www.China-Defense.com

Here is what I see the stands of the three sides involved in this issue, as participants here have made perfectly clear:

PRC: sovereignty
Taiwan: self determination, independence from the CCP
U.S.: credibility

All sacred principles, and ideally, all worth killing and dying for. Fortunately, China's sovereignty (from PRC's POV) is only mortally damaged if Taiwan goes TI (Taiwan independent), and Taiwan's defacto independence and US credibility are only threatened if PRC launches an invasion. Therefore, assuming no misunderstandings by any of the three sides, war will only likely to break out if Taiwan goes TI unprovoked. Again, fortunately, both the PRC and the US work within all their means to prevent such a course of action, and even the TI leaning DPP party administration has avoided TI radicalism.

Unfortunately, all three sides also assign sinister motives to their opponents, which are held by the most hawkish elements in the respective sides:

PRC: resurrection of Pax Sinica
Taiwan: unsinkable carrier to contain China
U.S.: preservation of Pax Americana

Due to the existence of such hawkish elements, each sides prepare for the worst, should such elements come to power, and become increasingly paranoid that these elements are indeed taking over. There are those who insist on framing all actions by the other side from these paranoid perspectives, and they could scare the rest of us into believing them. Events could follow a downward spiral, driven by the paranoid fears of all three sides, each drunken with nationalism, fanned by the blood boiling appeals to the sacred principles. Until the three sides have steered irrevocably on a collision course. Only after the three have been awakened from the intoxicated states by the dreadful pain of injuries sustained, they can review the events in sorrowful retrospect. Could they perhaps realize that all this calamity could have been prevented, that perhaps their most paranoid fears were just that, and perhaps their most sacred principles were not so direly threatened after all. They might also find that, in their steadfast conviction of their own righteousness, they were actually intoxicated and controlled by something far less pure and glorious - pride. They might decide that pride was not worth killing and dying for after all. All assuming, of course, that the wounds are not mortal.

People are obsessed with World War II. Yes, it was the epic struggle of the modern age, where the victors could unabashedly proclaim their triumph and parade their pride without too much guilty conscience. The struggle could actually be framed in something like the dualistic Judeo-Christian worldviews without contorting it so much as to destroy the original. Even then, combatants such as the USSR and Italy are gray at best. Ever since, nations have tried to frame all their struggles and conflicts in terms of WW II.

However, World War I is probably much more representative of human conflicts past and present, especially in terms of the chain reaction leading up to it. Instead of one or a few actors leaving all others with no choice, as in WW II, the principle participants in WW I painted each other and themselves into a corner. The flowers of the European youth marched to war buoyed by patriotic songs and nationalistic slogans, ala All Quiet on the Western Front, and were butchered as the vain elders looked and urged on, exclaiming: "how magnificently they fell!"

I see a tendency to construct scenarios where the state one supports is utterly blameless, and is forced to take the dreadful step to war by the complete unreasonableness of the other side. Indeed, I myself has fallen into such tendencies in my past debates on the TW issue. However, such scenarios are probably the most unlikely of all. The folly leading up to any cross-Strait conflict will not likely be, IMHO, failures to pursue deterrence by any side, but overzealousness in such pursuits, and failure to communicate to the other side that one is preparing for the worst, nothing more. Furthermore, each side would be adamant that the proverbial ball is in the other court, after offering a token reconciliatory gesture or two of doubtful substance.