Keith B. Payne wrote the books upon which Dominic Cummings is basing his commentary. He has an article out precisely on the subject of deterrence and Taiwan from late last year. The centerpiece is the American policy of strategic ambiguity on the Taiwan question. The most important takeaway for me is what American policy needed to accomplish:
Since the TRA, the United States has walked the fine balance between two different unwanted possibilities: 1) backing Taiwan’s autonomy to such an extent that U.S. support effectively encourages Taiwanese leaders to declare formal sovereign state independence from China; and, 2) failing to support Taiwan’s autonomy to the extent that the CCP feels free to resolve the Taiwan Question forcefully.
This is important context when reasoning about the Ukraine situation. In the case of Taiwan, both too strong and too weak a position lead to war; we benefit from both China and Taiwan to be uncertain of our position. But in a situation like Russia and Ukraine there is no corollary: what unilateral action would Ukraine take, which would cause a war with Russia, that an American defense guarantee would motivate? In the Russian view, joining NATO qualifies—but this is a multilateral action (NATO has to be willing to accept) and also the whole motivation for joining NATO, to Ukraine, is the defense guarantee. Why would Ukraine choose to take on the burdens of membership if it could get good-enough guarantees for free, without crossing the red line that drives the very conflict it wants to prevent?
It looks to me like strategic ambiguity is the wrong lens through which to view Ukraine (and prospective future issues with Russia). As a consequence commentary about “being unpredictable” isn’t really germane; I agree with the emphasis on credibility instead.
Russia’s occupation of Crimea is one of the things a better-calibrated American position was supposed to prevent; Ukraine did have defense guarantees before then, so I’m extending the reasoning backwards to that point.
I claim the problem is that those guarantees were not sufficiently credible to prevent the Russian occupation; and then the response to the occupation was not successful in increasing credibility enough to prevent the full invasion.
At this point credibility seems critically low, and I don’t know how we can go about rebuilding it from here even if the people making American/NATO policy are persuaded that credibility is the thing to focus on.
Keith B. Payne wrote the books upon which Dominic Cummings is basing his commentary. He has an article out precisely on the subject of deterrence and Taiwan from late last year. The centerpiece is the American policy of strategic ambiguity on the Taiwan question. The most important takeaway for me is what American policy needed to accomplish:
This is important context when reasoning about the Ukraine situation. In the case of Taiwan, both too strong and too weak a position lead to war; we benefit from both China and Taiwan to be uncertain of our position. But in a situation like Russia and Ukraine there is no corollary: what unilateral action would Ukraine take, which would cause a war with Russia, that an American defense guarantee would motivate? In the Russian view, joining NATO qualifies—but this is a multilateral action (NATO has to be willing to accept) and also the whole motivation for joining NATO, to Ukraine, is the defense guarantee. Why would Ukraine choose to take on the burdens of membership if it could get good-enough guarantees for free, without crossing the red line that drives the very conflict it wants to prevent?
It looks to me like strategic ambiguity is the wrong lens through which to view Ukraine (and prospective future issues with Russia). As a consequence commentary about “being unpredictable” isn’t really germane; I agree with the emphasis on credibility instead.
Wouldn’t Ukraine want Crimea back, and wouldn’t that cause a war with Russia?
Russia’s occupation of Crimea is one of the things a better-calibrated American position was supposed to prevent; Ukraine did have defense guarantees before then, so I’m extending the reasoning backwards to that point.
I claim the problem is that those guarantees were not sufficiently credible to prevent the Russian occupation; and then the response to the occupation was not successful in increasing credibility enough to prevent the full invasion.
At this point credibility seems critically low, and I don’t know how we can go about rebuilding it from here even if the people making American/NATO policy are persuaded that credibility is the thing to focus on.