No, Nukes are not going to save Taiwan

Everybody and their grandmother has been telling Taiwan to get nuclear weapons in the face of eroding US deterrent. But it isn’t going to work.

Annotated satellite photo showing Taiwanese nuclear facilities, early February 1969, including site of eventual Taiwan Research Reactor (Courtesy of Institute for Science and International Security, published in Taiwan’s Former Nuclear Weapons Program)

Tensions reached a boiling point behind the imposing neoclassical façade of the White House, as the newly anointed leaders of the fragile yet strategically vital United States clashed with a nominal ally over a botched minerals deal.

Donald Trump — the aging strongman who first seized power years ago in a disputed electoral contest marred by allegations of foreign meddling — leveled incendiary accusations at Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky, whose embattled regime has long relied on material support from its unpredictable North American patron. “You are gambling to start World War III!”

In a move calculated to inflame populist sentiments, Trump’s hand-picked second-in-command Vice President JD Vance lambasted Zelensky for his perceived impudence in front of the cameras. “Have you ever tried saying ‘thank you’?”

As the crisis unfolds, the world wonders if the United States, once regarded as a stable if flawed democracy, can still be considered a reliable player on the world stage?

As you can imagine, Trump and Vance taking Zelensky to the woodshed in the Oval Office set a flurry of renewed panic over how Taipei can continue to count on the United States as a security guarantor. “Pivot to Asia” notwithstanding, it seems clear that America can no longer be counted on to do right by its allies if it is not in its own interests.

The credibility of the United States as an offshore security guarantor just dropped through the floor, so everybody and their grandmother on Twitter have been exhorting Taiwan to “get nukes.” Unfortunately, it just doesn’t work like that.

No, Taiwan can’t just “Get Nukes”

The black pill on defense of Taiwan is that we are just too small and too close to our potential adversary and frankly outmatched. Nuclear weapons seem like an ideal solution. Why didn’t we think of it before?

Well, we certainly did. Even after we were warned by the US not to, we developed a program in the 80s that came tantalizingly close to fruition before a defector to the US exposed the program.

This was back in the 80s. Well shouldn’t we just start again? No that would be suicidal, despite the fact that randos on Twitter think it would barely be an inconvenience.

Let’s just head down to Plutonium-R-us! I hear some great weapons-grade material just fell off the back of a truck.

It’s like trying to bake a cake when you don’t have flour or eggs, don’t have an oven, don’t how to bake a cake, and as soon as you even get a shopping list together, your neighbors will find out and demolish your house.

First the ingredients: not just any bit of uranium lying around is good for military applications. You need High-Enriched Uranium (HEU) or weapons-grade plutonium. These are highly controlled substances all but impossible to get one’s hands on without detection. Then you need to make it into a bomb and test the damned things to make sure they work. Detection is a risk every step of the way. Taiwan is a tiny island under intense scrutiny. There is no place to hide. And let’s not forget we were ratted out once before.

As soon as China catches a whiff of the program, it’s an instant invasion for them. The black pill on defense of Taiwan is that we are just too small, too close to our potential adversary and frankly outmatched already. The reason the Chinese haven’t invaded yet is because they prefer bloodless coercion to winning ugly. But with an existential threat like Taiwan attempting to go nuclear, they will not just strike but strike in anger. The United States might defend Taiwan under other circumstances but no great power wants to reward proliferation. If China attacks Taiwan in the wake of a nuclear attempt Taiwan will be alone.

Why Taiwan can’t be MAD

Even if Taiwan had nuclear weapons it will almost certainly not provide a suitable deterrent. Let’s say we scraped together a program: the number of warheads are likely to be minimal with no second-strike capability. How would we even threaten to launch it? As soon as we do it’s a guaranteed suicide as the PRC has enough nukes to turn the island of Taiwan into a solid block of glass from Keelung to Kenting while we can take out one or two of their cities at best. The doctrine of Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD) rests on both parties being left in guaranteed ruins. If the offensive party can only partially damage the other party while guaranteeing its own destruction, that’s not MAD, that’s suicide with more deaths.

Naive folks might think Taiwan wouldn’t even need to launch the nukes because China will be too risk averse. Maybe even some dirty bombs will do. No. As soon as China knows Taiwan is nuclear-equipped its threat level will go through the roof and it will proactively move to remove that threat from what it considers a breakaway province. This is the argument a scientist tried to make to Chiang Kai-shek to try get him to kill the nuclear program.

“If we look at it from the perspective of pure strategic power, Taiwan could not use nuclear weapons for offense purposes; on the contrary, by possessing such weapons, we increase the possibility of an attack initiated by our enemy because they would be alarmed. Taiwan is a small place with no room for maneuver if it was attacked with a nuclear weapon, unlike those countries with vast land, which, even if they were attacked first, would still have the opportunity to counterattack. They could rely on that potential power to maintain balance.”

A reminder that Taiwan is an island with nowhere to evacuate TO in the case of a nuclear attack and subsequent fallout. To learn more on Taiwan’s nuclear (non) option, I suggest this post which goes into everything from history to doctrine.

What Might Have Been

Obviously I’m adamantly against a nuclear-armed Taiwan now. However, if we had nuclear capabilities grandfathered in from the 80s, the entire security situation across the Taiwan straits would have developed differently.

In fact, if the US had been foresighted enough to allow trusted allies in the pacific (Japan, South Korea, Taiwan) with nuclear weapons, the world would probably be a safer place today.

The man who ratted out Taiwan’s nuclear program.

It’s too late for Taiwan…but it might not be for regional allies Japan and South Korea. To return to the cake analogy, they not only have all the ingredients, but have the batter all mixed up and ready to go. Japan may have even pre-heated the oven. As I wrote in a previous edition of Taipology, there is no technical barrier for Japan and South Korea to obtain the nuclear bomb in quick order. The barrier is political and psychological.

The US really have to have a long think about how anti-proliferation bound the hands of allies successfully while non-aligned nations like India and enemies like North Korea are still able to obtain the ultimate deterrent.