The deterrence needed to prevent World War III

Biden’s successor must convince China’s leaders that US and its allies would come swiftly to Taiwan’s defense

by BILL EMMOTT
AUGUST 19, 2024

A nuclear war between the US and China can be prevented. Wikimedia

In hindsight, wars often look as if they were inevitable. Tensions were building up. National ambitions were clashing. Mutual fears and suspicions were growing. Historical grievances were simmering.

Yet in truth, they are never inevitable. They depend on decisions made by men – leaders ordering wars have almost always been men – who could have chosen to act differently.

I have been thinking about this a lot over the past year because I have been researching and writing a new book about the risk of a war breaking out between China and the United States.

The title of the English book, published by the International Institute for Strategic Studies and Routledge, is “Deterrence, Diplomacy and the Risk of Conflict over Taiwan.” But the title of the translated (and expanded) Japanese version that has also just been translated by Fusosha, is “How to Stop World War Three“, which you might think is a somewhat dramatic title.

Would a war between the US and China really become counted as “World War III”? And could it be stopped?

The answer to the first is obvious: this would be the first war in history between two nuclear-armed superpowers, and it would be a war that would determine the nature of global leadership for decades to come.

With stakes so high, we have to expect that such a conflict would widen to include other countries, including Japan, and, sadly, that it would escalate to include the use of nuclear weapons.

The answer to the second question is, however, more reassuring and takes us back to the question of inevitability. If such a war were to start, it would be the result either of

a deliberate calculation made by one side about the prospects of prevailing, for example over an invasion of Taiwan; or
an impulsive response to an accident or incident, for example over a collision in the South China Sea, as a result of which both sides failed to understand each other’s actions or intentions.

In either case, the issue is one chiefly of psychology and of the decisions made by political and military leaders. If such a catastrophic war is to be stopped from happening, what has to be focused on is that psychology – and how to alter the decisions leaders make in order to preserve peace and avoid war.

This is one of the most important lessons to be learned from the war that Russia launched against Ukraine, first by seizing the Ukrainian province of Crimea in 2014 and then by making a full-scale invasion in February 2022.

That war was inevitable only if President Vladimir Putin of Russia decided that he wanted, regardless of the costs, to try to seize back a former Russian colony that had been made independent by one of his Russian predecessors in 1991. That is what he did decide, and Ukrainians and Russians are still bearing the consequences.

Could he have been persuaded to make a different decision? Two years later, it looks as if two things could have altered his calculations. The first would have been if he had seen that the Ukrainian army was so well-trained and equipped and so well supported by Ukrainian society that it would be likely to put up strong enough resistance to make his invasion likely to be highly costly and time-consuming.

This did in fact prove to be the case, which is why more than two years later he has succeeded in occupying only about 20% of Ukraine’s territory at the cost of variously estimated 110,000-140,000 deaths of Russian soldiers and a much larger number of severely wounded. [And it is why Russia’s vulnerability has now been exposed by Ukraine’s daring counter-invasion.]

Putin expected Ukraine’s army to surrender easily, perhaps within a few days, so this must count as a terrible misjudgment on his part. Had he known in advance what the costs would be and how little progress the Russian military would have made two years later, it is reasonable to doubt whether he would have ordered the invasion.

The second thing that could have altered his calculations would have been a belief that American or other NATO forces would enter the war in support of Ukraine. In this case, President Joe Biden and other NATO leaders ruled out their forces’ participation right from the start, so Putin’s judgment about this was well-informed. And he has used the threat of the use of nuclear weapons to make sure that NATO leaders do not change their minds.

The war in Ukraine has been a terrible tragedy and a terrible mistake on the part of Russia and, let us not forget, its “strategic partner,” China. Russia and China signed a joint statement about their aims and ambitions just three weeks before Putin ordered the full invasion of Ukraine.

Yet that tragedy could yet bring some good, if its lessons can help prevent a far more catastrophic war from breaking out in the Indo-Pacific.

The crucial point is that psychology is paramount. An attempted Chinese invasion or blockade of Taiwan is inevitable only if Chinese leaders decide to do this, rather than just talking about it. As Ukraine has reminded us, that decision can be prevented in two main ways.

The biggest way is if China’s leaders can be convinced that, unlike in the case of Ukraine, American and other allied forces would come swiftly to aid Taiwan’s defense, so China would be fighting America and not just Taiwan. President Biden on four occasions during 2021-22 said that he was committed to doing this. He said it precisely to deter a copycat invasion of Taiwan.

Whoever wins the US presidential election in November should repeat this commitment at the earliest opportunity, and then repeat it again. Uncertainty about a new president’s intentions represents the biggest danger to peace, for it could tempt President Xi Jinping to follow Putin by making the wrong calculation.

That commitment needs to be accompanied by reassurance that America continues to oppose a formal declaration of independence by Taiwan, but also by sterner words warning of the danger of mutual nuclear destruction if war were to break out. The old Cold War framework of nuclear arms agreements needs to be resurrected for the US-China era.

Alongside such commitments, efforts also need to be made to convince China that the defense forces in Taiwan and those surrounding it in Japan, the Philippines, US bases and South Korea are strong and nimble enough to play a decisive and resilient part in the event of a conflict. If China were to conclude that an invasion would be a walkover, it would be much likelier to attempt one.

Those efforts are underway, in Japan and its allies, and the important thing is that such military build-ups continue, year after year, decade after decade. The old saying from the Roman Empire remains sadly true: if you want peace, prepare for war. The psychology of leaders and their decision-making depends on it.

Formerly editor-in-chief of The Economist, Bill Emmott is currently chairman of the Japan Society of the UK, the International Institute for Strategic Studies and the International Trade Institute.

This is a slightly expanded English original of a “Jidai-no-Kaze” (Winds of Our Times) column published in Japanese and English by Mainichi Shimbun on August 11 and in English on the Substack Bill Emmott’s Global View. It is republished with permission.