Stephen Wertheim
The restraint debate on Taiwan is advancing. I’d like to put forward the problems I see with calls to end the currently ambiguous U.S. commitment to Taiwan by clarifying that the United States would not defend Taiwan: 1. If the United States announced it wouldn’t defend Taiwan, confidence in Taipei could collapse and Beijing could move swiftly to bring Taiwan under its control while an unusually accommodating U.S. president remained in office. So there would be a real risk of China taking over Taiwan in the near term. 2. Chinese control of Taiwan would hit the U.S. economy hard. If China cut off U.S. access to Taiwan’s semiconductor fabs (or if Washington cut off inputs to the fabs), America could suffer a recession. It could try to accommodate China to keep the chips flowing, but China could still keep the most advanced chips away from America, much as Washington has kept them away from Beijing. Could the United States rapidly build fabs able to manufacture the most advanced chips? Lots of evidence says it can’t, at least not at speed and scale. If it can, let’s see the plan. 3. The proposal would oddly demote Taiwan to a uniquely low status. Washington does not affirmatively rule out defending countries; it commits to defend allies and stays silent otherwise. Taiwan implicates U.S. interests more than many treaty allies do. So abandoning Taiwan would make the strategic logic behind U.S. foreign policy less coherent (or more incoherent) and give allies a good reason to reassess America’s commitment to their own defense. That should be a manageable challenge, and could spur some allies to step up. But there’s an important debate to be had about which allies Washington should then reassure and how. 4. Domestic backlash: Abandoning Taiwan outright could politicize the issue and prompt members of Congress and presidential candidates to push for reinstating the old policy or supporting Taiwan more strongly than before. If the next administration merely restores strategic ambiguity, the United States would likely end up worse off: Taiwan’s confidence will have been shaken and China won’t be reassured. This risk could be reduced by waiting for the U.S. political environment to change — but that would indefinitely defer the policy shift. The alternative is to maintain strategic ambiguity, restrain Taipei where necessary, and affirm or strengthen the elements of the One China policy that reassure Beijing. Meanwhile the United States could take many materially meaningful actions: help Taiwan strengthen its defenses, develop ways to aid Taiwan in a crisis short of direct intervention, shift posture away from the first island chain, and expand semiconductor manufacturing at home and elsewhere. Those measures would work to prevent a cross-strait war and reduce America's economic exposure without handing Taiwan to Beijing.