When I wrote my book on war, I avoided ongoing conflicts because I didn’t want the book to be dated the moment it came out. The roots of war and the paths to peace are timeless, and I wanted examples that made this permanence clear. Still, it was hard not to read obsessively about the conflicts facing today’s world and develop opinions. Over the next few months I plan to write a series on some of the most troublesome conflicts, and what I think social science has to say about them. I’ll begin with the one that worries me most, by far: a Chinese invasion of Taiwan, one that draws the United States and its Pacific allies into prolonged fighting. In other words: World War III. As many of you know, I am no China expert. Instead, this is what I gleaned from trying read as much as possible. My hope is that some of these ideas are as surprising to you as they were to me, including: Why America’s policy of strategic ambiguity is targeted at the Taiwanese, not China Why most of the things we read about in the news—from Pelosi’s visit, to Biden’s gaffes—are distractions from the important policy choices Why I think the two most significant events of the 21st century so far are China’s Hong Kong security law and Xi Jinping’s centralization of power (on par with, or even more important than, 9/11 or Russia’s invasion of Ukraine) Why the United States has been remarkably restrained and stable (even naive) in its China policy—maybe to its detriment—and much larger shifts seem inevitable to me. I am keen for feedback. Comments are open. The dispute The core issue is how autonomous Taiwan gets to be. In principle, there are lots of options. At one end of the spectrum is an independent and sovereign state of Taiwan, at the other is complete unification into mainland China under the current regime. The status quo is, of course, in between—Taiwan is de facto politically independent, while most countries and the UN acknowledge that Taiwan is part of China (some more reluctantly than others). This status quo worked for a long time for a few reasons:

China never had the military capability to invade, not least because amphibious landings are really difficult

Occupying a huge and possibly hostile island is also hard, especially because the style of Chinese rule is to try to control society through Communist Party cells

Besides the usual costs of war, invasion could unravel China’s economic entanglements with the rest of the world, and that could endanger growth

Deterrence: Taiwan’s allies supplied it with weapons and soft assurances that, if invaded unprovoked, Taiwan could probably expect military support

Another way to put this: everyone knew that invasion was the worst possible way to settle this dispute. War would be ruinous for both sides. Even if China’s leaders hated the status quo, it made sense for them to grudgingly accept it. Same for Taiwan. Political leader seldom get what they want. Mapping it out It’s useful to use a diagram here, because it will clarify why the status quo may be unsustainable. Let’s take the spectrum from total unification to complete independence and draw it as a line. For argument’s sake, let’s also suppose China and Taiwan + allies have had even odds of winning a war (hence the little black marker at the middle of the spectrum). I’ve put the status quo is just to the right of that for illustrative purposes, but the exact position doesn’t matter. The key intuition: rivals usually find a compromise that’s roughly proportional to their ability to burn the house down. That’s bargaining power. Arguably, 50 years ago, the balance of military power and status quo was further to the right (more autonomous). This was before China’s rise—back when many countries recognized the government in Taiwan as the sovereign of the island, if not all of China. But as mainland China’s economic and military might grew under the Communist Party, the balance of power shifted leftwards. China pressured the rest of the world to recognize its rights over the island, and most nations complied. China hauled the status quo in their direction. Now, if that was so successful, why didn’t China just invade, and pull the status quo all the way to the left? Or why hasn’t a fervent Taiwanese president come to power and declared independence, pulling it all the way to the right? The answer is simple: war would be costly, not just in terms of lost life and armaments, but destroying a lot of what makes Taiwan valuable (like microchip factories, and highly skilled workers) and possibly crushing Chinese exports and growth. Costs like these are why diplomacy, cajoling, and dirty tricks usually win out over war. The cost of the war creates a whole range of compromises both sides prefer to fighting. Suppose the cost is really high, represented by the bracket centered around the 50-50 split in military might. Those costs mean that China would fight rather than accept any Taiwanese autonomy to the far right of the bracket. Taiwan would fight rather than accept anything to the far left of the bracket. In between, there’s a whole range of deals. If one side were to find a clever way to change the status quo, the other side would grumble (or conduct military exercises, or seek sanctions, or something) but they wouldn’t invade. (By the way, I’m pulling this example from a terrific 2016 article on China-Taiwan relations by Scott Kastner. Some of you will recognize the bargaining approach to war, which comes from Jim Fearon. But the idea has been around much longer than that, and goes back to a literature on strikes, litigation, and business, including the famous Coase Theorem. It is a very deep and important idea in political economy: striking and battling are inefficient and so, most of the time, they’re avoided.) So what happens when one side—China—experiences the greatest and most sustained economic miracle in human history, spending some of that wealth on weapons, military research, troops, and information control? Maybe China advances to a 70% chance of victory. If that’s true, the balance of power shifts to the left, taking the range of compromises with it. The status quo is still preferable to fighting, but (let’s be honest) it looks more fragile. Why war wasn’t an issue up to now This helps explain Beijing’s patience up to now. For years, China experts have been telling us that Beijing was happy to tolerate the current status quo but leave the future open. They were betting on the continued rise of China, and the decline of the West. The bargaining range would keep shifting leftwards, and eventually the Taiwanese would have to concede some autonomy. Because the cost of not doing so was too dear. This also helps explains Taiwanese and Western patience. For four decades, the liberal-capitalist world made a bit bet that massive development, economic integration, and information technology would eventually make China a more open society. If that happened, mainland Chinese wouldn’t care so much about unification, and Taiwanese wouldn’t find somewhat closer relations so objectionable. I think that was the right bet to make at the time, given what we knew. But it is a bet the West lost. Both sides have now begun to lose their patience. The West lost their bet. And, on the Chinese side, growth has slowed under Xi Jinping. A lot. (This slowdown was happening before the tech company crackdown and before zero covid policies. Those policies have probably made growth even worse. Lately the government has even resorted to delaying the release of economic statistics. That seems desperate.) If China enters a low-growth state, then the leftward shift of the bargaining range no longer looks so inevitable. Still, even if it’s goodbye to patience, that doesn’t mean war. These are painful realities for all sides to accept. But that’s politics. Like I said, no government gets what it wants. How each side is responding strategically Instead, both sides are doing their best to improve their bargaining position—to move that balance of power in the direction of their preferred pole. Take Taiwan’s military strategy. It involves buying conventional planes, tanks, and missile defense systems, plus training a reserve army, and (increasingly, it seems) trying to make more conventional military doctrine.