Eyck Freymann

But when you look at the histories of great power wars or even great power crises like the Cuban Missile Crisis, these things do not fall out of the clear blue sky.

They emerge over the course of years, then months, then weeks through a path-dependent arc where someone does this, and then we do that, and then they do this, and then we do that.

And we put reputational capital on the line saying, hey, publicly, don't do this or else.

And then by the time it's time for choosing –

We have skin in the game and backing down means something totally different than it did at the beginning.

And maybe we choose to back down, but we have chips on the table now.

And that is why I can't think of an example in American history where a president has decided for reasons of strategy, we need to go to war or we need to go to the brink of war.

And the American public hasn't come along.

This Iran war may actually be the first.

He never gave an Oval Office address to the American people saying, hey, listen, I know people don't want this.

Here's my reasoning.

He still hasn't even articulated what we're fighting for, what the war aims are.

I think a Taiwan situation would be different.

A Taiwan situation...

China would push, and it might be the case that either Taiwan's morale implodes or our morale implodes or both, and then China gets the prize without fighting.

That's possible.

But I think equally possible, in fact, probably base case, if China starts squeezing Taiwan, we do posturing to try to make them stop.

And then they do a little more, and we do a little more, and we do a little more, and they maybe mobilize their forces on their side of the strait or start doing economic coercion, and we start surging ships to the region, and the market starts getting nervous.

And then by the time we actually get to the precipice, it's a completely different situation.

Possibly.