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- [00:01]
Daniel Byman
The following podcast contains advertising to access.
- [00:05]
Evan Braden Montgomery
An ad free version of the Lawfare Podcast. Become a material supporter of lawfare@patreon.com lawfare that's patreon.com Lawfair also check out Lawfare's other podcast offerings, Rational Security, Chatter, Lawfare.
- [00:26]
Toshi Yoshihara
No Bull and the Aftermath.
- [00:32]
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- [01:02]
Paige
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- [02:07]
Daniel Byman
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.
- [02:31]
Toshi Yoshihara
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.
- [02:46]
Evan Braden Montgomery
Individually, a lot of these coercive efforts 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, 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.
- [03:14]
Toshi Yoshihara
We are talking about how China might coerce Taiwan. Your piece is very provocative. You're arguing that invasion might not be the best scenario to plan for. And 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.
- [03:44]
Evan Braden Montgomery
Basically, the argument that we make is, 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 and extremely high cost. Despite criticisms 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 so there are kind of reasons, I think, in our view, for the PLA and the CCP to kind of 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 or 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 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 cheaper route to victory over Taiwan, over the United States than invasion with all the costs that that would entail.
- [05:45]
Daniel Byman
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, 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 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, and I think Xi Jinping and his subordinates might be tempted to consider alternative options that reconciles some of those tensions. And it may be that that might lead them to consider these alternative options that we highlight in our article.
- [07:47]
Toshi Yoshihara
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.
- [08:17]
Evan Braden Montgomery
Sure, I mean, just to start and then I think, you know, Toshi's done a lot of work on this issue in particular, but the blockade is certainly an option that is much discussed as a potential alternative to invasion for the pla. So it's not new, I think at all to kind of highlight the risks associated with the blockade. China's ability to actually implement a blockade stems in large part from its just frankly the growth and the number of platforms it has, the growth in the PLA Navy, the growth in the People's Liberation Army, Air Force. It's something that can be complemented with Chinese Coast Guard or other irregular and paramilitary forces. And you know, I think from our perspective, you know, the blockade has, you know, 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 PLA could turn a large scale exercise like the ones they've 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 hide. And certainly one of the big lessons from Russia's conflict with Ukraine is that building up to invade your neighbor is a very visible effort in most cases. And so I think that surprise or near surprise, operational surprise factor, it's important. You know, I think the other factor that we, we discuss and that we highlight is that I think usually the idea behind a blockade is that it's about inflicting deprivation against the Taiwanese, that given 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 the impact it can have, or you can imagine PLA and CCP leaders calculating this way, that the impact it could have is almost more psychological and therefore has the potential to work much more quickly than a blockade that's really just designed to starve out the target.
- [10:38]
Daniel Byman
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, US Allies like Japan have a hard time justifying intervention or counterescalation when 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 buy time for Beijing to put the squeeze against the island.
- [12:17]
Toshi Yoshihara
So let's go to a second possibility you raise for coercion, which is campaign of subversion. You mentioned assassination. Again, play this out for us.
- [12:28]
Daniel Byman
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 so seeds of confusion, chaos and debate between political parties in Taiwan. It could be used to divide the politicians from their 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 Zelensky effect, which is that 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 this political infighting within Taiwan and military commanders standing down this storyline, that if the Taiwanese aren't willing to fight, why should we, why should we risk blood and treasure if it's clear that even the local commanders and politicians aren't willing to defend themselves?
- [14:29]
Evan Braden Montgomery
Yeah, I mean, I think as you kind of look at this case, you need to be attuned. In the case of Taiwan and its Vulnerability to domestic level differences seems within society, writ large between political parties, between civilian and military leaders, and that China may and certainly does have a lot of tools to exploit that. There's also the important role, as we've seen, as Toshi mentioned, in the case of Ukraine, as you've written about, you know, very eloquently, the role of individuals 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 foot stomp 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 going to 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 US Allies.
- [15:42]
Daniel Byman
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 people behind the scenes that are pulling these levers. And so I think it would be very difficult for policymakers and strategists to diagnose exactly what's going on, which would, of course, complicate decision making and 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. There's very little that we can do when it's something that's happening internally 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 I think 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.
- [16:51]
Toshi Yoshihara
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?
- [17:08]
Evan Braden Montgomery
So I think the nuclear coercive aspect of this argument is the one that's I think a bit eye opening. It's quite scary. And a lot of this really 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 minimal nucle nuclear deterrent, you know, very small, focused at least 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 have 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, of that arsenal to make it readier, more accurate, multimodal. And so 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 U.S. 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 again look at the growth of the Chinese arsenal, if you look at reports from the US Government, national security strategy, nuclear posture review, national defense strategy, all of the bullet China military power report, all 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 US Power projection. If you could get the Japanese to obviously put significant restrictions on what the United States can do militarily from their territor, 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've thought about this is, you know, for a number of years there's been this concern, you know, pre2022 about, you know, Russian escalate to de escalate 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.
- [20:09]
Daniel Byman
And to say a few words about the mechanics of this, again, one can imagine in a crisis that 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 has fewer qualms, if you will, about showcasing particularly its theater level capabilities. So you have, you know, state owned television shows showcasing 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, you know, reading the Chinese language literature and 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 the future.
- [21:50]
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- [23:32]
Toshi Yoshihara
Your Hydro Pro Rower. That's H Y-R-O-W.com code row 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 going to use different instruments in combination and the effect is going to be disproportionately greater. Talk us through a scenario or some way of illustrating this point, because I think it's a very important one.
- [24:09]
Evan Braden Montgomery
Yeah, I mean, I think 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, but increases their sense that they are isolated and cut off from outside support to 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 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 US 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 magnify the political debate and debate over risk of intervention in Washington, which in turn is going to have an impact in Tokyo about the extent to which Japanese leaders want to be forward leaning in their support for the United States. And so I think the way that we have kind of thought through this and the concern we have is that, you know, individually a lot of these coercive efforts 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, 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.
- [26:28]
Daniel Byman
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 it's a theory that the Chinese Communist Party has also sought to exploit by inflaming those concerns within Taiwan through political warfare and so forth. Japan of course, has always been really skittish, concerned about US Extended deterrence. One only need to think back to the Obama administration's decision to withdraw the submarine launched nuclear capable cruise missile and the debates and, and the concerns that, that raised among Japanese policymakers. 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.
- [27:55]
Toshi Yoshihara
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 US allies and partners in Asia or other countries that in theory at least might be useful in a Taiwan contingency?
- [28:16]
Daniel Byman
Yeah, 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 US 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 would reinforce this option of trying to drive a wedge in perhaps probably the most important bilateral security alliance in the region.
- [29:27]
Toshi Yoshihara
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 set of scenarios. What should they be doing differently from their current approach?
- [29:50]
Evan Braden Montgomery
I don't know that there's actually a radical, a radical difference in what we, and I don't want to speak for tertiary, but I think what we would recommend that Taiwan do, I mean, there has been a pretty, I want to call it the school book solution, but there's been a kind of standard set of recommendation that has been going around for the Taiwanese for many years that kind of builds in 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, you know, 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, air 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, 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.
- [31:41]
Daniel Byman
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 of 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 compromise, 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.
- [32:55]
Toshi Yoshihara
Let me ask 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.
- [33:34]
Evan Braden Montgomery
So I do tend to think that you are right, that it does tend to be viewed as a lesser included case. And I think that is the kind of underlying logic of US Defense planning. If the United States can build and design a force and field of 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 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 invasion, 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 big challenges for the United States. You know, I think the other one really kind of gets to the nuclear coercion dimension. I mean, 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 another US Ally or partner in the region? It does raise or highlight some kind of fundamental tensions with extended deterrence. It does raise questions about whether the US Nuclear arsenal, as it's sized and structured, is kind of adequate to provide 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 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 participating in the military defense of Taiwan, the United States is, as it has many times before, it's going to have to think about how it can shore up extended deterrence relationships with allies like Japan. And you know, that may be, there may be a capability solution. We used to rely, Ashi hinted at earlier, we used to rely on the nuclear armed version of the sea launch Tomahawk. There may be kind of comparable capabilities that could help ameliorate concerns in Tokyo about U.S. reliability. It may be 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 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 kind of rapid invasion threat.
- [37:23]
Daniel Byman
Yeah, you know, and I think the, the three options that we highlight actually get at the asymmetries in terms of a lack of 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 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 time 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 support of Taiwan or even to diagnose what's happening. As I mentioned earlier, the third option I think also gets into not just capabilities in terms of 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. 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 the fact that some of that institutional muscle have atrophied and that 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.
- [39:12]
Toshi Yoshihara
Evan Toshi thank you both very much.
- [39:15]
Evan Braden Montgomery
Thank you.
- [39:15]
Daniel Byman
Thanks for having us.
- [39:19]
Toshi Yoshihara
The Lawfare Podcast is produced in cooperation with the Brookings Institution. You can get ad free versions of this and other Lawfare podcasts by becoming a Lawfare Material supporter at our website, lawfairmedia.org support. You'll also get access to special events and other content available only to our supporters. Please rate and review us wherever you get your podcasts. Look out for other podcasts including Rational Security, Allies, the Aftermath and Escalation, our latest Lawfare Presents podcast series about the war in Ukraine. Check out our written work as well@lawfaremedia.org the podcast is edited by Jen Pacha and our audio engineer. This episode was Kara Schillen of Go Rodeo. Our theme song is from Alibi Music. As always, thank you for for listening.
- [40:12]
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