It is doubtful that Beijing is poised to invade Taiwan or that it would assume that the deployment of sizable U.S. ground forces to Europe provided an opportunity to strike the island.
In a February 13, 2022, essay that was published in the Wall Street Journal entitled “Ukraine Is a Distraction From Taiwan,” Elbridge Colby and Oriana Skylar Mastro argue that the United States will increase the danger of prompting an opportunistic Chinese attack on Taiwan if it deploys military forces to deal with Russia’s threat to Ukraine.
To support this argument, the authors assert that “…China poses an increasingly imminent [emphasis added] threat to Taiwan,” and, given its huge military power, “…reasonably doubt[s] that the U.S or anyone else would mount a meaningful response to an invasion of Taiwan.” In addition, the authors assert that any additional U.S. ground troop deployments to Europe will weaken the U.S. capacity to defend Taiwan, and hence will indeed tempt China to attack.
