My acupuncturist is a bit of a contrarian. When I complain of a stiff neck or lower back pain, she smiles and reaches for my left hand. Needles are placed in my fingers, wrist, and elbow. Forty minutes later, the pain is mostly gone despite her never once touching my neck or back.
Geopolitics works in similar ways. Deterring China from invading Taiwan is not only about amassing weapons in the Taiwan Strait but can be done through identifying the pressure points that connect to Beijing’s nervous system.
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Those pressure points lie across Eurasia: in Xinjiang, Central Asia, the South Caucasus, Turkey, and Eastern Europe.
The principal constraint for Chinese President Xi Jinping remains the economic cost of war. Any invasion of Taiwan today will likely be met by a closure of the Strait of Malacca by the U.S. Navy, choking China’s economy.
That cost-benefit calculation will shift if Beijing can secure energy and continue trade through overland pipelines and railways that run across Eurasia.
Beijing is already shaping that future. In addition to the Northern Corridor, which runs through Russia, and the Middle Corridor, which runs through Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan, China is adding another alternative railway that runs through Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan.
Yet the ultimate test of China’s continental strategy may lie not in Central Asia or the South Caucasus, but where those corridors reach Europe. There, 13 countries between the Baltic, Adriatic, and Black Seas have been building the Three Seas Initiative.
A decade ago, Beijing sought influence in Central and Eastern Europe through its 17+1 framework, promising investment and access to China’s market. But after Beijing declared a “no-limits partnership” with Moscow and Russia invaded Ukraine, support eroded. The Baltic states withdrew, while Prague declared the initiative dead. China has since pivoted toward bilateral ties with partners such as Hungary and Serbia.
If the members of the Western-oriented Three Seas Initiative — Austria, Bulgaria, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Greece, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, and Slovenia — can act together, it can become the regulatory gateway through which China’s overland commerce enters the European Union.
The mistake in much Western strategic thinking is the assumption that deterrence must be concentrated where conflict would occur. Like acupuncture, pressure applied at the intersection of China’s east-west corridors and Europe’s north-south backbone could shape Beijing’s calculations far from the Taiwan Strait.
The Middle Corridor stretches more than 4,000 km from China to Europe, bypassing both Russia and Iran. The United States and its allies do not need to block China from using it. On the contrary, the more Beijing relies on the Eurasian landmass, the more geopolitical pressure points emerge. Dependence creates vulnerabilities to regulatory barriers and regional instability.
In the South Caucasus, a new Chinese pressure point is emerging: Armenia. If Yerevan can amend language in its Constitution linked to historic territorial claims, that would remove the last obstacle to a final peace agreement with Azerbaijan. It would also accelerate the construction of the Trump Route for International Peace and Prosperity, connecting the two former adversaries by railways and pipelines.
A successful TRIPP could shift part of the Middle Corridor away from Georgia, which seems increasingly close to Russia, toward an American-led route through Azerbaijan and Armenia.
Armenia, therefore, determines whether the most politically stable version of the Middle Corridor becomes viable, giving the U.S. and Europe greater influence over a corridor China increasingly views as insurance against maritime disruption.
Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan just won reelection in June but fell short of the mandate required to unilaterally amend the constitution. This leaves a central issue in the peace process, ending territorial claims against Azerbaijan, unresolved.
If Washington is serious about engaging Beijing’s pressure points, more change will be needed. The U.S. should repeal Section 907 of the Freedom Support Act of 1992 and certain provisions of the Jackson-Vanik amendment that continue to restrict Azerbaijan.
Thus, Armenian constitutional reform, European engagement with Armenia, and changes to American trade law are all elements that build deterrence against China.
HORMUZ 2.0: CHINA’S COMING CHOKEPOINT STRATEGY IN THE TAIWAN STRAIT
None of these measures would determine Xi’s decision on its own. But deterrence is cumulative. Every additional uncertainty over China’s wartime energy security, trade resilience, and continental access raises the expected cost of aggression.
An acupuncture approach to geopolitics suggests that Europe need not project military power into the Pacific to influence Taiwan’s security or U.S.-China relations. Strengthening strategic pressure points across Eurasia would reinforce deterrence where it ultimately matters most — not on a map, but in Xi Jinping’s cost-benefit calculations.
Ken Moriyasu, a former longtime correspondent at Japan’s Nikkei, is a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute.
