Written by Jacques deLisle.
Image credit: Donald Trump by Gage Skidmore/ Flickr, license: CC BY-SA 2.0.
Concerns today about the future of US-Taiwan relations—and, in turn, Taiwan’s international status and security—often focus on the likely impact of a second Donald Trump administration. Trump’s return to power will matter a great deal, but its effects will reflect, sometimes may mask, and in some respects are likely to exacerbate more fundamental trends and challenges affecting Taiwan and Washington’s Taiwan policy.
Do Trump’s calls for Taiwan (and other allies and partners) to pay more for defence or complaints that Taiwan “stole” the US chip industry portend a serious weakening of US support for Taiwan? Is Trump possibly interested in, and potentially able to, strike a grand bargain with Xi Jinping over Taiwan? Will policies toward China resemble the confrontational and vitriolic approach of the COVID era during the first Trump administration, or might they be substantially influenced by Trump’s apparent recurring and revived admiration of Xi—and with what consequences for Taiwan? How are we to read the implications for US-Taiwan relations of nominees for senior defence and foreign policy posts in the new administration and powerful informal advisors, who seem to range from hard-core China hawks to those who favour—and have material stakes in—a more cooperative relationship with China, especially on economic issues? Are Trump’s tariff threats harbingers of an all-out trade-and-tech war between the US and China, posing major problems for Taiwan, or bargaining chips deployed in pursuit of policies that are less disruptive or resemble the prior Trump and Biden administrations’ approaches? How resilient and influential will recently strong bipartisan support for Taiwan in Congress be during Trump’s second term? What are the implications for Taiwan of the apparent tension within the Trump-era Republican party between demands for reduced international entanglements and calls for treating China as a near-existential threat?
The answers to these questions are important, but they will emerge in the context of more deep-seated features that shape US policy on Taiwan issues. For the US, deterring China from undermining the cross-Strait status quo has become increasingly difficult and complex during the last thirty years and especially during the last decade or so. China’s rising power—including its military capabilities and economic leverage—has raised the potential costs and reduced the likely efficacy of US action—whether military intervention or sanctions. Apparent shifts in China’s aims and assessments have made effective US deterrence look all the more difficult to achieve. Among the most high-profile of the many signs of China’s seemingly growing assertiveness or impatience on the Taiwan issue are Xi Jinping and other official sources, repeatedly stressing the inevitability of unification, warning the US (including the incoming Trump administration) against interference in Taiwan and other “internal affairs” of China, and linking resolution of the Taiwan question to the core project of national rejuvenation. The new administration in Washington is not likely to be able to alter significantly these patterns in Chinese capacity and will.
Limited prospects for redressing the long-term relative decline in US power have compounded the difficulties of deterrence. Large-scale investments in US military capabilities remain uncertain and offer no near-term answer. Especially during the Biden administration, the US sought a partial remedy in closer alignment with so-called “like-minded states” in the region and beyond, which had their own concerns about a more powerful and assertive China and joined the US in expressing opposition to actions by Beijing that would breach peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait. The Trump administration is likely to weaken this element of its predecessor’s approach, given what is expected to be a lessened emphasis on democracy and other “values” issues, a more narrowly transactional approach to foreign relations, and greatly increased scepticism—or disdain—for allies and other durable or entangling alignments.
The implications of these expected Trump-associated changes for US deterrence of China in the Taiwan context depend partly on their effects on Chinese decision-makers’ thinking. A lessened emphasis on a “democracy vs. autocracy” narrative could conceivably moderate the increasingly prevalent Chinese narratives that the US is pursuing a new Cold War and an ideologically framed agenda to keep China down. Such a shift might ameliorate one element of US-China tensions over democratic Taiwan and, in turn, the challenges of deterring China from taking coercive measures against Taiwan. But, here, too, any influence on now-entrenched Chinese views is likely to be limited, especially given the likely context of continued strained relations over trade, technology, and other matters. At the same time, a Trump-driven retrenchment from engagement with US allies and partners—and international institutions and norms more generally—could well reinforce (possibly for good reason) Xi’s reportedly strongly held belief that the US is in long-term decline, creating greater opportunities for China to pursue its agendas abroad.
For the US, deterring China in the Taiwan context also has required—or at least consistently entailed—assuring Taiwan, reassuring China, and, at times, deterring Taiwan. All of these components have become more problematic. First, doubts have increased in Taiwan about the credibility of US commitments—understandably, given the narrowing of the gap between US and Chinese relevant military capabilities since the third cross-Strait crisis three decades ago, when the US could confidently dispatch elements of the US Navy’s Seventh Fleet to the region at little or no risk. In recent years, yimeilun—the suspicion that the US will not follow through on promises to protect Taiwan—has become a salient feature of Taiwan’s political and foreign policy landscape, especially but not exclusively among the opposition Kuomintang and its supporters. President Biden sought to address these concerns—as well as other problems of deterrence—by asserting repeatedly that the US would intervene militarily if China were to attack or invade Taiwan.
On some assessments, Biden’s statements imperilled, or even abandoned, the long-standing US policy of “strategic ambiguity”—which has sought to deter China (as well as Taiwan) from undermining the cross-Strait status quo by leaving both in doubt about the conditions under which the US would intervene with force. Biden’s articulated positions are reconcilable with strategic ambiguity—in that they were soon followed by statements that asserted no change in US policy, in that they arguably assumed that China would be acting without adequate provocation, and in that strategic ambiguity has always included, and indeed depended, on elements of relative clarity in signalling that the US would, and would not, intervene under some extreme circumstances, including a PRC attempt to reunify Taiwan by military conquest.
Second, the Biden administration’s not-entirely-effective efforts to assure Taiwan—along with a several-year surge in overwhelmingly bipartisan congressional legislation expressing support for Taiwan and close US-Taiwan ties—also complicated the pursuit of an essential and very different complement—or component—of deterring China: reassuring China. The rise in “pro-Taiwan” policy statements from Washington came with heightened risks of overshadowing or displacing signals to Beijing that, if it refrained from the actions or threats that US policy opposed, China would get something in return, such as the US stepping back from what Beijing regards as encouragement of—or wilful indifference toward—Taiwan’s gradual or incremental movement towards independence or intractable rejection of ultimate unification.
Third, and further complicating any agenda of reassuring Beijing, the Taiwan-focused side of the US policy of “dual deterrence” has atrophied since 2008. Deterring status quo-endangering moves by Taiwan has seemed unnecessary during a long period when cross-Strait relations were warming (during Ma Ying-jeou’s presidency in Taiwan), when Washington has adjudged Beijing to be almost entirely responsible for chillier cross-Strait relations (during the Tsai Ing-wen’s tenure and—so far—the Lai Ching-te’s term), and when no Taiwanese leader has shown an inclination to return to Chen Shui-bian’s flirtation with measures that could be and were read as approaching Beijing’s redlines on formal independence.
In each of these three aspects, the difficulties are unlikely to abate and will likely increase during a second Trump administration. The reduced emphasis on values and allies and the increased volatility and transactional approach that are expected under Trump could well worsen Taiwan’s doubts about US (and other states’) commitments. Offering assurances to China that are both credible to Beijing and not unacceptably costly to Washington is a formidable, perhaps insoluble, puzzle—all the more so given the apparent proclivities and skill set of the Trump administration and a Republican-controlled Congress and the already (and perhaps increasingly) sour, fraught, and mutually suspicious state of bilateral relations. Developments on the Taiwan side (partly in response to Beijing’s actions) could perhaps resurrect a US imperative to deter Taiwan from cross-Strait stability-imperilling moves. Although still relatively inchoate, concerns persist or are emerging that Lai (who once famously described himself as a worker for Taiwan’s independence) would not be as adept or moderate as his predecessor in dealing with the subtleties of cross-Strait issues and triangular relations, or that Beijing’s cold shoulder and tightening vice (as well as Lai’s own views) will yield a mindset akin to Beijing’s concerning Washington—that no conceivably bearable concessions or accommodations by Taiwan will alter Beijing’s policies and practices—and that, therefore, a harder line stance on cross-Strait and status issues is either a necessary defensive measure or can be undertaken with little additional cost.
Taiwan’s capacity to navigate this increasingly difficult terrain and mitigate its consequences has been waning as well. As China becomes an increasingly core geopolitical and geoeconomic concern for the United States, and as US-PRC relations converge somewhat with Cold War patterns, Taiwan issues become more integrated into and peripheral to Washington’s China policy and great power rivalry. Taiwan’s agency—its ability to shape its own fate—is correspondingly endangered. With the securitisation of economic issues in US-China relations (and more broadly in international relations), Taiwan, with its deep economic ties to both the United States and China, faces considerable risk to a long-successful but increasingly stressed model for Taiwan’s prosperity and indispensability to the global economy, and, in turn, Taiwan’s security. Especially—but not only—if Trump’s second presidency accelerates the US turn away from democracy and other values issues in foreign policy and support for international institutions, Taiwan will suffer a blow to another of its relative strengths in seeking status and security: conforming to the norms, playing by the rules, and behaving as if it were a member of the key institutions of a liberal international order.
While the challenges and risks are, thus, considerable, they do not warrant despair. The deeply rooted and long-developing factors that have shaped US Taiwan policy, and that will continue to do so under Trump, weigh significantly against sudden and radical change, making the bad (although not worst) case scenarios under Trump likely to be a low point in a cycle around a relatively intractable—if negative—long-term trendline. China’s persisting interests in avoiding the strategic, economic, and reputational costs of a conflict, or even an especially severe crisis, over Taiwan continue to give Xi good reasons for restraint. And Taiwan may continue to prove itself adept in playing the weak hand it has been dealt.
Jacques deLisle is the Stephen A. Cozen Professor of Law, professor of political science, and director of the Centre for the Study of Contemporary China at the University of Pennsylvania. He is also the chair of the Asia Program at the Foreign Policy Research Institute.
This article was published as part of a special issue on ‘Farewell 2024, Fresh start 2025?’.
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