Director
Lyle Goldstein is Director of Asia Engagement at Defense Priorities. Formerly, he served as Research Professor at U.S. Naval War College for 20 years. In that post, he was awarded the Superior Civilian Service Medal for founding and leading the China Maritime Studies Institute (CMSI). His main areas of expertise include both maritime security and nuclear security issues. Major focus areas have also recently included the Arctic, as well as the Korean Peninsula. He has published seven books on Chinese strategy, including Meeting China Halfway (Georgetown UP, 2015). He speaks both Chinese and Russian and is currently writing a book on China-Russia relations. He has a PhD from Princeton, an MA from Johns Hopkins SAIS, and a BA from Harvard.
Asia Engagement
This program seeks to operationalize and promote a strategy of restraint for the U.S. in Asia.
This means capitalizing on a balance of power that favors defense to do less militarily and encourage allies and partners to do more. While engaging with this dynamic region, the strategy seeks, above all, to advance U.S. security and prosperity.
Within that broad framework, this program works to define U.S. defense policy goals in Asia and to chart a course of meeting them by laying out policies in the following areas:
Responsible competition with China: evaluating how exactly China challenges U.S. interests, bearing in mind the imperative to avoid a dangerous overreaction and treating it as an enemy
U.S. military posture, basing, force structure, and procurement and how these align with U.S. security interests
U.S. relations with major military allies in the region—Japan, South Korea, the Philippines, and Australia—and distribution of burdens and responsibilities within the alliances
The role of the U.S. on the Korean Peninsula and dealing with a nuclear-armed North Korea
Issues of common concern with China, including sea lane security, peacekeeping, anti-terrorism, energy, public health, climate change, arms control, and nuclear proliferation
Crisis management and escalation issues related to the delicate Taiwan issue and how the island could pursue viable self-defense
U.S. naval assets, presence, and patrols in the region, including freedom of navigation operations in the South China Sea
China’s prospects for continued improvement in its military capabilities and the implications for regional arms racing
U.S. relations with India and how that bilateral relationship might impact the regional security architecture
The closer relationship between China and Russia and resulting strategic implications for the U.S.
Explainers
The balance of power in East Asia has shifted in China's favor, but it does not follow that China constitutes a major threat to the territorial integrity or political independence of all neighboring states. As DEFP Non-Resident Fellow Peter Harris argues in a new explainer, upholding peace and stability in East Asia does not require U.S. military primacy. U.S. efforts to dominate the region could backfire by intensifying the U.S.-China rivalry and plunging East Asia into a new cold war. A more sensible approach would be to move toward an offshore balancing posture that incentivizes capable regional states to provide for their own defense and deter Chinese aggression.
The ongoing Russo-Ukraine war is analogous to a hypothetical war between China and Taiwan. Taiwan cannot assume the United States will fight on its behalf and should invest in anti-access, area-denial weaponry. While Taiwan can expect global support if attacked, challenges exist for aid to be delivered and employed. Sanctions against China are unlikely to deter them if they choose to invade Taiwan. Taiwan should learn applicable lessons from the war in Ukraine and use them to secure their continued safety and prosperity.
Many experts have expressed fears that China could either stage a hostile takeover of Taiwan’s semiconductor chip-manufacturing capacity or effect a critical disruption of chip supplies as a secondary consequence of a blockade or protracted invasion of the island. Some have therefore argued that these “nightmare scenarios” provide additional reasons for the United States to defend Taiwan. Neither of these scenarios, however, justify an explicit commitment to defend Taiwan or the risk of a great power war with China.
The United States has an interest in avoiding a Chinese invasion of Taiwan, but America’s overriding concern is to avoid a ruinous war with China. Proposals to deter China by bolstering U.S. military deployments in the Western Pacific are unlikely to succeed and fraught with danger. Instead, the United States should encourage Taiwan and other regional actors to develop their own means of deterring a Chinese invasion. If calibrated correctly, Taiwan and others may be able to threaten a response severe and credible enough to deter Beijing.
Amid the debate over U.S. policy toward Taiwan, advocates of an overt declaration to defend the island tend to assign Taiwan significant value, while proponents of abrogating U.S. defense commitments often downplay its utility. The truth is somewhere in the middle. The military value of Taiwan to China must be viewed in the aggregate. Occupying Taiwan would offer China some important military advantages, but China’s current technical deficiencies limit Taiwan’s overall utility to China, and occupying Taiwan could stress Chinese military and security forces.
China’s recent nuclear expansion, consisting of new ICBMs, submarine-launched weapons, and a new generation of strategic bombers, suggests a significant recalibration of Beijing’s traditional “minimum deterrence” strategy. Washington should avoid overreacting to this shift in Chinese strategy, prioritize preserving a strong nuclear deterrent that focuses on survivability, and accompany any modernization efforts with attempts at dialogue, arms control, and the development of crisis management mechanisms.
The Quad has transformed in recent years into a multilateral forum to enhance military coordination in the Indo-Pacific among the U.S., Japan, India, and Australia and to address issues of mutual concern, including China. But the Quad is not—and should not become—an anti-China alliance. Pushing the Quad toward such a goal undermines U.S. interests and risks unnecessary conflict, possibly even nuclear war.
China is destined to be the leading power in East Asia. It will soon have an economy much larger than that of the U.S., and its advantages in East Asia compared with the U.S. are compounded by geographic proximity and hence deeper economic ties to the countries of the region compared to the U.S. At the same time, the U.S. need not be directly threatened by the rise of China—if it focuses on balancing in ways that bring prosperity and avoid catastrophic war.
As discussion intensifies over U.S. policy toward Taiwan, including debates over the future of strategic ambiguity, nuclear concerns should be at the forefront. In the event of setbacks in a conflict over Taiwan, China could find itself willing to use nuclear weapons, even if it had not intended to do so before the start of hostilities. The U.S., too, could be forced to contemplate nuclear use in certain scenarios. The potential for miscalculation by each side is higher than commonly acknowledged.
It is at sea where the risk is greatest for a direct clash between Chinese and U.S. forces. But a closer look at Chinese maritime capabilities reveals a fleet that is powerful, but uneven and geographically constrained, with important capability gaps. This reality affords the U.S. time and strategic flexibility to pursue prudent policies that advance U.S. interests while avoiding a needless conflict.
Competition between the world’s two greatest powers is in some ways inevitable—but military conflict need not be. Geography, starting with the Pacific Ocean, and the positive sum outcomes of trade limit the dangers of competition with China. And U.S. allies, fortified with U.S.-supplied A2/AD defense systems and aided by other regional states, are capable of balancing a potentially expansionist China. That limits the risk of U.S.-China confrontation and the shadow it casts on cooperation in areas of overlapping interests.
The U.S. is strong, and the DPRK is weak and vulnerable, which is why it acquired nuclear weapons. The DPRK’s nuclear deterrent makes U.S. military intervention unthinkable. The DPRK is therefore unlikely to ever give up its arsenal, but a diplomatic solution could see freezes or rollbacks of the DPRK’s nuclear program in exchange for economic relief. Should the DPRK prove uncooperative, U.S. conventional and nuclear superiority can deter DPRK aggression indefinitely, maintaining an acceptable status quo. Given its strong position, the only way the U.S. loses is by going to war.