Is a Coming War in the Taiwan Strait a Myth?: A Review Essay

The Myth of War in the Taiwan Strait offers a unique rethinking of China–Taiwan–US relations. Drawing on their backgrounds—one from the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and the other from Taiwan—the authors seek to establish a baseline consensus. Their ability to present both perspectives, and to reason maturely about them, is admirable. They challenge readers to avoid a simplistic adoption of the so-called “Thucydides Trap,”¹ arguing instead that China’s own history provides an alternative model, which they term the “Yizhou Dilemma.” Unlike the typical narrative of the bipolar Greek world divided between a rising Athens and an established Sparta, the authors contend that the triangular relations of the Three Kingdoms period of Chinese history (220–280 CE) offer a more fitting analogy to the situation today. (In fact, fifth–century Greece also had three major powers, but Persia’s role is often overlooked in simplified accounts—a point that can be set aside for now.)²

Sun and Weng center their analysis on the Yizhou Dilemma. The states of Yizhou and Shu, both claiming rightful succession through the Han Dynasty, cooperated and competed as the fortunes of the warring states shifted. To the east, Wei and Wu waged war, exerting pressure on Yizhou and Shu. Seeking an advantage in the broader struggle for hegemony, Shu expanded into Yizhou and blockaded it. In response, Yizhou’s ruler opened the city gates and allowed Shu to absorb his state, ostensibly to spare his people the cost of a losing battle. Sun and Weng argue that this conquest led to overextension, ultimately enabling Wei to defeat both Wu and Shu, paving the way for the rise of the Jin dynasty (10–13).

The authors draw a modern parallel, likening the United States to Wei, the dominant power; China to Shu, a divided state striving for consolidation; and Taiwan to Yizhou, the weakest actor yet one whose choices could shape the system’s trajectory. The dilemma, they explain, lies in the risk that a rising power’s expansion may result in overextension and stall its ascent. Conversely, failing to consolidate territory may leave it too weak to challenge the leading power (14). As they conclude, “the path to hegemony is constricted when the rising power faces the challenge of navigating its relationship with the valuable weaker actor as a prelude to reaching hegemonic status” (15).

While the book covers more ground, its central argument—the Yizhou Dilemma—merits closer examination. Sun and Weng argue that in a system with three powers, the rising power will avoid conflict with a weaker third party because the costs of a distracting conflict would be prohibitively high given the pressures exerted on the rising power by the hegemon. However, they also contend that not expanding into the third party carries equally high costs, as it constrains the rising power’s ability to ascend (17). This is the dilemma. They conclude, “Beijing will stay weak if it stays put, but [it will be] weakened if it uses its military to attack by force” (17). Given the risks associated with expansion, they argue that “the specter of war in the Taiwan Strait is largely exaggerated” (161).

Yet the most puzzling aspect of this argument lies in the historical precedent. Shu did, in fact, pursue expansion. Although Yizhou did not resist with full force, it could have; and while Shu’s conquest succeeded, it ultimately failed to secure dominance. This raises a key question: Is the lesson of the Yizhou Dilemma meant to be descriptive or prescriptive? Sun and Weng advise rising powers to exercise caution in expanding into third-party states, yet their primary case study describes a rising power doing precisely that. Their argument ultimately hinges on the notion that prescriptive reasoning should override descriptive precedent. But if that were the case, conquests would not be as prevalent in world history as they are. The prospect of war in the Taiwan Strait may not be as exaggerated or mythical as the authors suggest.

A second claim requiring scrutiny is the assertion that “Beijing will stay weak” unless it unifies with Taiwan. But why must this be true? Is Beijing weak today, and what role does Taiwan play in China’s ability to increase its national strength? This argument attempts to replace a material rationale with an ideological one. The mainland government seeks unification for the same reasons it did in the seventeenth century: to neutralize the legitimacy threat posed by a rival regime in exile and to mitigate the strategic risk of a foreign presence in Taiwan.³ Yet both risks have already been managed or significantly reduced. Taiwan no longer seeks to reclaim rule over the mainland, and global recognition of the “One China” has largely prevented foreign states from directly intervening in Taiwan’s affairs, as the United States did between 1950 and 1979.

A truly peaceful unification would provide Beijing with geographical, economic, technological, ideological, and prestige benefits. However, the claim that PRC cannot be a strong and influential state without unification is unfounded. This mistaken inference stems from Sun and Weng’s overly direct analogy between China’s ancient warring states and the modern geopolitical landscape. As Yuri Pines has demonstrated, Legalist rulers in China’s past viewed population size and agricultural output as the primary sources of state power.⁴ More territory meant greater access to both, creating a continuous incentive for expansion.⁵ Today, however, the correlation between population size, agricultural land, and state power has largely disappeared. If it had not, China and India would already be the world’s most powerful states.

Instead, state power today depends on science, technology, trade, and innovation—factors closely tied to a nation’s education system, market economy, and stable relations with neighbors. The Chinese people, in fact, seem to understand this intuitively. China is not weak, nor will it be destined for weakness without unification with Taiwan. It is crucial to state this plainly, lest a new and unfounded justification for imperial expansion enter public discourse. A more fitting conclusion than Sun and Weng’s is the line from the Chinese satire Please Don’t Call Me Human, “Our nation’s doing just fine, thank you, and getting better.”⁶

Although Sun and Weng’s central argument is flawed, their survey evidence remains valuable. They conducted elite surveys in the PRC, Taiwan, and the United States, with approximately 130 participants completing the questionnaires. Their most notable finding was that elites in Taiwan and China view war in the Taiwan Strait as “somewhat unlikely,” while elites in the United States consider it “somewhat likely” (58). Moreover, elites in all three regions generally do not believe the United States would intervene militarily. Only 10 percent of PRC respondents, 14 percent of US respondents, and 20.8 percent of Taiwanese respondents predicted such intervention (59). Among Taiwanese elites, only those affiliated with the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) believe the United States would send troops, whereas nearly all Kuomintang (KMT) elites reject that possibility (69).

Assessing the validity of elite surveys remains challenging. The growing skepticism regarding US military intervention is increasingly shared by Taiwan’s public, particularly as expectations have been shaken by the war in Ukraine.⁷ However, a recent CSIS elite survey found that 96 percent of US experts are “completely or moderately confident” that the United States would intervene militarily in the event of an invasion, while 72 percent of Taiwanese experts concurred.⁸ A 2022 CSIS survey further reported that 100 percent of American experts believe China expects US military intervention in a Taiwan conflict.⁹ Yet, if all American experts believe China anticipates such intervention, while only 10 percent of Chinese experts actually do, this suggests a deep-seated mutual misperception.

A separate survey indicates that concerns over US intervention have a modest effect on Chinese public support for forcible unification with Taiwan.¹⁰ If China’s decision-making elite do not expect US military involvement, then such a threat offers little deterrence. More robust evidence on Chinese perspectives is essential to clarifying this issue.

Until such evidence emerges, Sun and Weng’s findings remain the most compelling. Their data suggest that US elites are out of touch with their Chinese counterparts, particularly in the post-COVID-19 and post-Ukraine invasion environment. Furthermore, President Joe Biden’s efforts to shift US policy toward “strategic clarity” appear to have failed. This failure may stem from the perception that an unequivocal US commitment to Taiwan’s defense outweighs America’s actual stakes in the conflict. It may also reflect the absence of traditional credibility mechanisms, such as forward troop deployments or a mutual defense treaty, in the Taiwan case.¹¹ Regardless, the presidential transition from Biden to Trump could have produced the same outcome.

History suggests that misunderstanding and misperception have long shaped US–China–Taiwan relations. Sulmaan Wasif Khan’s The Struggle for Taiwan traces this pattern in a chronological history from 1943 to the present. He compellingly describes how the US government has “shifted between two gears—strategic drift and sudden energetic action—while constantly revisiting its options” (52). For Taiwan, this dynamic began in 1950, when the United States unexpectedly intervened in the Korean Peninsula and simultaneously deployed naval forces in the Taiwan Strait to prevent the war’s expansion. The following year, the United States excluded “China” from the San Francisco Peace Conference, leaving Taiwan’s sovereignty unresolved. Although Japan renounced its claim to the island, the question of whether sovereignty belonged to the Republic of China (ROC), the People’s Republic of China (PRC), or neither remained unanswered (65).

Even after the Korean War armistice, US reconnaissance data enabled Chiang Kai-shek’s blockade of China’s southern coast, a violation of freedom of navigation that Secretary of State John Foster Dulles dismissed as merely “a little illegal” (76–77). Amid rumors of an impending US–ROC defense treaty, Mao ordered the shelling of Kinmen and Matsu to signal that such an agreement would be a mistake (82). The United States, however, interpreted the shelling differently and formalized the treaty to deter further aggression. Eisenhower, previously ambivalent on the issue, then signaled he might use nuclear weapons to defend the offshore islands. The crisis deescalated at the 1955 Bandung Conference, though a similar confrontation emerged in 1958.

Khan uses these episodes to illustrate his broader argument: US leaders repeatedly escalated peripheral disputes into near-existential confrontations. Richard Nixon, by contrast, avoided becoming “imprisoned” by his National Security Council (105), which allowed him to pursue rapprochement with the PRC. This effort required setting the United States on a path toward severing official ties with the Republic of China and ending its defense commitment to Taiwan. Khan argues that had Nixon fully abandoned Taiwan in 1972—rather than leaving the process to unfold under future administrations—Taiwan’s “story would have ended there” (115). This conclusion is too abrupt. The PRC lacked the air and sea superiority needed for a successful amphibious invasion,¹² and at any rate, was consumed by the internal chaos of the Cultural Revolution (1966–1976). Since the Korean War, multiple factors have informed the PRC’s capability and willingness to launch an invasion, and in the aggregate these variables have led the PRC to defer any such effort to the future.¹³

As Khan’s narrative moves into more recent events—China’s economic reforms after Mao’s death, the Third Taiwan Strait Crisis (1995–96), and the policies of the Trump and Biden administrations—it becomes more descriptive. The Struggle for Taiwan traces Taiwan’s political evolution from Lee Teng-hui’s 1995 assertion that “mutual respect will gradually lead to the peaceful reunification of China” to the increasingly polarized politics of the Kuomintang (KMT) and the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP). This division was symbolized in March 2023, when Ma Ying-jeou visited China while Tsai Ing-wen traveled to the United States (236).¹⁴

In recent years, Khan argues, the US–China–Taiwan triangle has reached the “edge of chaos,” with all sides becoming desensitized to escalating risks (237). As peaceful unification grows increasingly implausible due to Beijing’s “brutish nationalism” (250) and deteriorating US–China relations, the possibility of conflict stands at its highest point in three generations.

If a conflict were to occur and the PRC conquered Taiwan, Khan argues that regional powers would counterbalance China militarily and geopolitically, even as Beijing endured the long-term costs of estrangement from the West (255). Many American analysts, however, disagree, contending that regional states would be more likely to bandwagon with China, triggering a domino-like collapse of the US alliance system in the Indo-Pacific.¹⁵ As with differing American and Chinese expectations of US military intervention, this debate should not rely on abstract speculation but instead serve as a basis for further scholarly research. The responses of India,¹⁶ Japan,¹⁷ South Korea,¹⁸ Australia,¹⁹ and others —and, more importantly, China’s expectations of their responses—will critically shape any assessment of the costs and benefits of an invasion.

Chinese scholar Jiang Shigong asserts that reunification with Taiwan would elevate China to “political leadership in East Asia” and prompt Japan to “leave Europe and rejoin Asia.”²⁰ But is this claim accurate, or is it yet another case of strategic misperception? Perhaps Jiang should reflect on the Yuzhou dilemma and consider the potential costs of expansion.

Khan concludes his book with a critique of the increasingly casual discussions in Washington, DC, about a potential Taiwan conflict, including speculation on a possible US first use of nuclear weapons.²¹ In this rhetoric, echoes of President Dwight Eisenhower’s statements during the Taiwan Strait crises of the 1950s are evident. Yet two key differences exist: the PRC is now a nuclear power and no longer relies on Russia for extended deterrence, and Taiwan is no longer a formal treaty ally, as it was in the mid-1950s. As a result, such threats are both less credible and more reckless.

In sum, this review essay identifies two key tasks for scholars and policy makers across the region:

1. Conducting new research to better understand PRC elite expectations regarding the likely consequences of a Chinese invasion of Taiwan.

2. Shaping and influencing perceptions of those consequences in ways that strengthen deterrence.

The first task requires analysts to approach the issue with genuine curiosity, extending their focus beyond the US–China–Taiwan triangle. The second demands regional consensus-building, careful consideration of credible US and coalition responses short of open warfare, and a clear articulation of why maintaining the status quo is preferable to recklessly rolling the iron dice of war. Such efforts may ultimately contribute to war in the Taiwan Strait being more firmly established as mythical.

Dr. Jared M. McKinney

Dr. McKinney is an assistant professor at Air War College and the founder of the Air University Taiwan Deterrence Research Task Force. Opinions, conclusions, and recommendations expressed or implied within are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent the views of the Air University, the United States Air Force, the Department of Defense, or any other US government agency.