Demilitarization as a Political Lever

2026-08-10 · Muchun

English translation of the Chinese original (AI-assisted). Read the original in Chinese.

A geopolitical game-theory study under the assumption of "zero military forces" in Taiwan

Abstract

Against the backdrop of long-standing and highly asymmetric military capabilities across the Taiwan Strait, if Taiwan continues to develop its military according to traditional national-security logic, it will find it very hard to reach genuine military parity with mainland China.

This article proposes an extreme thought experiment: suppose the Taiwan authorities voluntarily announce the dissolution of their existing armed forces, stop military construction, do not attack and do not resist, and reduce the state's regular military forces to zero, while Taiwan's existing government, social system, economic system, and political autonomy continue to exist.

This article does not interpret such an action as surrendering to unification, nor does it assume that its purpose would be to pave the way for unification. Instead, it treats it as a political strategy that voluntarily changes the rules of the game. Its core logic is not "using military force to prevent unification," but voluntarily withdrawing from military competition and transforming cross-Strait competition from a contest of military power into a contest over political costs, international public opinion, diplomatic pressure, and institutional arrangements.

Taiwan cannot achieve genuine military parity with mainland China. But in theory, by voluntarily giving up military capability, it could turn part of its military disadvantage into a political advantage: if a political entity has already voluntarily disarmed, does not attack, and is not preparing for war, the political cost of explaining military action against it may rise. At the same time, reducing the military to zero does not mean reducing security needs to zero. Some security functions originally performed by the national military could shift toward international security services, cybersecurity, satellites, intelligence, maritime monitoring, infrastructure protection, and other fields, creating a second-order effect of "national demilitarization and the internationalization of social security."

But this article does not assume that this mechanism must work. The most important unknown variable in the entire theory is: does mainland China regard international political costs as an important constraint in its decision-making on unification, or does it regard unification as a core sovereignty and territorial-integrity issue whose importance cannot be offset by external political costs?

If the former is true, "zero military forces" may create a certain degree of political leverage. If the latter is true, its strategic utility would decline significantly.

Judging from official statements in recent years, the weight of the sovereignty and territorial-integrity narrative is clearly greater than that of the "military threat" narrative. This means the upper limit of the mechanism proposed here is likely to be lower than its theoretical maximum. This judgment is developed in the main text.

Therefore, this article does not treat "zero military forces" as a realistic policy recommendation. It treats it as a thought experiment for testing the boundaries of cross-Strait strategic interaction.

I. Statement of the Problem

Taiwan has long occupied a special geopolitical position. On the one hand, it has a complete economic system, a highly internationalized industrial structure, an important semiconductor industry, and a unique geographic position. On the other hand, in terms of pure military power, there is a huge difference in scale between Taiwan and mainland China.

Traditional national-security logic generally runs: strengthen military power → seek external support → raise the other side's cost of military action → maintain the status quo. The core of this strategy is military deterrence.

The problem is: can Taiwan keep genuine parity with mainland China in the military dimension over the long term?

If the answer is no, then continued military investment may increase its defensive capability, but cannot remove the structural military asymmetry.

This leads to the opposite question: if Taiwan voluntarily gives up its military forces, could it instead gain more political power than it has by maintaining them?

This is not a military question, but a question of political game theory.

This article is a purely theoretical thought experiment and does not constitute a real-world policy recommendation.

II. Basic Premises

2.1 Unification as a long-term terminal variable

This article does not discuss whether mainland China will ultimately unify Taiwan; it takes that as a given premise.

So this article does not study "how Taiwan can prevent unification forever," but rather: if unification is ultimately unavoidable, can Taiwan change the process of the game before unification, as well as the way, timing, and conditions under which unification happens?

The variables of the study therefore shift from "whether unification occurs" to: when unification occurs, by what method, how much political space Taiwan can gain before unification, whether a political agreement can be reached, and how much institutional and social space can be retained after unification.

An unchanged endpoint does not mean the process cannot be changed.

2.2 Political will and military capability must be separated

This article assumes that Taiwanese society as a whole does not accept direct political unification. Then: Taiwan disbanding its military ≠ Taiwan accepting unification.

In theory, Taiwan could put forward a position that seems contradictory but is internally coherent:

"We will not attack you, and we are not preparing to attack you. We are giving up war, but we still demand the right to determine our own political life."

Military resistance and political position are thus deliberately separated. This is the key to the entire theory.

III. The Limits of Traditional Military Deterrence

The logic of traditional military deterrence is: "I have enough military capability, so you do not dare to attack me."

But within the highly asymmetric cross-Strait relationship, this logic has an inherent limit: Taiwan can raise the cost to mainland China of military action, but it can hardly remove the fundamental difference in military power between the two sides.

This can form a cycle: military threat → Taiwan strengthens its military → mainland China strengthens its military → military tension rises → Taiwan seeks more external support → the Taiwan Strait becomes ever more militarized.

The problem is not that military power has no value. It is that Taiwan cannot remove the structural power asymmetry through limited investment. It is always competing against a far larger country in the dimension where it is weakest.

IV. The Strategic Logic of "Zero Military Forces"

"Zero military forces" is not simply disarmament. It is an attempt to change the dimension of the game.

Traditional logic: Taiwan has a military → mainland China faces military pressure → Taiwan needs external military support.

New logic: Taiwan has no military → Taiwan does not attack and is not preparing for war → if mainland China still uses force, it must bear a higher political cost of explanation.

The question therefore changes from "Can Taiwan resist?" to "Why does a society that has voluntarily given up its capacity for war still need to be dealt with through war?"

This is the first layer of political leverage that "zero military forces" tries to create.

But whether this transformation can actually happen is not up to Taiwan alone. It depends on how the international community interprets the action, how the United States, Japan, and Europe respond, how mainland China defines the Taiwan issue, and whether mainland China's decision-makers include international political costs in their strategic calculations.

So it is a mechanism to be tested, not an established conclusion.

V. From Military Deterrence to Political-Cost Deterrence

The logic of military deterrence is: "If you attack me, you will pay a military price."

The proposal discussed here tries instead to create political-cost deterrence: "If you attack me, you will pay ever higher political, diplomatic, economic, and public-opinion costs."

For Taiwan, this may be a dimension of the game better suited to a small political entity. It is hard for Taiwan to exceed mainland China in military scale, but it may be possible to use an extreme political action to make any military action against Taiwan draw far greater international attention.

Military weakness does not necessarily mean political weakness. The key is whether power can be converted from one dimension into another.

VI. Creating Political Capital

"Zero military forces" could create a kind of political capital Taiwan does not currently have: the capital of active peace.

In theory, Taiwan could send different signals to different parties at the same time. To mainland China, it could show that it has neither the capability nor the intention to attack. To the United States and Japan, it could show that it is not asking them to go to war on its behalf. To Europe and the international community, it could show that it has voluntarily given up military power while still hoping to keep its own political and social system.

This tries to redefine Taiwan as an "actively demilitarized political entity," distinct from the traditional image of a "military frontline."

The shift would be from "prove that we can defend ourselves and therefore deserve protection" to "we have voluntarily given up war; so if anyone still chooses war, they need to explain why."

This is the potential source of political capital.

VII. Shifting the Burden of Proof: The Strongest Part of the Argument

If Taiwan keeps its military, mainland China can continue to explain the Taiwan Strait issue in terms of military security, while Taiwan must keep proving its defensive capability.

Once the military is reduced to zero, the situation could partly reverse. Taiwan could say: "We no longer have a military."

The international community's question might then become: "If Taiwan has no military capacity to attack, why does the issue still need to be solved by military means?"

Part of the political burden of proof could therefore shift from Taiwan to mainland China.

But two kinds of reasons must be distinguished here: military reasons—whether Taiwan constitutes a military threat; and sovereignty reasons—whether Taiwan belongs to China, and whether unification is an irreversible national goal.

If mainland China understands the Taiwan issue mainly in terms of the former, reducing Taiwan's military to zero could have greater strategic effect. If it relies mainly on the latter, whether Taiwan has a military is not a decisive variable.

So shifting the burden of proof can weaken the military justification, but it cannot automatically remove the sovereignty justification. This is the first boundary of the theory, and also the starting point for the challenges later in this article.

VIII. The Value Structure of a Small Political Entity

Taiwan's structural weakness is its limited scale.

The traditional logic is: small → strengthen military power → seek alliances → balance against a major power. But facing a major power with vastly greater overall strength, this path has a natural ceiling.

A small political entity may therefore need another logic: do not compete with a major power on scale; instead, make its political value far greater than its physical size.

Taiwan already sits at the intersection of several systems: mainland China, Japan, U.S. strategy in the Western Pacific, global semiconductor supply chains, international shipping, global finance, and the global technology industry. Its geopolitical weight is already greater than its population and land area would suggest.

The question is: would reducing the military to zero amplify this weight further?

The answer is uncertain, because this value existed before the military was reduced to zero. A more accurate way to put it: reducing the military to zero might change the form in which Taiwan's geopolitical value is expressed—from a "strategic frontline and military node" to a "node of peace, supply chains, institutions, and international politics."

This would be a redistribution of the structure of value, not a net increase in its total amount.

IX. International Attention: Can Taiwan Redefine the Question?

If Taiwan has a military, the international community can easily understand the Taiwan Strait issue as a question of military balance.

If Taiwan voluntarily disbands its military, the issue could in theory be redefined as: "What is the future political arrangement for a demilitarized political entity with a complete society, economy, and political system?"

But Taiwan putting forward a narrative does not mean the international community will accept it. Countries generally read Taiwan's actions through their own national interests: mainland China through sovereignty; the United States through regional security; Japan through its own security; Europe through peace, democracy, and the international order; companies through supply chains and investment risk.

So what reducing the military to zero may actually achieve is perhaps not "unifying international opinion," but "giving different parties more reason to reinterpret the Taiwan issue."

That in itself is still an uncertain benefit.

X. Marketization of Security: A Second-Order Result, Not a Strategic Goal

To be clear: this article does not advocate setting up a so-called "mercenary system." Developing a security market is not a strategic goal; it is a possible second-order result.

The logic is: national military capability falls to zero → security needs do not fall to zero → security needs look for new suppliers → international companies and capital come in.

Some functions originally performed by the national military—cybersecurity, satellite reconnaissance, intelligence analysis, maritime monitoring, port and airport security, critical-infrastructure protection, AI security systems, and risk management—could therefore become partly marketized.

The disappearance of the military does not mean the disappearance of the security industry. Instead, national military capability could decline while demand for security services in society increases.

XI. From National Military Power to an International Security Network

If this trend continued for many years, Taiwan might form a special structure of "national demilitarization + internationalized social security."

The government would no longer have a traditional military, but society could have a large international network of security services: U.S. security companies, Japanese technology companies, international satellite companies, cybersecurity companies, shipping companies, and international insurers.

The power structure across the Strait might partly shift from "military confrontation between the two sides" to "mainland China's national military power + Taiwan's internationalized security network."

This would not be a military balance in the traditional sense, but a non-military balance formed through networks of political, economic, technological, and international interests.

But this idea is directly challenged in Section XIII.

XII. Five-Party Game Matrix

Looking side by side at how the interests of the five main actors—mainland China, Taiwan, the United States, Japan, and Europe—would change:

The matrix shows that no party would simply gain or simply lose from Taiwan reducing its military to zero.

So the truly important question is not "Who supports Taiwan?" but "Who has an incentive to help create a new political order after Taiwan reduces its military to zero?"

This is the key entry point for analyzing the real-world feasibility of the strategy, rather than staying at the level of moral or emotional support.

XIII. Two Core Challenges

13.1 The security vacuum will not disappear — the self-canceling mechanism of "zero military forces"

"Zero military forces" contains an obvious paradox: the more demilitarized Taiwan becomes, the more its security needs may have to be internationalized.

If large numbers of foreign security forces enter Taiwan, mainland China may interpret this as: "Taiwan may not have its own military, but foreign military capabilities are coming in."

Demilitarization could thus be reinterpreted as the externalization of military power, partly canceling the original strategic advantage.

The real question is not "Is there a military?" but "What counts as military power?"

If satellite reconnaissance, cyberattack capability, drones, intelligence networks, foreign armed personnel, and other capabilities together form a complete security system, then even if it is not officially called a "military," its strategic function may come close to that of military power.

Moreover, there is no objective standard by which this gray zone can be defined in advance. The final power of interpretation may still rest with mainland China.

This directly weakens the practical effect of the core argument in Section VII about shifting the burden of proof.

13.2 A more fundamental challenge: is mainland China actually sensitive to "political costs"?

The core mechanism of this article rests on an implicit assumption: that mainland China's decision-making on unification treats international political costs as an important variable.

If this assumption holds, the following chain can work: reduced military threat → changes in international opinion → higher political cost of using force → a political solution becomes relatively more attractive.

If it does not hold—that is, if mainland China understands unification as a core sovereignty goal independent of whether Taiwan poses a military threat, and does not accept external opinion being converted into a cost of unification—then whether Taiwan has a military may have only a limited effect on the ultimate goal of unification.

Reasons for judging that the marginal effect may be limited include:

The legitimacy of the sovereignty claim—history, constitutional narratives, and national narratives—does not depend on whether the other side poses a military threat.

In the history of international relations, the logic of "demilitarization in exchange for political space" has rarely, on its own, been decisive in stopping or delaying a powerful state from absorbing a weaker one. It has generally still required substantive security commitments from outside powers.

A military presence also serves a political function: it symbolizes a refusal to let the status quo be changed unilaterally. Giving up the military also means giving up this symbolic function.

So the net effect is not necessarily positive.

Taken together with the judgment in the abstract, this article leans toward the view that the sovereignty narrative currently dominates mainland China's discourse on Taiwan policy, and that the "military threat" argument is more a strategic formulation than the fundamental basis of decision-making.

If this judgment is correct, "zero military forces" can at most change the political cost and difficulty of explaining a war, not the goal of unification itself.

This conclusion is more conservative than the maximum expectations of the original proposal.

XIV. Real-World Political Feasibility

Even if the theoretical mechanism partly holds, the proposal still faces obstacles in practice that are almost impossible to overcome:

• Irreversibility: disbanding a military is extremely hard to undo, and rebuilding one would take a long time. Voluntarily giving up military capability without equivalent security commitments means voluntarily giving up an important fallback.
• Domestic political resistance: in any democratic political system, "voluntarily giving up national military capability" is very likely to be seen as surrender or concession. A stable domestic coalition would be hard to form. However large the theoretical benefits, the political cost of carrying it out could become unbearable.
• No institutional guarantee of reciprocal commitments: after Taiwan disbands its military, whether mainland China would make matching political commitments is unknown. Without them, this is closer to a high-risk unilateral strategic bet than a move in a reciprocal game.
• International security commitments could shrink instead: after Taiwan voluntarily gives up its defensive capability, the United States, Japan, and Europe might conclude: "Taiwan has given up its own defense, so why should we take on more security responsibility?" Demilitarization could increase international sympathy, but it could also reduce international security commitments. This variable cannot be known in advance.

Taken together, these four points show that even if the proposal partly holds at the level of pure logic, its real-world feasibility is extremely low.

XV. The Limits of Historical Comparisons

Costa Rica's abolition of its standing army in 1948 and Iceland's long-term lack of a standing army are often cited to show that "countries without standing armies can survive over the long term."

But these cases differ from Taiwan's situation in key ways. Neither country has a neighboring major power, far stronger overall, that has explicitly made a unification or sovereignty claim. The security environment of both countries depends on implicit or explicit protection from the United States or regional security systems. Their "no military" status was a choice made under an existing security umbrella, not an attempt to create such an umbrella from nothing. And neither has a unification agenda comparable to the cross-Strait relationship as a terminal variable.

So these cases can show that "demilitarization can work under particular security conditions," but they cannot directly prove that "voluntary demilitarization can create political leverage where a powerful neighbor has a unification goal."

These are different propositions and should not simply be compared.

XVI. Conclusion: A Thought Experiment for Testing the Boundaries of the Game, Not an Executable Policy

Compressing the whole chain of reasoning: military asymmetry → Taiwan cannot achieve genuine parity through military power → voluntarily withdraw from military competition → the state's regular forces fall to zero → if mainland China takes military action, its political cost of explanation may rise → Taiwan gains potential international political capital → all parties reassess their interests → security needs become partly internationalized → Taiwan gains new negotiating leverage → the unification issue partly shifts from military competition toward political integration.

But there is one critical break in this chain: does mainland China actually regard international political costs as a variable significant enough to change its decisions?

This article's judgment is that this assumption currently lacks sufficient support. From this break point on, the whole chain is significantly weakened.

Taken together, the thirteen steps of argument in this article lead to the following limited but specific judgments:

First, "shifting the burden of proof" (Section VII) is the most solidly argued part of this article. It is worth taking seriously as a marginal strategic tool, but its effect is limited by the inherent ambiguity between "military" and "non-military security capabilities" (Section XIII, Part One). The actual room for leverage is therefore smaller than the surface-level theoretical analysis suggests.

Second, the core premise of the proposal itself lacks sufficient evidence (Section XIII, Part Two). If mainland China's decision-making on unification is driven mainly by a sovereignty narrative rather than by perceptions of military threat, then reducing Taiwan's military to zero would have only a marginal, not a structural, effect on the timetable and method of unification.

Third, even if the theoretical mechanism partly holds, the proposal is almost impossible to carry out in practical politics (Section XIV). Irreversibility, domestic political resistance, the lack of guaranteed reciprocal commitments, and the possibility that international security commitments shrink rather than grow together make it hard to propose this strategy seriously in the foreseeable future.

Fourth, the comparable historical cases differ fundamentally from Taiwan's situation (Section XV) and cannot directly support an argument for the proposal's feasibility.

So "zero military forces" should not be understood as a policy option with practical value, but as a thought experiment for testing the boundaries of the logic of strategic interaction across the Taiwan Strait.

Its analytical value lies in revealing a dimension of Taiwan's strategic space that military thinking often obscures: competition over political costs.

But how far this dimension can replace or supplement military deterrence remains an open question that depends heavily on specific assumptions, and on which this article leans toward a conservative estimate. It should not be treated as an established conclusion.