The Donald Trump administration’s National Security Strategy (NSS), issued in December 2025, affirmed “our longstanding declaratory policy on Taiwan, meaning that the United States does not support any unilateral change to the status quo in the Taiwan Strait.” What is conspicuously absent from this formulation are the words “one China.” In both the first Trump administration’s NSS (2017) and the Joe Biden administration’s NSS (2022), Washington’s longstanding declaratory policy was characterized as “our one China policy.” Presumably, this omission in the 2025 document was intentional. But why? And what does it mean?
This remains unclear, especially since Trump officials are likely prepared to reaffirm US adherence to a “one China policy” rhetorically. But its absence from the recent NSS nonetheless reinforces the erosion over many years of Washington’s substantial commitment to “one China,” which could have profound implications for the future of US-China relations.
By way of quick review: the US “one China policy” is based primarily on the “Three Communiques,” which normalized US relations with the People’s Republic of China (PRC) in the 1970s and early 1980s.
President Richard Nixon’s historic trip to China in 1972 produced the “Shanghai Communique,” in which the United States “acknowledged” the Chinese position that “there is but one China and that Taiwan is part of China.” It added that “The United States Government does not challenge that position.”
When the Jimmy Carter administration established formal diplomatic ties with the PRC in 1979, it recognized the PRC as “the sole legal Government of China” and again “acknowledge[d] the Chinese position” that there is one China and Taiwan is part of it.
Finally, in the Third Communique of 1982, the Ronald Reagan administration reaffirmed that the United States “has no intention of infringing on Chinese sovereignty and territorial integrity, or interfering in China’s internal affairs, or pursuing a policy of ‘two Chinas’ or ‘one China, one Taiwan.’”
But the “one China policy” also encompasses other documentary sources that emphasize the Taiwan side of the equation. These include the 1979 Taiwan Relations Act—congressional legislation that outlined how and why Washington would maintain “unofficial” relations with Taiwan—and the 1982 “Six Assurances,” which reaffirmed US support for Taiwan and promised that Washington would not negotiate with Beijing at Taipei’s expense.
Over time, the “one China policy” has become increasingly amorphous, incorporating additional rhetorical elements, particularly statements of principle regarding how Washington believes the sovereignty dispute between Beijing and Taipei should be resolved. After Taiwan’s democratization in the 1990s, the Bill Clinton administration added the notion that the dispute must be resolved “with the assent of the people of Taiwan.” The George W. Bush administration introduced the stipulation that Washington does not support “unilateral moves that would change the status quo” in the Taiwan Strait, “as we define it” (without defining the status quo).
One of the most important but complicated elements of Washington’s “one China policy” is its position on a potential Chinese use of force against Taiwan. In the 1982 Communique—which addressed US arms sales to Taiwan—Beijing affirmed its policy to “strive for a peaceful solution to the Taiwan question,” and Washington stated that it “understands and appreciates” that policy.
However, in a simultaneous internal US memorandum, Reagan went further to state that Washington’s willingness to reduce its arms sales to Taiwan was “conditioned absolutely upon the continued commitment of China to a peaceful solution of the Taiwan-PRC differences. It should be clearly understood that the linkage between these two matters is a permanent imperative of US foreign policy.”
This linkage has essentially been upheld by every subsequent US presidential administration. Clinton stated that “the issues between Beijing and Taiwan must be resolved peacefully,” and the George W. Bush administration—echoing language in the Taiwan Relations Act—stated that Washington would view “any use of force against Taiwan with grave concern.” Accordingly, Washington’s “one China policy” has long incorporated the notion that the United States has an “abiding interest in peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait” and an “expectation” that cross-Strait differences would be “resolved by peaceful means.”
The problem here is that Beijing—contrary to Reagan’s premise—never made any such commitment to peaceful resolution. Indeed, Beijing has consistently avoided renouncing the use of force against Taiwan, both in order to retain its military deterrent and leverage, and because of the visceral importance of the Taiwan issue to Chinese nationalism and the legitimacy of the Chinese Communist Party. This is precisely why Beijing promised only to “strive for” a peaceful resolution.
In short, Beijing has no binding commitment to fulfill Washington’s “expectation” or “abiding interest” beyond what was actually agreed to bilaterally in the Three Communiques. Strictly speaking, Washington’s own historical “one China” commitments cannot be contingent on a Chinese pledge not to use force, because that was never part of the agreement. Washington, however, appears to have unilaterally adopted that linkage and contingency, even though it risks prompting Beijing to abandon its own normalization commitments, which might include no longer “striving for” a peaceful resolution.
The US’ Implicit “One China, One Taiwan” Policy
The erosion of the US “one China policy” has continued over the past decade, especially with regard to US relations with Taiwan and Washington’s implicit acceptance of Taipei’s retreat from its own “one China” policy. In a major shift in the “unofficial” relationship, the first Trump administration rescinded longstanding restrictions on contact between US officials and representatives of Taipei, and the Biden administration upheld the lifting of those restrictions.
More importantly, Taipei has incrementally adopted a “one China, one Taiwan” policy by routinely referring to Taiwan as a sovereign independent country and China as a wholly and historically separate entity. Although this characterization is not consistent with either Washington’s “one China” policy or its normalization commitments to Beijing, the United States appears at least to have tacitly acquiesced to Taipei’s definition of the island’s status and of the cross-Strait status quo.
This trend has been reinforced over the past several years by growing support in Washington for the idea that Taiwan should, in fact, remain permanently separate from China because of its strategic importance to the United States. An important benchmark in this regard was the 2021 Congressional testimony of a Biden administration official, who characterized Taiwan as a “critical node within the first island chain” in the Western Pacific and thus “critical to the defense of vital US interests” in the region. Intentionally or otherwise, this provided the rationale for opposing Taiwan’s unification with China under any circumstances.
The same view was essentially reflected in a 2021 book (The Strategy of Denial) by Elbridge Colby, who is now the undersecretary of defense for policy in the second Trump administration. It should not be surprising, then, that this assessment of Taiwan’s geostrategic importance is evident in both the Trump administration’s NSS and its National Defense Strategy (NDS), released this month.
The NSS notes that Taiwan is militarily significant because it “provides direct access to the Second Island Chain and splits Northeast and Southeast Asia into two distinct theaters.” And the NDS, although it does not mention Taiwan by name, states that the United States intends to “build, posture, and sustain a strong denial defense along the First Island Chain,” which anyone familiar with Colby’s thinking will recognize as aimed at denying Taiwan to the PRC.
All of this reflects—or strongly suggests—incremental drift toward a de facto “one China, one Taiwan” policy and away from Washington’s longstanding assertion of neutrality on the long-term disposition of Taiwan as long as its status is determined peacefully. Accordingly, questions have arisen about the substance and credibility of “our one China policy.” Chinese foreign minister Wang Yi has repeatedly charged that “the United States is constantly distorting and hollowing out the one-China principle” and has “gone back on its commitment made when it established diplomatic relations with China.”
The same questions have arisen regarding Japan in the wake of Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi’s November 2025 statements, which hinted at the possibility of Japanese military intervention in response to a Chinese attack on Taiwan. Following Beijing’s protests, Takaichi stated that Tokyo’s position on Taiwan’s status has not changed since its 1972 normalization agreement with the PRC.
China’s Foreign Ministry spokesperson, however, deemed this unacceptable: “If Japan merely keeps repeating that its position has not changed without specifying what that position is and meanwhile keeps crossing the line, then this kind of repetition means nothing but empty words, and simply fudges and hollows out the one-China position.”
Beijing views Washington’s insistence that its “one China” policy remains unchanged in precisely the same way. This perception will only be reinforced by Washington’s acquiescence to or support for Takaichi’s position.
Perhaps the most subtle evidence of the erosion of Washington’s “one China” policy is the extent to which US officials routinely talk about “Taiwan” and “China” as separate entities. To a large extent, this is unavoidable because the United States does not recognize Taiwan by its official name, “Republic of China,” and thus requires a shorthand way to refer to it. But when US officials refer to “Taiwan” as a democratic partner, an economic and technological player, an international actor, or a strategic asset distinct from China, they implicitly validate Taipei’s characterization of the island’s international status and its efforts to secure US support for the goal of permanent separation.
As noted above, some voices in Washington already advocate opposing Taiwan’s unification with mainland China for strategic and political reasons. On the other hand, Trump’s personal inconsistency on the Taiwan issue suggests that he has a limited understanding of the history and substance of the “one China” policy, and that he is ambivalent about either unification or separation. Only time will tell what role Trump will play in determining Taiwan’s future.
In the meantime, Washington’s “one China” policy continues to erode, with potentially dire consequences if Washington persists in denying this erosion and Beijing continues to find the denials unpersuasive. The fragility of the US position is particularly evident in the perennial and esoteric debate over the difference between Washington’s “one China policy” and Beijing’s “one China principle.” According to Beijing’s “principle,” there is only one China, the PRC is its sole legal government, and Taiwan is part of it.
As noted earlier, Washington’s “policy” accepts the first two clauses but not the third; the United States only “acknowledges” the PRC position that Taiwan belongs to China. This is the crux of the longstanding argument about UN Resolution 2758 of 1971, which expelled Taiwan (as the “Republic of China”) from the UN and gave its seat to the PRC. Beijing insists that the resolution demonstrated international recognition of its “one China principle.” The counterargument is that the resolution did not mention Taiwan by name and did not resolve its international status.
What is generally overlooked in this debate (aside from the fact that the overwhelming majority of UN member countries subscribe to Beijing’s “one China principle”) is the rhetorical trap of the US position: Washington insists that it cannot say Taiwan is part of China, but at the same time it has never been willing or prepared to say that Taiwan is not part of China.
This farcical position is based in part on the tenuous and probably unsustainable assertion that Taiwan’s status has remained “undetermined” since World War II. And that legalistic US position both obscures and sidesteps the inherent dilemma of Washington’s “one China policy,” which is both melting and walking on thin ice.
Ultimately, the only way to escape this dilemma will be for Washington to clarify the substance and meaning of “our one China policy” credibly and persuasively. Doing so may be the only way to avert a war over Taiwan.
Paul Heer is a non-resident senior fellow at the Chicago Council on Global Affairs. He served as national intelligence officer for East Asia from 2007 to 2015. He is the author of Mr. X and the Pacific: George F. Kennan and American Policy in East Asia(Cornell University Press, 2018). All statements of fact, opinion, or analysis in this article are those of the author and do not reflect the official positions or views of the US government. Nothing in the contents should be construed as asserting or implying US government authentication of information or endorsement of the author’s views.
Image: Carlos 110 / Shutterstock.com.