President Trump will soon have a face-to-face meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping. Although Trump would likely prefer to talk about a trade deal, Xi will just as certainly be emphasizing the sensitive issue of Taiwan. The recently reignited trade war seems to show that Beijing is now playing hard ball.
In fact, a recent report suggests Beijing will be aiming for a “grand bargain,” attempting to bring Washington’s and Beijing’s priorities into alignment. This bargain would trade Chinese economic concessions for movement on its priority issue: Taiwan.
Xi reportedly wants Trump to move American policy away from the current language of “not supporting Taiwan independence” to “opposing” Taiwan independence. Trump should meet with Xi, and he would be wise to consider accepting some variant of this deal.
Yes, the two leaders will inevitably focus on trade tensions, but a new agreement on Taiwan will put a more solid foundation under this key bilateral relationship.
American foreign and defense policies have long been distorted by the notion that Taiwan constitutes a vital U.S. national security interest. Here’s the big secret: It doesn’t.
That distortion exists for numerous reasons, not least the ample funding that Taiwan spreads around D.C. think tanks. And the stakes are very high: If Washington gets its Taiwan policy wrong, it could find itself dragged into a military conflict that makes the Russia-Ukraine War seem like a minor brushfire, and could conceivably involve the use of nuclear weapons.
How can the U.S. extract itself from this extraordinarily dangerous situation? An earlier Republican administration bravely showed the way.
President Richard Nixon and his wily national security adviser, Henry Kissinger, broke the Gordian Knot of the Taiwan issue with the famous Shanghai Communique in 1972 that remains the cornerstone of contemporary U.S.-China relations. That document is remarkably clear: “The United States acknowledges that all Chinese on either side of the Taiwan Strait maintain there is but one China and that Taiwan is a part of China. The United States Government does not challenge that position.”
In conformity with Nixon’s revolutionary rapprochement, American military forces, including units wielding nuclear weapons, were quickly withdrawn from Taiwan. In addition, Taiwan was unseated at the United Nations and replaced by mainland China — a move of no small symbolic significance. America’s “One China policy” had been born. Nixon and Kissinger had aimed to finally extricate the U.S. from a Chinese Civil War that never fully ended. And this was achieved to a large extent.
Unfortunately, these efforts have been muddled in recent years, as Taiwan’s many advocates have sought to undermine the significance of Nixon’s bold stabilization efforts. Measures taken in Trump’s first term did not help this situation. And President Biden only made it worse with his clumsy rhetoric, mistakenly claiming in 2021 that Taiwan was an ally on par with Japan or NATO countries. In fact, no defense treaty binds the U.S. to Taiwan.
It’s rather clear that the Trump administration is taking a different approach to Taiwan. As one recent appraisal suggests, the U.S. president seems to be leaning toward the “tinderbox” warnings of the so-called restrainers’ camp, observing that these strategists emphasize that “the costs caused by … U.S. direct military involvement in the cross-strait conflict [would] outweigh the benefits.”
Trump is evidently not on the Taiwan bandwagon; the current administration has declined to endorse Biden’s rhetorical commitment to defend the island, delayed recent aid to Taiwan, and even canceled U.S.-Taiwan exchanges, including a planned transit stopover by Taiwan’s leader. In fact, the characterization of China’s ask as seeking “a huge concession” is not accurate, since opposing Taiwan’s independence is wholly consistent with a commonsense reading of the One China policy as derived from the Shanghai Communique.
Such a small semantic correction to American policy would go a long way toward stabilizing the volatile U.S.-China relationship. Other major steps that should be considered include winding down high-level visitations to the island, withdrawing all U.S. military and intelligence personnel from Taiwan, and encouraging cross-strait negotiations. American leaders should also consider slowing the massive U.S. military buildup now unfolding in proximate areas, such as Guam, Okinawa and the Philippines. Meanwhile, Taiwan should continue to quietly bolster its own defenses as a hedge.
Simple common sense dictates that a rising Chinese superpower will not give up on its decades-long quest to achieve unification with Taiwan. Washington would be foolish to enforce a red line on this matter, especially in the nuclear era.
Instead, the most promising way to preserve Taiwan’s current autonomy would be for the U.S. to step out of the equation entirely, allowing both sides of the strait to figure the issue out — a reality that even Taiwanese elites have started to recognize. For our part, Americans are more than a little tired of being hoodwinked into fighting other people’s civil wars.
Haggling with the Chinese about technology transfer and market access is one thing. Preparing for a superpower military showdown in the Taiwan Strait is quite another — and it should be taken off the table for good.
Lyle Goldstein is director of Asia Engagement at Defense Priorities.