The Gathering Storm
If deterrence fails over Taiwan, no one can say we didn’t see it coming.
History of the Present — The Intellectualist Premium Series
The Gathering Storm: A four-part series on Taiwan, Trump, Xi, and the public collapse of deterrence.
Part I: The Storm Before Us
If deterrence fails over Taiwan, no one can say there were no warnings.
Part II: Appeasement Redistributes Fear
Trump can choose appeasement. Asia cannot.
Part III: The War Xi Thinks He Can Win
Sparta won the war and lost the future.
Part IV: The Long War Already Here
Taiwan is the next pressure point in an authoritarian conflict system already underway.
If China moves to annex Taiwan, no one will honestly be able to say the warnings were hidden. Trump is making deterrence look negotiable, allies are beginning to doubt America’s defense commitments, and Beijing is openly signaling that it sees China rising as the United States declines.
There are catastrophes people later say they never saw coming, even when the warnings were there. September 11 still lives that way in American memory: a clear morning, then rupture, followed by years of reconstruction in which scattered warnings slowly assembled into a pattern.
A Taiwan crisis would not be like that.
This time, the pattern is not buried in classified memos, missed signals, or hindsight. It is in the news almost every day. The threats are no longer abstract. They are publicly coalescing: Chinese pressure on Taiwan, American hesitation, conditional commitments, strained munitions, shaken alliances, Russia-China coordination, and a president treating deterrence as negotiation.
That is the gathering storm: not a surprise from a clear sky, but a visible front moving toward us while the people responsible for preparing the country argue over whether the clouds are real.
The warnings are not hidden. They are public, repeated, and still not being treated with the seriousness they deserve.
From the American side, this is a strategist’s nightmare: a president whose foreign policy appears more conciliatory toward authoritarian rivals than democratic partners; Taiwan made negotiable; Ukraine support made conditional; NATO trust made brittle; Greenland turned into a coercive hemispheric crisis; U.S. munitions stretched after Iran; U.S. soft power weakened; and democratic allies left to wonder whether Washington still understands the difference between partners and adversaries.
Ukraine is the warning Taiwan can already see.
Since January 20, 2025, Trump has treated Zelenskyy less like the elected leader of an invaded democracy than like a subordinate to be pressured, judged, and made useful. The Oval Office confrontation made the signal visible: Trump and Vice President JD Vance criticized Zelenskyy for not being sufficiently grateful, and U.S. military and intelligence aid was then paused.
AP reported that the Trump administration later resumed both military aid and intelligence sharing, reversing a suspension intended to pressure Ukraine into peace talks with Russia. That sequence matters more than the reversal. It showed every ally watching that American support can be paused, personalized, negotiated, and restored only after damage is done.
Taipei can see all of this happening in public.
Ukraine could absorb delay because it was already fighting a land war with major European backing. Taiwan may not get that margin. In a Taiwan Strait crisis, hesitation in the opening hours could become the event itself. Ukraine showed the method. Taiwan may reveal the cost.
Greenland shows how far the damage has gone.
The issue was not merely that Trump coveted allied territory. It was that the possibility of U.S. coercion against Greenland reportedly forced Denmark, a NATO ally, to prepare for the unthinkable: armed resistance to the United States. Military Times, citing Danish public broadcaster DR, reported that Denmark dispatched soldiers and explosives to Greenland as part of contingency planning to destroy key runways if the United States attempted an invasion, and that Danish blood banks flew supplies to treat potential casualties. A defense alliance cannot remain psychologically intact when allies have to contemplate military confrontation with the country meant to guarantee their security.
The historical insult cuts deeper because NATO’s Article 5 has been invoked only once: after September 11, in defense of the United States. Denmark answered that call in Afghanistan and paid heavily for it: forty-four Danish troops were killed, one of the highest per-capita death tolls among coalition forces. Trump’s attacks on NATO allies, his disparagement of allied contributions, and his willingness to threaten allied territory do more than strain diplomacy. They corrode the moral foundation of the alliance itself: a NATO ally that once stood with America after September 11 reportedly found itself preparing for the possibility of fighting America over Greenland.
That benefits Putin because NATO’s greatest strength is not simply military hardware. It is allied trust. If Denmark, a loyal Article 5 ally, has to imagine resisting American pressure by force, then Moscow sees something it has wanted for decades: a NATO alliance psychologically shaken from within. It tells Russia something extraordinary: allied confidence can be weakened from inside the alliance itself. It tells Beijing something equally dangerous: American alliances may still exist on paper, but their emotional, political, and strategic foundations are being weakened by Washington itself.
The military problem is just as stark. Deterring a Chinese attack on Taiwan depends on having enough of the right weapons in the right place before the crisis starts. Not just aircraft carriers or troop numbers, but the missiles, interceptors, air defenses, anti-ship weapons, and precision munitions needed to stop an invasion in its opening hours. If those stocks are thin, delayed, or already being burned down in other theaters, American credibility weakens before the crisis even begins.
That is what makes the munitions problem so dangerous. Deterrence is not rhetoric. It is the adversary’s belief that aggression will be punished quickly enough and severely enough to make the attempt irrational. In Taiwan, that means the ability to sink ships, destroy aircraft, intercept missiles, cripple logistics, and disable invasion forces before Beijing can convert movement into occupation.
CSIS warned after the Iran war ceasefire that concern over U.S. munitions inventories had intensified after heavy expenditures of Tomahawks, Patriots, and other missiles, and that the larger risk lies in future wars, especially against a peer competitor like China. If U.S. stocks are depleted or uncertain, deterrence weakens before a shot is fired. A promise without the weapons to enforce it is not deterrence. It is theater.
The danger is not that the world will ask, “How could this happen?”
The danger is that the answer will already be available.
Deterrence does not fail only when armies move. It fails earlier, when allies begin to doubt, adversaries begin to probe, and commitments become conditional. Beijing does not need to know that America will stand down. It only needs to suspect that America might hesitate. Moscow does not need NATO to disappear. It only needs allies to wonder whether Washington’s promise still means what it used to mean.
Alliances are not supposed to work like this.
That is the nightmare: not collapse, but uncertainty. Not surrender, but hesitation. Not one abandoned ally, but a pattern of signals convincing adversaries that the old American order still exists on paper while its political will is weakening underneath.
The danger is not that Donald Trump has a grand strategy. The danger is that America’s adversaries may have one for him.
Trump’s foreign policy is often called isolationist, but that word is too soft. Isolationism implies withdrawal. What Trump is practicing is more dangerous: a retreat from alliance leadership into sphere-of-influence politics joined to tactical coercion without strategic coherence.
His administration has revived a Monroe Doctrine-style focus on the Western Hemisphere, but the pattern is not a disciplined grand strategy.
It is tactical coercion without strategic architecture: pressure Ukraine, pressure Greenland, pressure allies, praise strongmen, bargain over commitments, and leave adversaries to test what remains.
Whether or not there is any formal understanding with China or Russia, the effect increasingly resembles one: America turns inward while Beijing and Moscow test the outer edge of the old American order.
The first place that logic becomes truly dangerous is Taiwan.
Taiwan is the central test.
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