragmatic. It retains options for U.S.
policymakers even if it fails — it neither produces immediate war, nor precludes a subsequent
decision to go to war either to defend against or to expel an aggressor. So too is there reason for
measured optimism that deterrence by punishment will work. The United States has real leverage,
and an increasingly resolute set of partners, with which to convince China that aggression will be
enormously costly.
INTRODUCTION
China’s ostentatious gymnastics in a corner
of Taiwan’s airspace in October 2021 were as
good as throwing catnip in the air for an already
agitated contingent of U.S. national security
professionals. Following the days-long incursion
anxious observers pointed out, once again, the
dangers of China’s military growth, its burgeoning
ill intent, and the real possibility that the United
States just might not win an outright war waged
over an island that sits just 100 miles off China’s
coast.
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This alarmism culminated in calls for U.S.
Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and his 2022
National Defense Strategy (NDS) to prioritize
“high-end conict” — which refers to “large-scale,
high-intensity, technologically sophisticated
conventional warfare”
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— with China above
all else and indeed to treat everything else as
negligible “small stuff.”
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This time, however,
these entreaties were accompanied by a new
and troubling assertion from Rep. Elaine Luria,
a Virginia Democrat. She chimed in with the
surprising argument that there should be a
