Deterrence lessons from Ukraine

Abstract

Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine confirmed that revived great-power competition has heightened the prospect of global conflict, while restoring the concept of deterrence to centre stage. The stakes in a conflict in East Asia, however, would be even higher than those in Ukraine. A war over Taiwan could bring the United States and China, the world’s two greatest powers, into a direct military conflict which would represent a contest for regional or global leadership and would be likely to draw other powers into the fight. Such a war – in which the nuclear question would be ever-present – can currently be described as ‘possible, avoidable, but potentially catastrophic’.

In this Adelphi book, Bill Emmott evaluates the diplomatic and deterrence strategies that countries in and outside the Indo-Pacific region are using to try to reduce the risk of that conflict occurring. This book examines these strategies in the light of the lessons of the Ukraine war and identifies yardsticks with which to gauge their potential effectiveness and sustainability. Our goal, Emmott argues, must be for all sides to regard such a US–China conflict as ‘inevitably catastrophic and therefore inconceivable’.

Notes

1 For the 2014 sanctions, see Anders Åslund, ‘Western Economic Sanctions on Russia over Ukraine, 2014–2019’, CESifo Forum, vol. 20, December 2019, https://www.cesifo.org/DocDL/CESifo-Forum-2019-4-aslund-economic-sanctions-december.pdf. For a preliminary assessment of the 2022 sanctions, see ‘The Economic Impact of Russia Sanctions’, Congressional Research Service, 13 December 2022, https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/IF/IF12092.

2 Guy Faulconbridge and Soo-Hyang Choi, ‘Putin and North Korea’s Kim Discuss Military Matters, Ukraine War and Satellites’, Reuters, 14 September 2023, https://www.reuters.com/world/nkoreas-kim-meets-putin-missiles-launched-pyongyang-2023-09-13/.

3 See Charlie Vest, Agatha Kratz and Reva Goujon, ‘The Global Economic Disruptions from a Taiwan Conflict’, Rhodium Group, 14 December 2022, https://rhg.com/research/taiwan-economic-disruptions/; and Jennifer Welch et al., ‘Xi, Biden and the $10 Trillion Cost of War over Taiwan’, Bloomberg, 9 January 2024, https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2024-01-09/if-china-invades-taiwan-it-would-cost-world-economy-10-trillion?leadSource=uverify%20wall.

4 See, most notably, President of Russia, ‘On the Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians’, 12 July 2021, http://en.kremlin.ru/events/president/news/66181.

5 Ian H. Robertson, ‘The Danger that Lurks Inside Vladimir Putin’s Brain’, Psychology Today, 17 March 2014, https://www.psychologytoday.com/ie/blog/the-winner-effect/201403/the-danger-lurks-inside-vladimir-putins-brain.

6 See also Ian Robertson and his fellow neurologist Lord David Owen, ‘Inside Putin’s Mind: Absolute Power Has Blinded Russia’s New Tsar’, Sunday Times, 26 February 2022, https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/inside-putins-mind-absolute-power-has-blinded-russias-new-tsar-q8gws3v5j.

7 ‘China’s Xi Goes Full Stalin with Purge’, Politico, 6 December 2023, https://www.politico.eu/article/chinas-paranoid-purge-xi-jinping-li-keqiang-qin-gang-li-shangfu/.

8 ‘Why the Man Who Planned the Attacks on Pearl Harbor Advised Against Them’, PearlHarbor.org, 24 June 2016, https://pearlharbor.org/blog/man-who-planned-the-attacks/.

9 Sharon Braithwaite, ‘Zelensky Refuses US Offer to Evacuate, Saying “I Need Ammunition, Not a Ride”’,CNN, 26 February 2022, https://edition.cnn.com/2022/02/26/europe/ukraine-zelensky-evacuation-intl/index.html.

10 For a crisp analysis of the invasion and blockade options with a realistic sense of how actions by either China or the US could quickly escalate the conflict, see Brendan Taylor, Dangerous Decade: Taiwan’s Security and Crisis Management, Adelphi 470 (Abingdon: Routledge for the IISS, 2019), pp. 108–13.

11 Republic of China (Taiwan), ‘National Statistics: Total Population’, https://eng.stat.gov.tw/Point.aspx?sid=t.9&n=4208&sms=11713.

12 See William S. Murray and Ian Easton, ‘The Chinese Invasion Threat: Taiwan’s Defense and American Strategy in Asia’, Naval War College Review, vol. 72, no. 1, Winter 2019, https://digital-commons.usnwc.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=7877&context=nwc-review.

13 One example of this term being used in this way can be found in ‘Building Resilience for the Future: The Case of Ukraine’, Swedish Civil Contingencies Agency, September 2023, https://www.msb.se/siteassets/dokument/publikationer/english-publications/building-resilience-for-the-future---lessons-from-ukraine.pdf.