Allied Coordination Is the Missing Link in Taiwan Deterrence

Eyck Freymann describes Taiwan as the point at which the uneasy peace between the United States and China may be tested—and potentially broken. American military strength, he says, has underwritten regional stability for decades, but the advantage is eroding as Beijing identifies gaps in the US approach and seeks to squeeze, isolate, and coerce Taiwan without firing a shot.

The danger is not confined to a conventional invasion scenario. A Taiwan crisis could produce a global financial and supply-chain shock that begins in Asia and rapidly reaches major banks in London, New York, and elsewhere. If deterrence fails, Freymann argues, the consequences could include a global recession or depression, a severe test of US alliances, and a Chinese ability to dominate the region and reshape the world order.

Freymann explicitly includes coercion short of open war in the problem deterrence must address. Taiwan might have to be defended after an attack or supplied under blockade; either scenario would test whether allies can act across military, political, and economic domains at once.

His answer is an integrated strategy with four mutually dependent pillars: political, conventional military, strategic, and economic. Military strength alone cannot carry the task, in this account, because a crisis would engage all four at once—and because each depends on allied participation.

Taiwan is the most urgent test of a broader allied coordination problem, Eyck Freymann argues. Defending the island after an attack—or sustaining it under blockade—would require extensive use of bases in Japan and close coordination with Tokyo across military, economic, and political domains.

But Japan is not the only country exposed or needed. Freymann names South Korea, Australia, the Philippines, Canada, and other US partners as highly exposed to a crisis. Washington would need their help with basing, supply-chain security, defense production, and other crisis functions. A Taiwan contingency, in his account, would draw simultaneously on military access, industrial capacity, and the financial system.

The obstacle is not that allied governments lack relevant institutions or assets. It is that they generally design policy unilaterally and within narrow departmental silos. Those systems, Freymann says, are not built to move with the necessary speed or coordination against a rival as powerful and sophisticated as China.

The same gap appears before a crisis. Allies need common answers to which products and technologies merit special attention; how production capacity should be organized for efficiency and resilience; how export controls can be enforced against illicit transshipment; and how countries should respond collectively to Chinese economic coercion and what Freymann calls predatory lending in developing countries.

These are connected decisions rather than discrete national portfolios. An ally can build production capacity, tighten controls, or secure a particular supply chain on its own. But the resilience Freymann seeks depends on partners aligning industrial, trade, economic, and security policies. Taiwan makes the consequences of failing to do that especially immediate.

Eyck Freymann does not propose a coalition in which Washington dictates policy and allies simply comply. Each partner has its own constraints and national interests, he says, and each will determine its own level and form of engagement. A durable coalition must therefore be flexible—and allow allies to shape policy throughout the cycle, from first principles through operational design.

The premise is that the relevant resources already exist in aggregate. Freymann says the United States, United Kingdom, Japan, Australia, and Canada together account for 36% of global GDP, more than twice China’s share, and 45% of global defense spending.

The missing asset, he argues, is the connective tissue that turns that scale into usable collective power: common problem definition, joint policy design, coordination across political, economic, and military domains, and trusted relationships among those expected to implement plans.

Freymann presents the Allied Coordination Working Group within the Hoover History Lab as a venue for building that machinery. Its role, he says, is to convene experts and practitioners from allied countries around actionable, integrated strategies informed by historical perspective. Taiwan deterrence is its first test case; the longer-term aim is a trusted network of practitioners able to put coordinated ideas into practice.

Stronger allied ties would, in Freymann’s view, make deterrence against China more credible and reduce the risk of a devastating crisis or war. They would also show that democracies can offer a positive vision to the world rather than merely react to coercion.