For decades, the question of whether the United States would intervene militarily to defend Taiwan against a People's Liberation Army assault has been one of Asia's most fiercely contested strategic debates. Washington has long maintained a posture of "strategic ambiguity" — neither pledging to defend Taiwan nor ruling out the possibility. Since President Donald Trump's return to the White House, that uncertainty has deepened, with growing concern that his administration might effectively abandon Taiwan as a concession to Beijing.
A military scholar at the U.S. Naval War College is now reframing the debate in pointed terms. From a strictly military perspective, he argues, Taiwan should be focused on bolstering its own defenses. But for Washington and its allies — Japan above all — the more urgent question may be this: Is it worth losing the bulk of the Seventh Fleet, homeported in Japan, in a failed or even successful defense of Taiwan? Or does it make more strategic sense to stay out of the conflict, allow Beijing to take the island, and keep that fleet intact? That calculation, he warns, presents a genuine dilemma for both the United States and Japan.
Research That Has Drawn Sharp Criticism
Jonathan Caverley — a professor in the Strategic and Operational Research department at the U.S. Naval War College and a visiting scholar at the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) in London — has spent the past two years publishing research that ventures into deeply sensitive territory, including whether the United States should, on purely military grounds, forgo a combat defense of Taiwan. The work has generated significant controversy. Caverley has nonetheless continued to present and defend his findings before professional audiences at home and abroad.
Last week, Caverley attended a closed-door seminar in Japan, where he laid out his strategic analysis for experts from the United States, Japan, and several other countries. The presentation drew on his paper published in the summer of 2025, "So What? Reassessing the Military Implications of Chinese Control of Taiwan." His central argument: repositioning U.S. forces to defend Taiwan could degrade America's and its allies' ability to manage a larger and more sustained conflict with the PLA.
Caverley's research concludes that even if Taiwan were to become a fully pacified and militarized province of the People's Republic of China, the effect on the overall military balance between China and the United States in the Asia-Pacific would be minimal. His reasoning is geographic: Taiwan stretches only 395 kilometers from north to south, meaning the additional strike range the island would offer PLA forces is negligible relative to China's 14,500-kilometer coastline.
He further argues that China's expanding space-based surveillance constellation — increasingly difficult for U.S. forces to neutralize in wartime — further diminishes Taiwan's strategic value to Washington. And because China has already developed the capability to strike American naval vessels at range, U.S. military intervention in a Taiwan conflict would only be meaningful, he contends, for as long as there are ships left to fight with.
Even in a scenario where a PLA invasion fails and Taiwan remains free, Caverley argues the outcome could still leave the United States worse off than non-intervention — if the price is most of the Seventh Fleet on the ocean floor. Weighed against a scenario in which the U.S. stays out, Beijing secures control of Taiwan, but American naval power remains intact, the arithmetic may favor restraint. If Washington's strategic objective is to sustain long-term military competition with China, he warns, the wrong Taiwan defense strategy "could backfire — doing more harm than good."
Combat Losses That Could Take Decades to Rebuild
Applying kill-chain analysis, Caverley points out that early American assessments of Taiwan's military value were made before the PLA developed its primary anti-access and area-denial arsenal — long-range, precision-guided conventional ballistic missiles. A prior U.S. Department of Defense report noted that China test-fired six DF-21D anti-ship ballistic missiles in 2019 alone. By 2025, Caverley assumes, China possesses hundreds of anti-ship missiles with a range of 3,000 kilometers and thousands of medium-range variants reaching out to 1,000 kilometers.
The projected U.S. losses are stark. Drawing on 24 war-game simulations conducted by the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), Caverley notes that an American intervention to defend Taiwan would likely result in the loss of 200 to 500 combat aircraft and between 9 and 20 major surface combatants — including up to two aircraft carriers. The CSIS analysis estimates that rebuilding that naval capacity would take a minimum of three to four years, potentially decades, while the lost carriers would be effectively irreplaceable.
On the Chinese side, the same simulations project average PLA losses of 90 percent of its amphibious fleet and 52 other major warships. But Caverley points to a critical asymmetry: China's shipbuilding capacity far outpaces America's, meaning Beijing could reconstitute its naval strength significantly faster. A war fought primarily over Taiwan's military value, he concludes, could undermine rather than reinforce the regional balance of power.
Challenging MacArthur's "Unsinkable Aircraft Carrier"
Caverley's paper directly contests the three military arguments most commonly invoked to justify an American defense of Taiwan. The first is General Douglas MacArthur's famous characterization of Taiwan as an "unsinkable aircraft carrier." The second holds that Taiwan's eastern coast provides vital submarine access lanes to open ocean. The third frames Taiwan as the critical "cork in the bottle" — a geographic choke point preventing the PLA from projecting power beyond the First Island Chain.
Caverley dismantles each in turn. "If Taiwan is an unsinkable aircraft carrier, it is also an immovable one," he writes. On the submarine access argument, he acknowledges that Chinese surface ships would face risks operating far from the mainland, but notes that Beijing's growing submarine fleet can compensate. On the cork-in-the-bottle framework, his verdict is blunt: "Taiwan is not a cork because, in the missile age, China doesn't need a bottle."
His paper reaches a striking conclusion: a hypothetical concession that placed Taiwan under PRC control would have relatively limited operational consequences for the United States and its allies. Given that China already poses a serious threat to American allies and to U.S. forces well beyond the First Island Chain, Beijing's control of Taiwan would not materially alter the military equation.
Caverley holds a bachelor's degree in history and literature from Harvard University and graduate degrees in public policy and political science from the University of Chicago. A specialist in U.S. naval force design, he also serves concurrently as a researcher with MIT's Security Studies Program. Before entering academia, he served as a submarine officer in the U.S. Navy. He emphasizes that he is currently on sabbatical and that his findings do not represent the views of the Naval War College, the U.S. Navy, or the U.S. government.
Why Publish Research That Invites Attack?
In a brief interview with Storm Media after the seminar, Caverley acknowledged that the research has brought accusations and criticism. He was direct about his intent: as a political scientist, he is not making a political argument about whether the United States should defend Taiwan. He is conducting a strictly military analysis of combat power — and the conclusions follow from that methodology.
On motivation, he told Storm Media that the project originated when a colleague was asked by a U.S. senator what would actually happen militarily if a conflict broke out in the Taiwan Strait. That question prompted the research.
Regarding Japan's role in any such conflict, Caverley said Tokyo should weigh the trade-off carefully: a Taiwan that falls to the PRC but a Seventh Fleet that survives intact, versus a Taiwan that emerges victorious but a Seventh Fleet that has been gutted. He noted that Japan's current focus on submarine development points in the right direction — submarines are among the few platforms capable of evading China's extensive space-based surveillance network, which, he said, already tracks the movements of the entire Seventh Fleet.
Asked what Taiwan should do if the United States proves unwilling to intervene militarily, Caverley offered limited but pointed guidance: Taiwan should work to strengthen its own defensive capabilities. Washington, for its part, can continue investing in military equipment capable of defending Taiwan — provided that equipment also serves American operational needs in other theaters.
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