The following is an excerpt from Jessica Chen Weiss' article in Foreign Affairs. Jessica is a Senior Fellow on Chinese Politics, Foreign Policy, and National Security at the Asia Society Policy Institute's Center for China Analysis. The article is co-written with Bonnie S. Glaser and Thomas J. Christensen. 

The growing might of China’s military and its increasingly aggressive posture toward Taiwan have made deterrence in the Taiwan Strait a tougher challenge than ever before. It is incumbent on the United States to support Taiwan’s efforts to develop a defensive “porcupine strategy.” Washington can help Taiwan’s military stockpile and train with coastal defense and air defense weapons, field a robust civil defense force, and create strategic reserves of critical materials such as food and fuel to deter and, if necessary, defeat an invasion or blockade of the island. The U.S. military should also better prepare to cope with China’s expanding arsenal of missiles that pose a threat to U.S. regional bases and even aircraft carriers by creating a stronger, more agile, and more geographically dispersed military presence in the region.

But deterrence is not just a matter of weapons in arsenals, boots on the ground, planes in the air, ships at sea, or strategies on the planning table. Signaling a credible military threat is only part of a successful strategy of deterrence. It also takes assurances to keep potential adversaries at bay. A threatened state has little incentive to avoid war if it fears the unacceptable consequences of not fighting. As the Nobel Prize — winning economist Thomas Schelling wrote years ago, “‘One more step and I shoot’ can be a deterrent threat only if accompanied by the implicit assurance, ‘And if you stop, I won’t.’”

Read the full article in Foreign Affairs.