To Deter China, the U.S. Must Have the Political Courage to Retaliate Against Russia

The principal lesson Beijing is learning from the 2022 Russia-Ukraine War is that Western politicians are fearful of risking military engagements with a nuclear-armed power, fearing nuclear war. Aside from the provision of arms, and a small number of Western military advisors in Ukraine, the NATO members have strenuously sought to avoid involvement, stressing that Ukraine is not covered by any provision of the NATO Treaty. Lately, there was a brief moment of crisis when a purportedly Russian missile struck the Polish village of Przewodów, killing two non-combatants, until denials from Moscow, and evidence from NATO suggested it was more likely an errant Ukrainian air defense rocket. The prevailing impression is that NATO would have been very reluctant to retaliate by striking Russian military targets.

Today, Beijing is watching NATO’s non-response in Ukraine very closely and may be drawing the wrong conclusions about U.S. eagerness to engage in combat against a power capable of reaching U.S. cities with ICBMs. Since the U.S. must either attack Chinese amphibious forces within the first twelve hours of a Chinese invasion of Taiwan, or abandon Taipei to defeat, it would enhance deterrence if Washington could make a demonstration of its willingness to fight, whereas perceived weakness in Europe is likely to have a galvanizing effect on the Chinese leadership. Beijing may believe that if NATO (which has the benefits of a cohesive organization, firm commitments to mutual defense, and decades of planning for conflict with Russia,) is reticent to act kinetically to protect one of its Eastern European members, then the U.S. may at the very least hesitate for a few days while awaiting promises of assistance from an equally hesitant Japan and Australia; and this may in turn convince Beijing of the possibility of achieving a fait accompli. India, for example, is reluctant to describe the Quad, (of which it is one member, along with the U.S., Japan and Australia,) as a “democratic alliance.” Likewise, AUKUS, comprising the U.S., UK, and Australia, is at best an alliance by implication only; it does not commit either Britain or Australia to come to America’s aid in the Pacific. Washington is unlikely to be able to leverage its bilateral security treaties with South Korea, Singapore, or the Philippines to help defend Taiwan, since these treaties concern only direct attacks against either party. The U.S. has no security agreement with Indonesia or Vietnam, the former of which is critical for the U.S. in establishing a cost-effective blockade of Chinese maritime trade. All of these facts suggest that assembling a coalition against Chinese aggression would, at the very least, take time: time which the Pacific allies will not have. 

In contrast to Ukraine, where extensive territorial depth and multiple urban and water barriers attenuate Russian logistics and erode momentum, Taiwan’s shallow Westward plains can be quickly overrun if China secures a beachhead. China can land 32,000 troops within the first few hours by ship, hovercraft, helicopter and parachute, and 41,000 within the next 10 hours. Taiwanese troops will have as much time to roll out of their garrisons to the waterfront, airports and key highway nodes, as it takes the Chinese People’s Liberation Army troops on exercise and in ports to vector towards the Taiwanese port of Kaohsiung. 

Although some former intelligence analysts claim that China will not be able to hide the signals of an impending attack, Beijing’s interventions in Korea in 1950, in India in 1962, and in Vietnam in 1979, were all surprises. Japanese analysts have warned - not without some irony - of the possibility of a surprise Chinese attack on Pearl Harbor. Even if only the first wave lands, Taiwan will at best be able to contain it. If a second wave lands, a Chinese breakout will be a matter of time. Taiwan only has a single plan, which is to destroy the Chinese invasion force at sea before it can land, after which it has little prospect of success.

There are two scenarios of how the U.S. will respond to a Chinese attack on Taiwan. The first, immediate intervention, will consist of poorly positioned U.S. submarines launching anti-ship attacks against the screening escorts of the invasion force. Simultaneously, perhaps one hundred U.S. aircraft from airbases in Okinawa and Guam, supplemented by perhaps fifty carrier-borne aircraft in the Philippine Sea, will suffer high losses while fighting through five hundred Chinese interceptors, to get to the straits. Despite the costs, the Chinese invasion fleet will never be as vulnerable or concentrated. All other scenarios, whether D+14 for concentrating a U.S.-Japanese-Australian fleet, or D+30 for a NATO fleet to secure the Philippines Sea and then focusing on contesting the Straits of Formosa, will be too late. By D+12, China will have been able to land 101,000 troops. Only prompt action can defeat China.

Unlike the USSR, communist China has been consistently more volatile in its aerial and at-sea encounters with the West, and has manipulated the U.S.-Chinese dialogue intended to reduce incidents at sea. China has also put a strong emphasis on asymmetric warfare and reliance on paramilitary seafaring militias to erode national commitments to defend their maritime boundaries, against countries as far away as South America. In other words, whereas the U.S. and Soviet Union came to view military incidents and skirmishes as unwanted byproducts of military readiness, China today views such incidents as a tool to be deliberately employed for the achievement of policy aims. U.S. reluctance to retaliate aggressively against a Chinese maritime militia, as compared with the occasional response of the U.S. Navy against similarly aggressive Iranian forces, demonstrates that it is China’s nuclear weapons that are acting to restrain U.S determination.

In this regard, the problem is not that China, at this early stage, has a dangerously large and dispersed arsenal; but that its sabre-rattling may be a symptom of confidence that a small arsenal is sufficient to coerce its neighbors and deter a conventional American intervention. Current estimates are that China only has 320 nuclear warheads in 2021, loaded on six Jin-class ballistic missile submarines (which lack a deep water bastion or easy access to the Pacific Ocean), twenty liquid-fuelled ICBMs that can reach all of the continental U.S., and approximately seventy DF-31 warheads able to reach the U.S. West coast. Although these forces can easily penetrate the U.S. national missile defense, they would be vulnerable to a U.S. nuclear first strike, and perhaps to conventional strikes in an ongoing war.

While it took the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis to alert the Soviet leadership of the dangers of nuclear adventurism and the reality of the shared risk, China has already provoked three losing crises over Taiwan in 1954-1955, 1958 and 1995-1996 - all occasions when the United States enjoyed much greater nuclear superiority over China - and still demonstrates no change in outlook. Middlebury College professor Russell Leng argued that when states lose crises, their most common conclusion is that they need to be more aggressive the next time. This does not bode well for future Taiwan crises. Although some like scholar Jeffrey Lewis suggest that China’s strategy of Minimum Deterrence is the result of a sober assessment of the disutility of nuclear weapons, it is more likely that technical issues with its plutonium breeder reactor at the Jiuquan Complex in Xinjiang have held back its serial production of thermonuclear weapons. Today, if Russia - with its comparably weak conventional position but relatively strong nuclear forces - is able to prevail by nuclear blackmail in Ukraine, then we should not be surprised if Chinese leaders conclude that the risks of nuclear brinkmanship with the United States are tolerable, and the results worthwhile. 

How can the US avoid such an outcome? There are two ways in which a war can escalate from the conventional to the nuclear level. The first way is a deliberate act of retaliatory violence controlled by a country’s political leaders. The second way is the unintended intensification of the nuclear exchange resulting from factors that are beyond the control of the two rivals. As unpalatable as it may be for both sides, the danger of this second type of escalation - the “escalation that leaves something to chance” in the words of Nobel-prize winning economist Thomas Schelling - actually reinforces deterrence; whereas demonstrated fear of escalation emboldens aggressors.  Consequently, the problem with vague public threats by civilian politicians is that they are more likely to be taken for a lack of resolve than prudent restraint, and thereby invite provocation. A precise threat of a proportional and immediate retaliation, updated in response to each new maneuver by an adversary, dispels any such perception. In other words, if American leaders wish to avoid being backed into a corner, they must demonstrate an unambiguous willingness to engage in limited war with their great power rivals.

There is the second challenge that the U.S. needs to convince its NATO allies that increasing the risk of nuclear war in Europe over Ukraine is worth saving Taiwan. China is an ascendant power with ten times the economy and population of Russia, and its prevailing over Taiwan’s independence will have global implications for the next century. Russia, by contrast, is manifesting a desperate and undignified final lashing-out, amid a period of humiliating imperial contraction, by the older generations of its society that nostalgically remember Soviet communism. Taiwan must take priority over Ukraine.

For this reason, the U.S. must retaliate reflexively without hesitation against any Russian attack on a U.S. treaty ally, because the strategic outcomes over Ukraine will set the stage for war with China over Taiwan. U.S. deterrence will be decisively undermined if Beijing comes to believe that the U.S. fears engaging in a limited war under overlapping nuclear umbrellas - which is precisely what the U.S. will need to do in the opening 24 hours of a Chinese amphibious, bombardment, or blockade operation of Taiwan.

Any retaliation against Russian aggression must be immediate and proportional. In the case of deliberate Russian strikes against NATO targets, a preliminary retaliation against Russian troops in Ukraine or Belarus may suffice, but continued attacks against Poland or the Baltic States may require retaliation against targets in Russia proper. All of these exchanges must be accompanied by a clear articulation of intentions through hotlines, public declarations, and direct warnings to the Russian people through available technical means; and, crucially, the U.S. must demonstrate its willingness to take such actions before the need for them actually arises. Washington must begin not only to rehearse a united alliance response with NATO in Europe and with its Asian allies, but to declare the certainty of retaliation openly so that little is left to the imagination of decision-makers in Moscow and Beijing.

Ben Ollerenshaw specializes in nuclear strategy and strategic studies in the International Security program at Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia.

Dr. Julian Spencer-Churchill is an associate professor of international relations at Concordia University (Montreal), former army engineer officer, and has written extensively on Pakistan, where he conducted field research for over ten years.