Numerology is a potent force in human affairs. So is a deadline—especially when it’s clear fateful consequences will come to pass once the cutoff date arrives. The wry English wit Dr. Samuel Johnson was on to something when he quipped that “when a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully.”

But what happens if you talk yourself into believing a deadline is impending when it’s not? Maybe the executioner is not on a set timetable. An approaching date may concentrate your mind, as Johnson prophesied. And that can be a healthy thing. Deadlines are forcing events. They spur thought and action, compelling you to set aside indecision and sloth. But, perversely, a deadline might goad you into doing something rash—something with dire strategic and political import—in hopes of eluding the hangman’s noose. And then you’ll be stuck with the consequences of your actions—potentially, consequences of cataclysmic proportions.

Even though the hangman was never coming for you in the first place. Being decisive could be self-defeating.

Such are the dangers of a phantom cutoff date. Now to the news. Here are two numbers that have come to fixate officialdom in Washington, DC over the past few years: six and 2027. Both originated in a single committee meeting in Congress. In 2021, while testifying before the Senate Armed Services Committee, outgoing U.S. Indo-Pacific Command chief Philip Davidson reported that “Beijing is pushing across the globe to diplomatically isolate, economically constrain, and militarily threaten Taiwan.”

No kidding.

That was abundantly true then, and it had been for some time. Fully twenty years ago, Chinese Communist Party (CCP) magnates transcribed their threat to use arms into Chinese domestic law in the form of an “Anti-Secession Law.” The law set the conditions under which China would use force and made—surprise, surprise—CCP leaders the arbiters of whether those conditions had been met. Nor was this mere bombast on Beijing’s part. In the ensuing years, as Chinese military might has swelled, the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) has taken to deploying sea and air power around the island. As a matter of routine, PLA forces now practice amphibious landings, bombardment of key infrastructure, destruction of the Taiwan Navy and Air Force, and associated precursors to conquest.

The Anti-Secession Law has taken on an increasingly martial hue as China acquires the means to enforce it.

None of what Admiral Davidson told senators in his prepared testimony was especially novel, let alone radical. His prepared remarks were boilerplate. While fielding questions from the committee, though, he had this to say: “I worry that [the Chinese are] accelerating their ambitions to supplant the United States and our leadership role in the rules-based international order, which they’ve long said that they want to do ... by 2050. I’m worried about them moving that target closer. Taiwan is clearly one of their ambitions before then. And I think the threat is manifest during this decade, in fact in the next six years” (emphasis added).

That last became the tagline for the admiral’s remarks. 6 + 2021 = 2027. There’s your numerology. The threat posed by China had become plain enough by 2021. Threats are composed of intentions and capabilities, and by then, Beijing had loudly and often trumpeted its intentions while at the same time amassing fearsome capabilities. But when the threat might cascade into war, if ever, it remained abstract and ethereal. There was no proof that Johnson’s hanging had been scheduled or ever would be. Or maybe the execution would be postponed if it were on the docket. However imposing, the threat emanating from China fell short of wonderfully concentrating minds.

It was possible to dither. And that’s what human beings do best.

Davidson changed all that. He provided specifics. His six-year timeframe was almost instantly dubbed the “Davidson Window,” shorthand for an interval of maximum peril in the Taiwan Strait. The metaphor concentrated minds. Now, that being said, it remains unclear to me precisely why policymakers and opinionmakers locked onto 2027, the endpoint of the Davidson Window. Obsessing over 2027 implies that Taiwan, America, and regional allies still have a couple of years’ respite to get ready for a trial of arms.

No.

Davidson meant to broadcast a more alarming message than that. He meant to tell Congress that the allies had no leisure to prepare, even back in 2021. China could act against Taiwan at any time during his six-year timeframe—including the day he testified, or today, or tomorrow. This hangman is on no fixed timetable. The allies should make haste lest he show up unannounced—as well he might, according to Davidson. That there can never be too much deception in warfare is baked into Communist Chinese strategic culture.

General Secretary Xi Jinping is not about to telegraph the timing of a drastic move like an assault on Taiwan. This hangman hides his thinking.

Which is why it’s also unclear to me why so many influential folks seem to regard 2027 as a deadline. Such a view is not entirely unreasonable. Chinese vest great importance in anniversaries, and 2027 marks the centennial of the founding of the Red Army, the forerunner to today’s People’s Liberation Army. Pomp might warrant extraordinary measures. It is also true that Xi has instructed PLA commanders to have a military option ready by that year, in part to commemorate the centennial and in part because political and military leaders covet having plentiful options. That’s what a capable armed force provides.

But creating an option is not the same as executing it. Human choice remains.

So beware of 2027 mania. Look both left and right of that date. If it hasn’t been already, the Pentagon needs to be laying contingency plans to intervene in a China-Taiwan war should one erupt today. And it could. Not just Phil Davidson but Carl von Clausewitz says so. The sage of Prussia postulates a case in which a weaker contender “is in conflict with a much more powerful one and expects its position to grow weaker every year.” He goes on to ask rhetorically, “If war is unavoidable, should it not make the most of its opportunities before its position gets still worse?”

He concludes that the lesser contender “should attack.”

Apply that to East Asia. If Xi sees military, economic, demographic, or other trendlines turning against China—if he believes the correlation of military might will be worse in the future than it is now—then the CCP supremo might roll the iron dice. If today is as good as it gets, Clausewitzian logic suggests today is the prime time to act.

Opportunism and risk calculations could prod Xi to be a gambler.

And he could gamble at any time. But neither should we regard the 2027 centennial year as a graven-in-stone deadline. Deterrence has worked and could work. What the allies do could change Xi’s mind. Clausewitz observes that there are three ways to prevail in contests of arms, and only one requires a combatant to throw down its antagonist on the battlefield and impose terms. He maintains that “inability to carry on the struggle”—the swiftest and surest route to martial triumph—“can, in practice, be replaced by two other grounds for making peace: the first is the improbability of victory; the second is its unacceptable cost.”

The latter two mechanisms operate in peacetime as well as wartime. An antagonist can be disheartened by the military situation or by cost/benefit calculations. It could desist from aggression by being rational.

Bottom line, it would be a mistake to succumb to either complacency or fatalism in the Western Pacific. It remains possible to convince Beijing its position in the Taiwan Strait is untenable. If Xi believes the People’s Liberation Army stands little chance of prevailing in 2027, he should refrain from ordering Chinese forces into action because of some arbitrary date. Or if the allies can persuade Xi that the cost and hazards of conquering Taiwan are more than the island is worth to China—or beyond China’s means entirely—he should likewise relent.

The year 2027 is just a year. We should remain watchful as it approaches, lest the prophets of automatic warfare prove correct, but we should neither relax our guard in the meantime nor resign ourselves to a certain clash of arms. Let’s not give up on efforts to defeat Chinese aggression without fighting.

We have a say in whether Johnson’s hanging happens—and how we react to it.

James Holmes is J. C. Wylie Chair of Maritime Strategy at the Naval War College and a Faculty Fellow at the University of Georgia School of Public and International Affairs. The views voiced here are his alone.

Image: Igor Grochev / Shutterstock.com