“China Issues Donald Trump a Warning Over Taiwan,” Newsweek headlined Billal Rahman’s recent article.
For the last five years, I havecounseled that the U.S. must either withdraw from Southeast Asia or convince the Chinese regime that we and our allies are willing to stand up to them, militarily.
How will President Trump respond in a second term?
Arguing that “the United States … is always America first,” a spokesperson for China’s Taiwan Affairs Office recently needled: “Taiwan at any time may turn from a pawn to a discarded child.”
However, Lyle Goldstein with Defense Priorities notes that “During Trump’s last four years there was quite a robust stance in favor of defending Taiwan …” While Al Jazeera headlined a recent story, “Trump signals hard line on China with hawkish cabinet picks.”
Still, “I think Taiwan should pay us for defense,” Trump said back in June.*
“[T]hey want protection,” he told Joe Rogan last month. “The mob makes you pay money, right? But with these countries that we protect, I got hundreds of billions of dollars from NATO countries that were never paying us.”
Mr. Trump did successfully prod NATO countries into putting more money into their militaries. That seems to be his gambit with Taiwan.
And maybe it’s working.
“Taiwan is considering a massive $15 billion military package,” Fox News is reporting, “in a show to the incoming Trump administration that it is serious about defending itself against the threat posed by China.”
Plus, as The Epoch Times illuminates, “A coalition of the willing is already emerging.” Countries in Europe and Asia are increasingly coming together and standing up against Chinese bullying of Taiwan.
As we await the second Trump administration.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
* Trump also charged that Taiwan “stole” our computer chip business. True, in the same sense that Shohei Ohtani stole 57 bases for the LA Dodgers last season.
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2 replies on “Trump & Taiwan”
How costly would be the defense of Taiwan depends upon how much the Chinese state is and will be willing to do to conquer Taiwan. In turn, how much the Chinese state is and will be willing to do to conquer Taiwan depends upon its reasons for conquest.
The Chinese state is generally imperialistic.
The Chinese state needs a distraction of its subjects from problems on the mainland. The need for distraction of the Chinese will of course intensify. However, distraction can be got more cheaply from cold war and smaller dust-ups.
The previous Chinese state, the Republic of China of the Kuomintang, was given Taiwan in the wake of World War II, and the Kuomintang retreated thence as they were driven from China proper by the Chinese Communist Party. For decades, the Republic of China under the Kuomintang, controlling Taiwan, insisted that it were sole legitimate state of China. Even though the Kuomintang has since formed a perverse alliance with the People’s Republic of China and the Chinese Communist Party, the defeat of the Republic of China will seem incomplete if Taiwan is not brought under overt control of the People’s Republic of China.
Further, while the Chinese state views lack of demonstrated opposition as a sign of weakness, a great public challenge, if unmet, would result in a loss of face. So the Chinese state may undertake a military conquest of Taiwan simply not to lose face.
While the present economic value of Taiwan is enormous, and technocrats do not understand value well enough to see that, if Taiwan surrendered without a shot, its value would largely be lost to mismanagement, the Chinese state does understand that overt war would destroy much of the value of Taiwan; they probably also understand that a conquered, ruined Taiwan could be a net drag on Chinese economic development.
Good to see countries in Europe and Asia are willing to come together to defend Taiwan. But do they really mean it? What steps are they willing to take? How much of their own resources are they prepared to expend in defense of Taiwan? Seeing is believing. For the US, defense of Taiwan can be considered an “America First’ stand because, unlike in Ukraine, America’s economy is more dependent on goods coming from Taiwan.