At the same time their needs to be deterrence of course, but I think we are already doing that part.
A better solution is to constantly harass, undermine, and isolate China much like we did with the USSR. Apply enough sustained pressure and hopefully the country will eventually collapse into a violent internal revolution.
Russia broke this by invading Ukraine.
China is threatening to break this by invading Taiwan.
Right now, there is peace in Taiwan. If China launches an assault, that is China's fault and they're the cause of suffering.
1. A hot war emerges due to it's aggression
2. The aggression is unchecked, effectively meaning the victims surrender to blackmail and/or violence
3. A cold war is put into place to prevent aggression through deterrence and other mechanisms to manage the situation to prevent escalation to a hot war.
My concern is that both Democrats and Republicans (and most other countries on earth) are not committed to a cold war and communicating that with the public. I'm far more concerned the US will surrender several more countries and territories to aggressive states before people realize what's going on and are ready to commit to a cold war to contain aggression.
edit: "invading their neighbors" is a rhetorical trick to discount all of the invasions of the US against countries who are not our neighbors. Just like "killing his own people" is a trick to discount the killing of other people.
According to DW news[1], the US is in Syria for these 4 reasons:
> Firstly, they were there to sustain the fight against the extremist IS group. This includes helping to train and arm the Syrian Kurdish fighters, known as the Syrian Democratic Forces, or SDF, who fought the IS group and who now control this part of Syria. The US regularly warns that the militias it supports here may only fight the IS group, unless they are acting in self-defense.
> Other American priorities in Syria include supporting local ceasefires, stabilizing the area and helping with humanitarian aid and access, as well as "pressing for accountability and respect for international law, while promoting human rights and non-proliferation."
> All of these are supposed to help in achieving a political solution to the ongoing Syrian crisis, as set out in Resolution 2254, agreed upon by the UN Security Council in 2015.
1. https://www.dw.com/en/what-does-the-us-actually-want-in-syri...
"In The Great Illusion, Angell's primary thesis was, in the words of historian James Joll, that "the economic cost of war was so great that no one could possibly hope to gain by starting a war the consequences of which would be so disastrous."[4] For that reason, a general European war was very unlikely to start, and if it did, it would not last long.[5] He argued that war was economically and socially irrational[6] and that war between industrial countries was futile because conquest did not pay. J. D. B. Miller writes: "The 'Great Illusion' was that nations gained by armed confrontation, militarism, war, or conquest."[7]
This book was published in 1909, it was wildly popular.
First, there certainly are analyses (plural) of where the situation is headed. They aren't published places that you and I are allowed to read, but that doesn't mean they don't exist. People are thinking seriously about this, and debating, though I have no idea what conclusions are being reached or what courses of action are being suggested.
Second, this is fundamentally about Taiwan. And that isn't "we're headed for war soon". That's "we're headed for war if China invades Taiwan, and China sure looks like they're going to invade Taiwan soon". That's Xi's choice; all we get is to decide how to respond. (Well, a bit more - we get to signal in advance how we're likely to respond, and hope that Xi decides it isn't worth it.)