An expert on China's military has advanced an intriguing thesis that should interest soybean growers. In a recent article in Foreign Affairs, Joel Wuthnow of the National Defense University in Washington maintains China's dependence on imported soybeans could deter it from trying to take Taiwan by force. (https://www.foreignaffairs.com/…)

His reasoning? In a shooting war over Taiwan, deliveries of foreign beans would disappear. The U.S. would embargo shipments from our shores and blockade shipments from South America.

Actually, a blockade might not even be necessary, Wuthnow argues. Insurance premiums would soar, discouraging ship owners from supplying China by sea.

Wuthnow understands that China has been stockpiling soybeans, along with oil and other imported commodities. Unlike oil, though, soybeans are fragile, Wuthnow points out; there are limits to how long they can be stored.

A long war would exhaust China's stocks and force its people back to a very unpopular grain-heavy diet. "The key for deterring Chinese leaders from starting a conflict," Wuthnow says, "is to convince them that a domestic crisis would arrive sooner than any battlefield victory."

Understand, Wuthnow is an expert on China's military. He's not a soybean expert. In assessing what he writes, I suffer from being an expert on neither. But one needn't be an expert to ask questions:

-- Would China's soybean stockpile really only last a few months, as Wuthnow assumes? If its imported beans are dry -- and China tries to buy them dry when it can -- might not modern storage technology keep them usable for a year or more?

-- Wuthnow discounts some of China's efforts to diversify suppliers, grow more beans at home and tinker with animal feed to require fewer beans. How confident should we be that some of these efforts aren't making progress?

-- Would fear of a "domestic crisis" really deter China's leaders? Might they not assume that their people would patriotically tolerate having less meat in their diets and less cooking oil?

During World War II, the U.S. rationed meat and several other foods to ensure soldiers in the field had enough. While Americans grumbled, they understood rationing was a wartime necessity.

China's leaders have whipped up nationalistic sentiment for years; acquiring Taiwan has long been a national goal. Why should we think Chinese people wouldn't similarly understand the need for rationing?

-- Isn't it possible China's leaders won't be deterred because they'll assume -- rightly or wrongly -- that the U.S. won't come to Taiwan's aid? U.S. policy has long been to leave open the question of how we'd react and let China's leaders fear they'll guess wrong. Strategic ambiguity, we called it.

President Donald J. Trump, a China hardliner in his first term, has been more dovish in his second. It's true that our arms sales to Taiwan continue, much to China's displeasure, but Trump has recently referred to them as "negotiating chips," suggesting we might end them if China gave us, say, a good enough deal on trade.

Couple that with the president's never-ending complaints about the costs of America's overseas commitments, and even some American analysts are questioning how likely we'd be to go to war in Taiwan's defense. Isn't it likely that China's leaders are questioning that, too?

-- Wouldn't China's leaders be more likely to assume they'd win the war quickly than fear a long struggle? They're rapidly building a Navy that dwarfs ours and is designed to knock out our military assets. They have stockpiles of missiles and other weapons. War games have suggested our supply of missiles wouldn't last more than a week against China -- and that was before we drew down those supplies in Iran.

-- As much as China's leaders might worry about running out of soybeans, wouldn't it be logical for them to calculate that a lengthy war would be harder on us than on them? Yes, they import soybeans from us and Brazil, but we import a great many strategically necessary things from them, starting with rare earth materials.

The Chinese people could, if necessary, go back to eating mostly grains and vegetables, but without some of what we get from China (and the likelihood of Taiwanese supplies being cut off), our high-tech industries couldn't function. Isn't it possible our strategic vulnerabilities are more significant than China's -- or could be seen that way in Beijing?

Give him his due: Wuthnow rightfully doesn't make too much of the fragility of soybeans. He describes it simply as a vulnerability of China's that's often overlooked. That's true; it is.

How important a vulnerability, though, is open to question.

Less questionable, in my view, is the conclusion Wuthnow comes to about deterrence: "The United States, Taiwan, and other government should invest in drones, rebuild munitions stockpiles, and ramp up messaging to China that a long, drawn-out conflict is likely."

Urban Lehner can be reached at urbanize@gmail.com

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