President Trump’s recent foreign policy moves provide a basis for both hope and fear for Taiwan. The tiny democratic island lies 90 miles off the coast of the world’s largest Communist dictatorship and genocidal regime (according to both the first Trump administration and President Biden’s) which brazenly claims it as a Chinese possession. Beijing regularly declares its intention to seize Taiwan by force if the government and population do not yield to “peaceful reunification,” even though the People’s Republic of China never ruled Taiwan.
Taiwan is entirely dependent for its survival on external Western support led by the United States–which was once a formal commitment under the U.S.-Republic of China (Taiwan) Mutual Defense Treaty of 1954. That Treaty was identical to one executed that same year between the U.S. and the Republic of Korea after the termination of the Korean War. The purpose of both security pacts was to halt further expansion of Asian Communism by eliminating any residual doubts regarding America’s intention to defend its regional friends and allies. The treaties were intended to correct the strategic communications mistake made in January 1950 when Secretary of State Dean Acheson outlined U.S. security interests in Asia and neglected to include both South Korea and Taiwan. The omissions encouraged Kim Il-sung to send North Korean forces across the 38th Parallel and Mao Tse-tung to accelerate preparations to take Taiwan. The 1954 Mutual Defense Treaties with South Korea and Taiwan ended any confusion about U.S. strategic intentions in both places.
But the welcome new strategic clarity on Taiwan ended in 1979 when Jimmy Carter fulfilled the implicit promise of Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger by opening diplomatic relations with China, terminating the ROC Defense Treaty, and breaking off formal ties with Taiwan. Within a few months, an angry Congress passed the Taiwan Relations Act which attempted to re-assert the public American commitment to Taiwan in the absence of an official security pact. It declared that “any effort to determine the future of Taiwan by other than peaceful means, including by boycotts or embargoes, [would constitute] a threat to the peace and security of the Western Pacific area and of grave concern to the United States.” The TRA also went so far as to warn Beijing that “the United States decision to establish diplomatic relations with the People’s Republic of China rests upon the expectation that the future of Taiwan will be determined by peaceful means.” Xi Jinping needs to consider whether Trump’s well-known norm-busting inclinations would contemplate threatening a complete diplomatic decoupling with China if it were to attack Taiwan. That dynamic becomes more plausible if a cross-Strait conflict were to escalate to open war between the U.S. and China, a frightful scenario that should restrain Beijing at least as much as it has inhibited Washington under administrations of both parties.
Trump’s performance on the other current challenge by a major U.S. adversary–Russia’s invasion of Ukraine–does not provide comfort to the government and people of Taiwan. On the contrary, Trump has consistently expressed support for Russia, even calling Putin’s initial invasion of Ukraine under the Obama-Biden administration “brilliant.”
Trump needs to undo the harm his appeasement of Russia on Ukraine has wreaked on U.S. deterrence of China in its planned aggression toward Taiwan. That would entail a clear public statement of intention to defend Taiwan, reinforced by sending a U.S. carrier battle group through the Taiwan Strait for the first time since 2007 and only the second passage since 1995. Meanwhile, China's handful of new, unseasoned carriers use the Strait routinely as a Chinese lake.
Had the 1954 Mutual Defense Treaties been in effect in January 1950, there would have been no Korean War–and possibly no Vietnam War since the Communist aggressors built on the concept of limited war and no regime change that restrained U.S. policy in Korea. With Trump rushing to challenge virtually every other principle of U.S. domestic and foreign policy, he should be willing to re-think this counter-productive and highly dangerous approach to dealing with avowed enemies of the United States.
Joseph Bosco served as China country director for the secretary of Defense from 2005 to 2006 and as Asia-Pacific director of humanitarian assistance and disaster relief from 2009 to 2010. He is a nonresident fellow at the Institute for Corean-American Studies, a member of the advisory board of the Global Taiwan Institute and member of the advisory board of the Vandenberg Coalition.
