War on the Rocks – Having spent years conducting extensive wargames with senior U.S. and allied government officials on the various cross-strait threat scenarios, I am confident, as I write in my recently released book World on the Brink, that an economic blockade in lieu of a full-scale military invasion has a low probability of success and, therefore, Beijing is unlikely to pursue such an operation and, indeed, hasn’t attempted it yet even though it has had the capability to do so for decades. In fact, an attempted economic blockade would almost inevitably lead to war or a humiliating defeat by China.