Private reassurances and commitments can be attempted as well, however I consider that to be even less viable than public commitments (which is why I didn't mention a private option) simply because of the ability of governments to deny any private commitments occurred while still building up forces.
For example, if the US agrees privately to stand down forces, but publicly rushes to reinforce their positions in the western pacific and denying there were any private agreements in the first place, then all you have left is essentially Option A by giving the US warning that China is intending to carry AR, which leaves China holding the decision to whether to strike at the US as part of AR operations.
It is important for us to recognize there is a difference between "preparedness" and "intent". I wrote about this a week or so ago with regards to China's capabilities vis a vis Taiwan, and it is also the case vis a vis the US to China.
Currently the US is indeed significantly fortifying its positions in the western pacific, however it is doing so to try and give itself as many capabilities and bases as it can, so that if conflict occurred, it has the best fighting chance and to allow itself to more rapidly redeploy and surge its global forces and CONTUS forces to the western pacific. It is engaging in preparedness.
However that doesn't mean the US right now has made a decision to explicitly provoke China into war at a given point in time.
If the US were intending to initiate a conflict with China, such as through provocations like conspiring with Taiwan to cross some of China's red lines, then I would be expecting the US to have made multiple months if not years of preparations before hand in the form of preparing its global and CONTUS based mobile units and redeploying them to the western pacific in rapid succession to give China minimal time to respond.
So no, it isn't a false dilemma, because the US has not chosen to prepare and massively surge the vast majority of its globally available air and naval forces to the western pacific yet.
If the US seriously wanted to prepare and commit to a western pacific war as part of a multi year plan, then we would be seeing stand down and work up periods of as many of its CSGs and air wings as possible, to allow them to recuperate, to enable as many of them to surge into the western pacific theater in as short of a period as possible.
Instead, what they're doing is fortifying alliances, expanding bases, and trying to acquire new bases, but the actual quantity and readiness of US globally available forces to rapidly redeploy to the western pacific is not significantly above recent norms, and their global deployment patterns are about normal as well.
Putting it another way -- what the US is currently doing at present is peacetime fortification. But if the US made an actual decision was made to carry out wartime fortification, redeployment and surge, then that would result in a far larger, more resilient, formidable and lethal force in the western pacific. It is the latter (wartime fortification, redeployment and surge) which the PLA would be most concerned about and ideally be wanting to prevent.
Which takes us back to the question of when/if they strike at US bases and forces in the region at the outset of conflict to prevent the US from reinforcing their westpac positions.
Edit:
One major "limitation" to US wartime reinforcing/surge capabilities to its westpac positions, is that it is not something which is permanent. It is not something the US can do indefinitely, and forces will eventually have to return to CONTUS for maintenance, stand down, and so on.
The problem becomes one of whether the PLA and US military in westpac actually wage war against each other when the US is reinforcing its westpac positions and the geopolitical decisions relevant to Taiwan. Namely, does the PLA conduct AR operations against Taiwan while the US has reinforced its westpac positions, or is there some ability for China to wait until the US has to drawdown its surge capabilities to strike once the US westpac presence is reduced?
Is it politically tenable for China to wait, if during that period for example Taiwan declares independence and the US and multiple other nations recognize its independence and open embassies and open up military bases on Taiwan, and China has to wait until the larger US westpac surge presence withdraws first, before carrying out AR operations?
That's the kind of unknowns we open ourselves up to, outside of Options A and B directly.
In terms of near future, I am talking about within the next 5-10 years. Beyond that, who knows.