ABSTRACT
This chapter explores how military conflict could arise in the Taiwan Strait and also the bargaining model of war, contextualized to the cross-Strait case. The Taiwan Strait has been widely viewed as a potential flashpoint, particularly prior to the current detente under President Ma Ying-jeou. Many analysts have feared that military conflict in the Taiwan Strait-potentially involving the United States, is a very real possibility. Perhaps the most common scenario for a cross-Strait conflict given by analysts of the China-Taiwan relationship involves a 'revisionist' Taiwan trying to formalize its independent status, thus triggering a People's Republic of China (PRC) military response. Chen Shui-bian's narrow re-election as Taiwan's president in 2004, when there also appeared to be a realistic chance that the DPP could capture the Legislative Yuan (LY) in year-end elections, analysts in Beijing were especially pessimistic about political trends in Taiwan. PRC military capabilities continue to grow, while Taiwan's appear to stagnate.
