The potential People’s Republic of China (PRC) takeover of Taiwan includes a full spectrum of military and non-military options. Yet the capabilities to do so are secondary to the will of China’s Communist leaders to accomplish it. Given the tyranny of distance that limits U.S. and partner access and resupply, the timing of crises inside the first island chain remains decidedly in Beijing’s sphere of influence. To counter China’s preponderance of initiative and momentum emanating from the mainland, the United States and its partners have been expanding resources and operational applications to slow, if not deny, a hostile takeover. The goal is to influence adversary decision-making before needing to defeat adversary forces through combat.
Foremost have been service-specific approaches supporting the theater commander, ranging from shipbuilding and expanded air and maritime freedom-of-navigation operations[1] to offensive space and cyber capabilities.[2] Irregular warfare activities are also increasing to build and sustain resistance in the area[3] and to expose and exploit adversary vulnerabilities.[4] All told, Joint Force efforts to increase multi-domain capabilities have the potential to counter the growing threat from China. However, applying that capability within the adversary’s decision space requires more than manpower and materiel; it requires intellectual overmatch to defeat the adversary’s strategy. The Joint Force can draw on a wealth of lessons learned from the Cold War and twenty years of counterterrorism (CT) and counterinsurgency (COIN)—to say nothing of the growing evidence from the large-scale “battle lab” in Ukraine. Yet little research has examined the potential for crisis response (CR), as an irregular-warfare specialization, to support strategic-deterrence efforts.
Crisis response spans both military and non-military actions. In the broadest sense, it entails the management of unexpected or intense events that threaten to overwhelm the normal functions of the system facing the crisis. State and societal responses depend as much on resilience built prior to crisis as they do on adaptability to respond decisively during it. This requires the ability to understand conditions accurately enough to apply processes previously proven effective under similar circumstances. For this capability to extend beyond the limits of the crisis itself, response thinking must also be strategic—able to see through the crisis to the core interests at stake. Employing a crisis response to communicate a threat to an adversary elevates it to the level of strategic coercion—the most complex and difficult of statecraft endeavors.
To lay out a possible pathway for crisis response to serve as a strategic force multiplier, this article focuses on the core logic of strategic coercion, of which deterrence is one element. It then analyzes CR as a means of supporting strategy before addressing the potential for applying elite military crisis-response capabilities to deterring China’s aggression against Taiwan.
Deterrence Is More Difficult Than It Appears
Carl von Clausewitz, the high priest of Western warfare, understood that power and initiative shape comparative advantage.[5] To weaken an adversary’s relative strengths, indirect measures can succeed so long as they do not disproportionately decrease one’s own. As a result, finding asymmetries that gain more in success than they cost in failure remains a hallmark of effective statecraft before, during, and after conflict. Those responsible for identifying and exploiting such advantages must retain boldness, both as a personal trait and as a product of education that cultivates critical and creative thinking under duress.[6] Under clandestine conditions, elite military units can afford to risk more for higher-payoff targets given the advantages of speed, surprise, and violence of action.[7]
For these small-scale operations to achieve coercive influence, they must carry over into the cognitive dimension of adversary decision-making and thus verge into strategic thinking as much as operations to shape it.[8] Deterrence, as a form of coercion, hinges on understanding adversary decision processes, which in turn relies on deep knowledge of the values and behavioral norms shaping their interests, actions, and reactions. As a central element of decision-making, risk propensity defines the willingness to endure costs for favorable benefits. Outside actors can force what would otherwise be undesirable actions more easily in areas of asymmetry, since these carry lower risks with larger margins of error that do not threaten core capabilities.[9] However, adversaries can also maintain and actively work toward generating alternatives that either balance coercive threats or supplant them through other means.
As Freedman points out, adversaries therefore possess agency within limitations—what they intend to do runs up against what they can do, both of which are influenced by their opponents.[10] The shared dynamic of inescapable constraints persists until one side can no longer participate, either through defeat or capitulation. The key to winning is to make the adversary think that victory is not possible, even if it may still be possible in reality.
Consequently, strategy becomes the exercise of coercion and counter-coercion played out across time and space with resources that are both critical for one’s side and vulnerable to the other’s predations. Influencing these kinds of relational opportunities and constraints defines coercion, which Schelling prioritized as some combination of “hurting” and “bargaining.”[11] At the core lies the anticipation of pain, which can motivate the other side to seek redress while it still retains the choice to avoid more undesirable consequences. Strength to resist can thus still be found at the bargaining table, even as it can conversely be lost through fighting what becomes a lost cause. Key to successful coercion is the ability to marry active violence to the potential for future violence should the opponent fail to relent. Recognizing that participants in conflict play multiple “variable-sum games”—such that they do not have singular, homogenized interests, preferences, or values[12]—coercion spans the power to hurt as a direct incentive and the power to deny as an indirect incentive to yield.
Throughout this strategic dialogue, successful coercion is fraught with dangers of escalation that each side seeks to manage. As the space for anticipated victory shrinks, either due to adversary actions or weakness within one’s side, the incentives to escalate increase. Kahn identifies principal ways this can compound actions and targets, widen areas under threat, and/or increase the intensity of language, actions, and actors.[13] Accordingly, a threatening act—either direct or implied—that is limited, isolated, or discrete can increase the likelihood of coercion working, because it leaves room for the adversary to offer a modicum of capitulation without fully surrendering existential interests.[14]
Herein lies the essential role of crisis response in supporting deterrence. By revealing a capability that can impose greater pain on the adversary than the isolated action itself, it can increase coercive effects with an ability that can be applied to other areas of greater significance. While the selection of targets remains concealed, the potential pain of CR activities is fungible. This expands the types and relative weight of signaling to threaten and, if needed, force the adversary into more painful circumstances. As per Clausewitz, given their limited, isolated, and discrete nature, CR capabilities threaten horizontal escalation across comparable vulnerabilities while avoiding the vertical risk so often associated with nuclear deterrence that threatens core interests. CR threatens the adversary indirectly because it does not require a specific demand; instead, it exposes a weakness that the action exploits to achieve its operational goals. By doing so, CR reinforces its coercive potential by incentivizing the adversary to react in a limited way rather than ratcheting the conflict. Thus, by raising the risks on other types of vulnerabilities rather than just a single set of targets, CR activities present a dilemma that forces the adversary into reactive decision-making, thereby taking away the initiative as a key source of power.
However, to maximize that coercive potential, crisis response must first connect what is inherently indirect to direct strategic messaging. This requires the adversary to perceive accurately and understand the leap from the crisis response itself to something more significant threatened by the capabilities being applied elsewhere. One particular activity that utilizes elite military crisis response in such a fungible way is hostage rescue in a denied area.
Hostage Rescue as Strategic Crisis Response
Operational environments directly affect the warfighting functions used during a hostage-rescue mission. Key functions include intelligence, communications, movement, and maneuver. Permissive locations offer numerous open sources to build a common intelligence picture; they also provide accessible ingress and egress options, and secure transmission of information while maneuvering onto and off the target. Operational dominance in these environments supports the protection function by closing knowledge gaps about enemy capabilities and force disposition. Diplomatic approvals, based on prior or immediate access, basing, and overflight permissions, also play a central role in enabling those advantages.
At the other end of the spectrum, denied areas undermine many of the support capabilities that units assume upon during planning and training. Terms such as “disrupted or denied comms” and “austere medicine” illustrate the constraints units must work around in the most challenging conditions, often forcing adaptations in tactics, techniques, and procedures. Between those endpoints, semi-permissive and semi-denied areas combine elements of freedom to operate with constraints on action.
Adversary strengths directly shape the operational environment. Against symmetric opponents, the United States and its partners have needed to identify “two-fors”—operations that maximize output while limiting input for activities and investments. The imperative to do more with fewer resources becomes more acute as budget pressures force the Joint Force, writ large, to do better with less. Central to those adaptations is identifying lightly protected adversary vulnerabilities that can cascade into threats against higher-priority interests. Finding gaps in defense systems at the periphery, or in similar systems used by commercial or proxy forces, can reveal edge weaknesses that point to core vulnerabilities. In that regard, hostage-rescue capabilities can produce ripple effects beyond the immediate operational area because the skills and resources employed in one context can transfer to similar conditions elsewhere—regardless of the target.
Given the political pressures and compressed timelines of hostage scenarios, rescue missions often require elite military units capable of executing Special Operations under the toughest conditions. These missions can target traditional hostage-takers—terrorist and criminal groups—as well as proxies of state adversaries. (Direct state-to-state hostage taking remains rare, given alternative avenues for coercion.) Central to rescue operations is the Special Operations targeting model: find, fix, finish, exploit, analyze, and disseminate (F3EAD). F3EAD moves quickly onto and off the target to match the short time frames of the operational context. Whether focused on high-priority site seizure, personnel recovery, or sensitive-material collection, Special Operations crisis response typically trades breadth of scope for speed of results.
Developed and refined through CT and COIN missions over the past two decades, F3EAD relies on a Joint Force–interagency–international network for intelligence assessments to find and fix targets. Partner contributions to target acquisition can increase accuracy even when constrained by classification restrictions. Given the heightened political priority of many hostage scenarios, CR may also benefit from expedited review and approval processes.
The finish phase depends on the exceptional expertise of assigned forces. Oversight and support before and during operations allow CR to be nested within larger strategic processes and to operate inside “right and left” limits that manage escalation risk. The final phases—exploit, analyze, and disseminate—extend learning across the enterprise. Passing lessons learned into other tactical and operational areas expands CR’s potential for strategic coercion.
Foremost, successful CR can undermine enemy capabilities and expose vulnerabilities through mission success against a single objective, which can then be leveraged for strategic effects in that location or elsewhere. Even while concealing the precise capabilities used in a rescue, revealing the success, and affirming the ability to do it again, shapes adversary calculations about strengths, weaknesses, and likely risks. After a rescue, an adversary must account for both the vulnerability exposed and its exploitation, which changes the calculus of relative strengths and weaknesses in future conflicts. Closing previously unknown or underprioritized gaps, restoring leaders’ confidence in rebuilt defenses, and punishing those responsible for the “embarrassment” all require time and resources. Those demands can, in turn, disrupt timelines and budgets for future hostile activity against the U.S. and its partners.
Crisis Response Support to Deterrence over Taiwan
The current and foreseeable force posture in the Indo-Pacific presents clear advantages to China. Proximity for lines of communication and control inherently privileges Beijing in its strategic calculus. By comparison, U.S. interests are more limited—focused on partnerships and commerce within a broader global footprint. Even as specific countries and industries feature prominently in U.S. strategies, the tyranny of distance and competing priorities constrain both available capabilities and future commitments. Wherever the United States postures its forces, much of the operational impact occurs through strategic signaling to assure partners and deter China, rather than through direct defense across the entire region. With the goal of preventing conflict, deterrence remains paramount, even as warfighting capabilities underpin its potential effectiveness.
In response to U.S. deterrent messages and the “muscle” necessary to back them, China’s military forces and civilian industries have developed multi-layered capabilities to defend the mainland while supporting offensive action against Taiwan. Caverley’s review of China’s “kill web” illustrates the challenge U.S. deterrence faces when seeking to impose costs inside the First Island Chain.[15] Notable features include:
- overlapping and redundant anti-access/area-denial and space systems;
- extensive global resource procurement to sustain war production and economic activity; and
- pervasive cyber capabilities that can both attack and defend in support of military operations.
Combined with “One China” nationalism as an element of Chinese Communist Party (CCP) control, the deck is not only stacked in Beijing’s favor—Beijing also holds many of the cards. How, then, can U.S. crisis-response capabilities influence Chinese decision-making if these systems already appear robust against U.S. interference?
The first step is understanding the adversary’s intrinsic vulnerabilities. The CCP governs a vast domestic empire akin to historic European dominions, characterized by diverse topography, languages, and regional identities. The weight of history has long threatened to pull China apart; the legacy of past imperial collapse still shapes CCP decision-making. This domestic fragility demands rigid control to prevent chaos, but that same control limits the social innovation needed for adaptive thinking during crisis or conflict. Sawyer highlights a stark contrast between classical Chinese strategic wisdom and Beijing’s current rigidity.[16] Across dynasties, Chinese strategists warned that political control could stifle the creative adaptation required to defeat an enemy, lessons the CCP appears to have forgotten.
China’s monolithic system may appear resilient, and its mass and geography may favor endurance, yet assumptions of U.S. weakness pose a deeper problem for Beijing than ignorance of U.S. capabilities. This leads to a second core vulnerability: the regime’s inability to understand its adversaries. Wu Ch’i, later known as Wu Tzu, argued in the fourth century BC that without genuine knowledge of the enemy, deception only compounds ignorance and brings ruin to even the best-planned strategy. Modern China’s insistence that others understand it—without reciprocating—has produced a trail of disillusioned partners. While some states still accept short-term gains from engagement, that pool is neither limitless nor uncontested. These flaws expose a key vulnerability for U.S. crisis-response strategy to exploit: Beijing’s tendency to overstep rather than merely overreach.
China’s defensive advantages on the mainland do not easily translate into offensive success. If the United States and its partners pre-position forces on and around Taiwan, defensive advantages shift toward the allies.[17] The extent of that advantage depends on their timing, duration, and intensity, but the potential to rebalance remains fluid. Moreover, while Beijing would seek rapid territorial gains, the likelihood of a prolonged regional conflict grows as U.S. policy continues to frame the CCP as a “pacing threat.” As Sun Tzu warned, stalemates offer no advantage.[18] Over time, mounting losses—economic and military—would turn such a conflict into a costly stalemate for Beijing.
China’s economic health increasingly depends on foreign-sourced materials. Globalization and market integration have eroded the CCP’s ability to insulate itself from external influence. Despite tools of control such as the “Great Firewall,” “Great Cannon,” and “social credit” system, the scale of dependence on global resources exposes vulnerabilities far beyond the loss of export markets. Damage to the defense industrial base would further compound these problems.[19]
As a result, the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) would need to seize Taiwan quickly to avoid prolonged economic and political shock. The CCP’s domestic legitimacy, fragile since Tiananmen, depends on maintaining prosperity and stability. As seen during the COVID-19 pandemic and the ongoing property-market crisis, Beijing walks a far narrower line with its populace than official narratives suggest. If a Taiwan conflict leads to sustained economic pain and mounting casualties, internal unrest could threaten the regime more than losses on the battlefield. The larger and more interconnected China’s economy becomes, the greater the number of pressure points that U.S. and partner actions can exploit to deter escalation.
Crisis-response capabilities directly address these vulnerabilities. First, by demonstrating the U.S. ability to act when and where it chooses, CR exposes a wide range of targets Beijing would prefer to remain untouched. Using the warfighting functions as a guide, U.S. CR operations can threaten the facilities, routes, and systems that underpin China’s global reach. Unless the CCP develops isolated “China-only” versions of these assets, its vulnerabilities will multiply over time. In that sense, CR’s greatest effect is deterrent: like the sword of Damocles, the potential for CR-enabled precision strikes to disrupt essential networks heightens Beijing’s internal frictions by targeting economic pressure points. Amplifying those domestic strains—historically the CCP’s greatest fear—positions CR as a valuable tool of strategic-escalation management.
Second, the integration across U.S. and allied networks required for effective crisis response also strengthens large-scale combat readiness. CR planning and resources can extend the duration and scope of a fight to halt Chinese aggression, leveraging a multi-layered coalition. While Beijing may blunt some of these capabilities, it cannot easily account for the resilience and adaptability of U.S. partnerships. From the global war on terror to Ukraine, allied cooperation has repeatedly demonstrated endurance under pressure. Recent advances with Japan, South Korea, Vietnam, the Philippines, and Australia point to a widening regional coalition to counter PRC aggression. Beyond the Indo-Pacific, growing European recognition of China’s threat adds depth to the Western response.
Finally, successful crisis-response operations demand an exquisite combination of skills, tools, and resources applied consistently across diverse environments. Few militaries can perform at that level worldwide. U.S. Special Operations Forces, however, have more than three decades of experience demonstrating such capabilities for strategic effect—from the adaptations of Operation Gothic Serpent in Mogadishu to the rapid mass evacuations under Operation Allies Refuge in Kabul. Given China’s overextended economic footprint and limited ability to defend critical nodes, lines of communication, and global supply routes, the United States and its partners face a “target-rich environment” should deterrence fail and conflict emerge. The United States would do well to publicize its crisis response successes to maximize their strategic impact on adversary decision-making. More importantly, Beijing’s leaders would do well to heed the lessons before they experience the consequences of those same capabilities in ways they can ill afford.
Endnotes
[1] Hyun-Binn Cho and Brian Chao, “Muddied Waters: Freedom-of-Navigation Operations as Signals in the South China Sea,” British Journal of International Relations 27, no. 1 (June 2024).
[2] Benjamin Jensen et al., “Securing Cyber and Space: How the United States can Disrupt China’s Blockade Plans,” Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), March 2025, https://www.csis.org/analysis/securing-cyber-and-space-how-united-states-can-disrupt-chinas-blockade-plans.
[3] Clementine Starling and Alyxandra Marine, “Stealth, Speed, and Adaptability: The Role of Special Operations Forces in Strategic Competition,” Atlantic Council, March 2024, https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/in-depth-research-reports/report/starling-marine-special-operations-forces-in-strategic-competition/#knowing-what-success-looks-like.
[4] Paul Rogers, “The Answers are in the Mountains: Countering Chinese Aggression with Irregular Warfare,” SOF Support, September 2025, https://sofsupport.org/the-answers-are-in-the-mountains-countering-chinese-aggression-with-irregular-warfare/.
[5] Carl Clausewitz, On War, Translated by Michael Howard and Peter Paret, (eds.) Princeton University Press, 1984.
[6] Carl Clausewitz, On War.
[7] Carl Clausewitz, On War.
[8] Eric Robinson et al., “Strategic Disruption by Special Operations Forces: A Concept for Proactive Campaigning Short of Traditional War,” RAND, 2023.
[9] Jeffrey W. Knopf, “Three Items in One: Deterrence as Concept, Research Program, and Political Issue,” in Complex Deterrence: Strategy in the Global Age, ed. T. V. Paul, Patrick M. Morgan, and James J. Wirtz (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009), 31–57.
[10] Lawrence Freedman, Strategic Coercion: Concepts and Cases (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003).
[11] Thomas C. Schelling, Arms and Influence (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1966).
[12] Thomas C. Schelling, “The Threat That Leaves Something to Chance” (Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation, 1959).
[13] Herman Kahn, On Escalation: Metaphors and Scenarios (Abingdon, UK: Routledge, 2009).
[14] Thomas C. Schelling, “The Threat that Leaves Something to Chance.”
[15] Jonathan Caverley, “So What? Reassessing the Military Implications of Chinese Control of Taiwan,” Texas National Security Review 8, no. 3 (2025).
[16] Ralph Sawyer and Mei-Chun Sawyer, trans., The Seven Military Classics of Ancient China (New York: Basic Books, 2007).
[17] Carl Clausewitz, On War.
[18] Sunzi (Sun Tzu), The Art of War, Capstone Classics Edition (Chichester, UK: Capstone Publishing, 2010).
[19] Lumpy Lumbaca, “How Irregular Warfare can Find – and Exploit – the Vulnerabilities in China’s Defense Industrial Base,” Modern War Institute, August 2024, https://mwi.westpoint.edu/how-irregular-warfare-can-find-and-exploit-the-vulnerabilities-in-chinas-defense-industrial-base/