China thinks it can, on its own, modulate the scale, intensity, and pace of a war with Taiwan, according to a senior U.S. intelligence officer. On Tuesday, Lonnie Henley, an East Asia specialist in the office of the Director of National Intelligence, told the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace that Beijing’s confidence in “war control” is “probably misplaced,” and argued that this view “is dangerous for all concerned.”

Given the overwhelming superiority of American forces in the Pacific, Beijing is probably thinking it can force the Taiwanese to surrender before the United States shows up on the scene. Yet there is one other, far more disturbing, possibility. Chinese officials might believe they can prevent the United States from even trying to defend Taiwan, despite the clear Congressional intent behind the Taiwan Relations Act. After all, Beijing has been surprisingly successful in recent years in getting the Bush administration to side with it in matters involving the island republic, a democracy of 23 million citizens.

President Bush apparently no longer stands behind his initial “whatever it takes” approach to defending Taiwan. (He’s reverted, it would seem, to the more nuanced “strategic ambiguity” policy of his predecessors.) The Chinese have noted (and welcomed) this shift. America’s failing to confront Beijing’s autocrats has made them overconfident, as Henley’s assessment shows. Washington, by wavering in the face of Chinese aggressiveness, is helping to create precisely the kind of unstable, dangerous conditions it seeks to avoid. Bush needs to start acting like Bush.