JOHN CULVER is a Nonresident Senior Fellow in the John L. Thornton China Center at Brookings. He served for 35 years as a Central Intelligence Agency officer, including as National Intelligence Officer for East Asia from 2015 to 2018.

Foreign investors are increasingly viewing a potential Chinese invasion of Taiwan as a real, if remote, risk under Donald Trumps presidency. While once unthinkable, tensions across the Taiwan Strait have intensified,