When Libertarian Institute Senior Fellow Ted Galen Carpenter published America’s Coming War with China: A Collision Course Over Taiwan in 2005, it was met with polite attention and quiet dismissal by most of the foreign policy establishment, which at that time was focused on destruction and destabilization in the Middle East. Two decades later, his arguments read not as theoretical provocations but as tragic prophecies. The deepening crisis in U.S.-China relations, particularly as it relates to the increasingly volatile question of Taiwan, is unfolding precisely along the lines Carpenter warned about. In an era of bipartisan hawkishness, Carpenter’s sober realism and principled non-interventionism deserve renewed attention.
Carpenter’s core thesis was simple: American policy toward Taiwan, built on a foundation of “strategic ambiguity,” was unsustainable and dangerous. By extending the prospect of security guarantees to Taipei while officially adhering to the One China policy, Washington was sending mixed signals—encouraging Taiwanese politicians to flirt with independence while offering no real clarity on what would happen if China responded militarily. This, Carpenter argued, was a textbook case of moral hazard, one that made war more likely, not less.
Today, that hazard is no longer theoretical. U.S. arms sales to Taiwan have accelerated, congressional visits to Taipei have multiplied, and military coordination between the two has deepened—indeed, there is talk of increasing the already incredible presence of several hundred U.S. military personnel on Taiwan.
Carpenter’s warnings were not rooted in any admiration for Beijing. On the contrary, his chapters on troubling domestic trends in China noted the regime’s repression, surveillance state, and nationalist posturing. But unlike the Cold Warriors of today, Carpenter was capable of distinguishing between a repressive government at home and an expansionist threat abroad. He correctly argued that China’s behavior, particularly in the Taiwan Strait, was reactive and driven by fears of encirclement and regime legitimacy—not evidence of Hitlerian ambition.
That distinction is absent in today’s debates, which treat any expression of Chinese power as a threat requiring immediate American counteraction. Taiwan, in Carpenter’s telling, is a red line for Beijing, but not for Washington—or at least it shouldn’t be.
Perhaps most prescient is Carpenter’s critique of alliance entanglements. In a period where defense thinkers like Ely Ratner are openly calling for a Pacific NATO, Carpenter’s argument that the United States is already overcommitted is more relevant than ever. The U.S. maintains security guarantees to Japan, South Korea, the Philippines, and Australia—all within striking distance of China. The idea that additional entanglements would promote stability, rather than hasten conflict, would have struck Carpenter as absurd.
Indeed, the past two decades have proven him right. Every effort to expand America’s military footprint in Asia—from Barack Obama’s Pivot to Asia, to Donald Trump’s erratic pressure campaigns, to Joe Biden’s tighter alignment with the Quad—has coincided with a deterioration of U.S.-China relations. The more the United States signals that it is willing to fight over Taiwan, which Biden said explicitly on multiple occasions, the more China prepares for war. What Carpenter anticipated is now the operational doctrine of the People’s Liberation Army: prepare for conflict because Washington seems determined to provoke one in the name of building up “deterrence” or maintaining its regional “credibility.”
In this context, Carpenter’s policy recommendations are as vital now as they were refreshingly radical then: He called for a phased withdrawal of American commitments to Taiwan, paired with a diplomatic effort to secure peaceful reintegration or long-term autonomy for the island. Critics predictably accused him of appeasement, but what he offered was realism: a recognition that no American president would or should be willing to risk trading thousands of American lives for Taipei. Pretending otherwise is not strategy; it is delusion.
Equally timely is Carpenter’s emphasis on constitutional and fiscal limits. At a moment when the United States is rapidly approaching $40 trillion in debt and overstretched militarily, his insistence that foreign policy must be subjected to democratic debate and cost-benefit analysis is more than a nice talking point—it is a survival imperative. His critique of defense contractor influence, think tank militarism, and bipartisan consensus-building around war is now, or should be, common sense to anyone not on the take.
Carpenter’s book stands today not only as a prescient warning but as a challenge to the dominant narratives of our time. It calls us to reject the fearmongering that portrays China as a new Nazi Germany. It demands that we treat Taiwan not as a pawn in some grand geopolitical chessboard but as a potential Sarajevo—a flashpoint that could ignite a war no one truly wants. And it urges Americans to remember the wisdom of their Founders, who warned against foreign entanglements and alliances that commit us to fight on behalf of others.
If America’s coming war with China does arrive, history will record that one of the few voices who foresaw it, explained it, and tried to prevent it was Ted Galen Carpenter. The tragedy is that Washington did not listen when it still had the chance.
