R eferring to an array of appliances and vehicles devised to deliver death and decimation as “healthy” seems a bit perverse. However, humanity being what it is, people will continue to build and acquire these devices. One is thus obliged to reflect on the possibility that these weapons may be used, and, therefore, one will want to ensure that their use results in what one perceives to be a desired outcome. It is widely accepted that a certain distribution of devices and conveyances may actually discourage disputants from using what they have. Consequently, how one evaluates what constitutes a healthy balance of forces depends on whether one’s aim is to employ fierce modes of destruction to kill and demolish or whether one is thinking of armaments principally in terms of what might be called a destructive derivative: deterrence. Views of what constitutes a healthy military balance across the Taiwan Strait will differ depending on the objectives one emphasizes as paramount and on the strategy one adopts as most efficacious in service to those objectives. Naturally, the governments of the People’s Republic of China (PRC), Republic of China (ROC), and the United States—the three states most enmeshed in the military dimension of the cross–Taiwan Strait controversy—act in what they each perceive to be their own national interest. Therefore, it is unsurprising that each state emphasizes different objectives and espouses competing views about an appropriate distribution of military forces while trying to affect the balance across the strait. Beyond that, one discerns within each of those three governments—to say nothing of what emerges from the broader gaggle of pundits in each of the three places—contending visions of what the paramount objective ought to be and, therefore, distinct visions of what constitutes a healthy military balance. Thus, what one prescribes as a healthy balance of military forces affecting the Taiwan Strait will reveal what one’s political objectives are and what role one imagines for the use of military power. At present, the PRC appears to have reached a juncture where it hopes the firepower it has developed will deter people on Taiwan from pursuing the amorphous objective known as “de jure” independence—even though there is no standard definition of what constitutes de jure independence or