Dangerous Differences: Crisis Management and Sino-American Naval Doctrines in the Taiwan Strait

Draft Prepared for International Studies Association Annual Meeting, 2008 In previous work I argue for a connection between different military doctrinal cultures and the failure of coercive diplomacy. Different military cultures in the United States and China affected signaling, communication, perception, and assessments of the balance of power. This led to failures of deterrence and coercion during the Korean War. In this paper, I extend this idea into two additional naval cases: the deterrence of conflict in the Taiwan Strait in 1950 and today. I argue that Chinese naval doctrine today is, for cultural and organizational reasons, distinct from that of the United States. I assess the potential dangers this poses to the conduct of military diplomacy in the Taiwan Strait, and offer proposals to overcome or limit these challenges.