> I have low faith in the USN in the event of a Taiwan contingency

Morale tends to be very different when you're acting as the reactor to some other actor on the offensive, you act (you think at least) as a defender of some larger idea of "peace". But when you instead gets sent out as the aggressor, you don't really have much to defend and hold on to, and it gets harder and harder for people to justify what they're there to do.

Say China were to invade Taiwan and there would be outright war, then a lot of people would feel differently about participating in that, compared to participating with the US acting as an aggressor against Iran for little rhyme or reason.