Deterring China: imposing nonmilitary costs to preserve peace in the Taiwan Strait

The case for urgency in the context of deterring Chinese force against Taiwan is clear. Deterrence of China is necessarily a dynamic and constant activity than a static one. A dynamic deterrence approach seeks to arrest and turn back China's creeping assertiveness and coercion. Rather than metaphorically gathering the sum of one's forces at the gates of the castle to persuade the adversary that the final battle is unwinnable, it is better to condition China to recalculate the strategic usefulness of its constant coercion and aggressive probing. The authors argue that treating deterrence as a static rather than a dynamic or constant activity weakens a deterrence-by-denial approach as the US and its allies lose ground tactically and psychologically. They provide an analysis of how best to impose costs on China for aggressive behaviour in the grey-zone.