I am mindful of not becoming a “one-trick pony” in this column. Indeed, the list of actions creating consequences in our contemporary era is long, rich, and worthy of our consideration, but I must return to Taiwan today. It’s been a tough few days for the ruling leader, “William” Lai (Lai Ching-ti) and those seeking to reconfigure Taiwan, while doubts within and about U.S. behavior towards the PRC mount.
As I have mentioned many times, Taiwan is a remarkable place in several ways. A beautiful island with 24 million residents on the Tropic of Cancer, well west of Hawai’i, its economic and social transformation over the seventy-six years of de facto sovereignty is a tribute to the islanders’ grit, policy choices, and U.S. support. Even more noteworthy is the institutionalized democracy under which the government has been operating for almost five decades, an accomplishment following decades of harsh authoritarian rule. Many today see democracy with great admiration, if not envy.
Millions of Americans support Taiwan’s right to self-governance in the face of the CCP, non-democratic rulers only a hundred miles to the west, demanding that the islanders reunify with the mainland. If the Taiwan population continues to ignore that mandate, five General Secretaries of the CCP threaten to use force to achieve the eventuality. Americans don’t like to see underdogs bullied, particularly by a ruthless dictatorial government, so we have a curious arrangement that perhaps includes U.S. forces to ensure Beijing does not carry out its threat. We may have broken formal ties with Taipei on 1 January 1979, but we are entranced with their determination to avoid living under communism.
While the Taiwan Relations Act of 1979 encapsulates strategic ambiguity rather than a guarantee of U.S. military intervention on the island’s behalf, most analysts have long expected that we would use our armed forces against Chinese forceable reunification efforts. President George W. Bush in 2001, then President Joe Biden multiple times, spoke passionately about defending Taiwan, but advisers to both reined back expectations of iron-clad commitments. U.S. military advisors work with Taiwan’s defense forces to strengthen the country as their vulnerability grows.
This week, however, the tenuous reality of Taiwan’s strengths and weaknesses became clear. I can only imagine this rebuttal of our relationship mortified Taiwan’s supporters in the United States, as it unnerved the islanders themselves, who are still absorbing the shock of an unequivocal message.
Democracies, particularly healthy ones like Taiwan’s, rely on public opinion through elections. The Guomindang, frequently known as the KMT, began ruling Taiwan in the late 1940s when the Party brought the remnants of the Republic of China to the island. The Guomindang president Chiang Ching-kuo loosened the Party’s stranglehold on governance in the mid-1980s to facilitate what became a vibrant multi-party political environment. The Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), an environmentalist/Taiwanese nationalist movement based in the southern portion of the island, won the presidency with a plurality in 2000, then managed to win four of the subsequent five presidential campaigns, including Lai’s victory a year and a half ago.
The Guomindang, however, has retained considerable strength, if not the most significant number of seats, in the Legislative Yuan (Congress equivalent). The DPP and several other smaller parties captured sufficient seats to demote the KMT in 2016 in conjunction with Tsai Ing-wen’s first victory as president. KMT preferences for better relations with the mainland, as a portion of their political platform, appeal to a significant portion of those who vote in LY elections.
KMT legislators regularly disparage budgets to increase the island’s military capacity, however. KMT opposition over the past quarter century to significant spending on a modern military retarded Taiwan’s hopes of keeping up with a modernizing People’s Liberation Army. It was only under Tsai Ing-wen between 2016 and 2024 that any serious steps at modernizing personnel policies and procuring appropriate weapons systems began to take hold. Still, Taiwan’s avowed adversary across the Strait had dramatically shifted the military “balance” across the Straight by that juncture.
Earlier this year, frustrated citizens who feared Legislative Yuan problems under the GMT leadership organized a recall election for more than two dozen KMT legislators in hopes of altering the balance of power in Taiwan. That election, focusing on the KMT’s enduring preference for better relations with Beijing, coincided with concerns about former KMT president—the sole KMT president since 2000—Ma Ying-jeou, who has made several personal trips to the mainland while criticizing the DPP’s unwillingness to ponder reunification in any form.
Despite anticipation of some success, voters chose on 26 July to recall none of the KMT members. A further vote later this year for another dozen now appears similarly unlikely to end the narrow KMT margin of control.
The recall was not technically a DPP-driven action, but the message to President Lai was clear. Lai, a politician whose inauguration speech upset Beijing in May 2024, is more aggressive in his stance against the mainland than was his predecessor, Tsai Ing-wen, a lawyer who deftly navigated pressures to implement some much-needed military reforms, but still had to operate under KMT fiscal controls.
Lai did not initially associate himself with the recall, but ten speeches to commemorate his first year in office took on a more combative tone when delivered. Perhaps the electorate did not agree with his thrust on the island’s autonomy. Maybe the voters are having second thoughts about KMT suggestions of better relations with the mainland. A third possible option is that as Taiwan’s demographics decline in sync with those across Northeast Asia, families are becoming ever more resistant to sending their oft-single children into combat if Beijing were to initiate action to force reunification. Perhaps the electorate simply prefers divided government, a not uncommon stance in democracies, to prevent too much military spending or some other policy question.
The reality, however, was that the complete collapse of the recall campaign shows a significant divide between those fearing the KMT’s pernicious effects and those seeking to put Taiwan on a different course.
Two foreign policy setbacks by the Trump administration only made irritation worse. For over twenty years, Taiwan’s leaders have made stops in the United States under the guise of comfort and safety in transit to their few allies in Latin America. The stopovers annoy Beijing, but both break up the long transit from the island while showing that Taiwan’s supporters welcome the island’s elected leaders. Additionally, these stops offer Taiwan’s presidents the opportunity to meet supporters in the United States, if not U.S. government officials, who traditionally do not visit the island with which we have no formal diplomatic relations. On a particularly noteworthy trip for President Tsai to Latin America, then Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy met with her (following the unique visit to Taiwan by his predecessor Nancy Pelosi, leading Beijing to initiate markedly more prominent military PLAN maneuvers around the island).
The Trump administration, according to press reports, refused Lai’s request for such a stopover next month. This rebuttal to a standing activity was noteworthy.
It occurred coincident with the U.S. administration’s cancellation of the Republic of China Defense Minister’s visit to Washington for Defense Consultative Talks, a decades-long event both to consider Taiwan’s military procurement from U.S. sources and better understand policy questions on both sides of the Pacific.
Both actions by the Trump administration stem from concerns that current tariff negotiations between the United States and the PRC are too fragile to tolerate Beijing’s fury at Washington violating the essence of our diplomatic protocols. Beijing’s position, since the United States shifted diplomatic relations to the PRC from the Republic of China in 1979, is that we either recognize Beijing as the sole legitimate government of China or we choose to have relations with Taiwan at the cost of our ties with the PRC. Since bilateral trade alone is worth multi-billions of dollars to U.S. businesses, the reality of our preference to maintain that relationship outweighs concerns about Beijing coercing the island of 24 million.
Beijing knows this is President Trump’s priority, so they acted on his desire for a tariff agreement by making noise about our peculiar (in international law) arrangement with Taiwan. The White House is currently deeply involved in negotiations with trading partners to satisfy the president’s vow to make tariffs revive the U.S. economy. His repeated concerns about predecessor administrations falling prey to Zhongnanhai’s better negotiating skills raise the stakes for a deal, meaning any obstacle that incites Beijing to pause talks is most welcome. Beijing has complained for forty-five years about Taipei’s unseemly steps towards any form of independence, so reiterating these irritations to the current administration amid the sensitive trade talks was a confluence of interests that leaves Taipei out of the decision-making.
One has to wonder whether Beijing seriously intends to negotiate at all since it may believe, based on Trump’s steps to rein in Taiwan, China holds the cards. Negotiations are underway this week so we should know before long but Xi Jinping must feel satisfied with his government’s position as the CCP leadership retrieat in Beidahe takes likely place this week (the entire event is a mystery but usually transpires in early August as temperatures are so unbearable inland).
Additionally, we all must recall that Candidate Trump campaigned vigorously, particularly in the run-up to 2024, to assure voters here that he would not prolong U.S. actions associated with “forever wars”, a possible description of conflict between Beijing and Taipei. What the president would do if confronted with the actual use of force against the island is another matter, as he does appear riled by leaders of other countries who ignore his dicta. Still, he sounds considerably less convinced that Taiwan deserves U.S. military support in the event of a conflict. As accurate as so many things in our world, it would come down to details, I suspect.
I am confident, however, that the events of the past few days made for a dreadful week for those on the island who took for granted unquestioned U.S. support long-term or a certainty that Taiwan is on a trajectory towards abandoning any hope of reconciliation with the mainland. It’s seductive to assume the trade negotiations are the sole reason for the cancellations, but the reason may be more than trade. President Trump has been lukewarm to Taipei’s level of fiscal commitment to its defense. He has also praised Xi Jinping’s strength as a leader for the better part of the past decade, raising questions about whether he envisions a different configuration of power in the western Pacific, despite U.S. supporters expecting him to take aggressive action to balance growing PRC assertiveness around the world.
In the final analysis, President Lai and his strongest supporters must feel frustrated, if not worried. Lai won the 2024 presidential election by earning a plurality, at just over 40% of votes, rather than an outright majority. Voters chose to redistribute power in the LY in 2024 by taking the DPP from the majority it had held for the prior eight years. One has to wonder whether popular support peaked for Taiwan taking positions so prone to incite armed response?
The real lesson of the past several days is not merely one on the risk of relying on the United States as the island’s protector, although that is notable. But Lai’s facility as a politician suggests that Taiwan may be considerably determined to declare complete independence than many analysts realized.
The greatest irony is that, despite still measurable support in many quarters of the United States, the last several days have demonstrated the reality of Taiwan’s weakness. One of the questions I have always had is whether Taiwan, relying on de facto protectorate status by the United States, would be satisfied being a distinctly junior partner in the arrangement if the island were to declare independence. Put otherwise, would Taiwan not want independence from Washington as well since the two nations’ interests frequently but never entirely run in parallel rather than in coincidence? I am not convinced perpetual protection is what they seek.
The two decisions by the Trump White House also open our eyes to the president taking the steps he declared during the campaign to eschew forever conflicts, even if it means making a deal with the abhorrent Communists in Zhongnanhai.Despite many of his most determined supporters’ assumption that Trump would confront, then defeat Beijing, this week may signal his determination to prioritize cooperation over confrontation. The administration is only one-eighth complete, so we do not know where Trump sees this relationship going long term, but I suspect his actions on Taiwan engendered anxiety in firmly pro-Taiwan quarters as well.
Elections created consequences in Asia and the United States last year. Where this will all lead, the full extent of the consequences, remains a play in progress since the world seems more prone than ever these days to change in policy.
I welcome your thoughts on Taiwan the mainland, the White House, or any other topic. I certainly do know have all of the answers but welcome readers’ analyses. I appreciate your time, knowing your voice will help expand our civil, measured discussion on one of the most intricate policy challenges of our age. Please chime in.
I appreciate the subscribers who offer me resources to expand my work. $55 annually is barely a dollar a day, or $8 monthly advance this work. I welcome all readers, however.
The Chesapeake is beastly today. I look forward to a cool down later this week as we welcome August but that seems ages away.
Be well and be safe. FIN
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