One of the most pressing challenges the Trump Administration will face is U.S. policy toward Taiwan. The island of 23 million people is one of the world’s freest democratic societies, according to Freedom House. But the People’s Republic of China, its authoritarian neighbor, continually threatens to end Taiwan’s democratic experiment, including by force if necessary. While the United States has not recognized Taiwan’s sovereignty since 1979, the U.S. is bound by law to provide Taipei with “defensive arms” to protect itself from external threats.
Why It Matters
In line with current U.S. law, the Biden Administration recently announced it has approved a new $2 billion arms sale to Taipei, including the National Advanced Surface-to-Air Missile System (NASAMS) that has already been successfully deployed in the Ukraine war. This means the U.S. is actively planning and learning valuable lessons from Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, in case of similar plans by China against Taiwan. Regrettably, the Biden Administration has been one of the least active in the last 30 years in approving these major arms packages to Taipei.
In October, the media reported that China’s President Xi Jinping officially requested that President Biden change U.S. language toward Taiwan from “not supporting” Taipei’s independence to actively “opposing” it. While this may seem a distinction without a difference, it is in fact critically important for the U.S. to maintain neutral language toward Taiwan, while acknowledging longstanding U.S. “one-China” policy.
What’s Next
The Trump Administration must continue to support Taiwan’s democracy, because to do so is both consistent with our country’s values and critical to U.S. interests. We must not betray the democratic will of 23 million people that want to remain free. The loss of Taiwan to China could be catastrophic to the U.S. and the global economy, not to mention a critical blow to U.S. security interests in the Indo-Pacific region and our long-term goal of deterring a rising authoritarian China.
Taiwan is also important because it may be the next target of the new axis of autocracies, consisting of China, Russia, North Korea, and Iran, newly-christened as the CRINK. Russia’s war against Ukraine should have taught us by now that there is no such thing as the “European theater” and the “Asian theater.” We are in a global fight to contain autocracies.
The Trump Administration will have plenty of tools to help our allies in Taipei, including the Taiwan Relations Act for more arms sales, as well as the TAIPEI Act for advancing bilateral ties and preserving Taiwan’s international space. It should use them often and effectively.
