Robert Rust is a China analyst with the Global Security Program at the Union of Concerned Scientists.
With tensions high in the Taiwan Strait, a dangerous trend of treating Taiwan as an indispensable strategic asset is emerging in Washington. This risks destabilizing the most explosive issue in U.S.-China relations.
The “status quo” on Taiwan refers to the state of affairs whereby the U.S. acknowledges that Taiwan is part of China, while Taiwan governs itself and maintains official diplomatic relations with a handful of countries. The status quo is fragile and not ideal, but it has kept the peace for decades and must be reinforced to avoid a war in which Taiwanese people would suffer the most.
This status quo is a U.S. creation. It came about in the 1970s, after U.S. President Richard Nixon sought to make it politically palatable to sever relations with the Republic of China government in Taipei in favor of the People’s Republic of China in Beijing. Nixon privately assured Zhou Enlai, Mao Zedong’s second-in-command, that the U.S. recognized that Taiwan was part of China, but insisted that the public statement should be vague in order to protect him politically. China acquiesced.
When U.S. President Jimmy Carter formally established diplomatic relations with Beijing 1979, he chose to follow through on the promises Nixon made in Beijing in 1972. Thus, the “One China policy” came about because it was seen as advantageous to U.S. foreign policy aims, specifically cultivating China to counter the Soviet Union.
Now, the U.S. sees China as its main global adversary, and America’s foreign policy goals center on containment rather than alignment. But the promises on which the U.S.-China relationship is founded cannot be wished away.
While meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping and Foreign Minister Wang Yi in Beijing recently, U.S. National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan reemphasized Washington’s adherence to the One China policy. Since the U.S. normalized relations with China, this policy has opposed unilateral moves by either China or Taiwan to change the status quo, while supporting a peaceful resolution. A key impasse in the bilateral relationship is a disagreement about the order of operations: China wants the U.S. to respect its “core issues” and improve the bilateral relationship overall before negotiating on specific points, while Washington insists that the relationship should have “guardrails,” even while it is generally frosty.
Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi, right, shakes hands with White House National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan in Beijing in August 2024. © Reuters
In reality, these two perspectives can be reconciled. Taiwan is a core issue for Beijing, and a better understanding of Beijing’s concerns around Taiwan and willingness to adhere to the One China policy would be the most effective guardrail the U.S. could implement.
There is a growing neoconservative campaign to tear down the pillars of the bilateral understanding on Taiwan. Former U.S. Vice President Mike Pence recently argued that Taiwan is an indispensable strategic asset to the U.S.. Speaking at an event in Taipei, former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley echoed Pence, arguing for greater U.S. intervention in the Taiwan Strait.
Pence, Haley and others on the right like the Heritage Foundation, authors of the now infamous Project 2025, are trying to preserve an interventionist strain of U.S. foreign policy that would be at risk under a second Donald Trump presidency. Speculation about how another four years of Trump would impact alliances with South Korea, Japan and others has abounded; Pence and company are clearly concerned that Trump might usher in a new era of “American isolationism,” which they believe would be a strategic misstep that would hurt U.S. interests.
In a sense, they should be thanked for their honesty. Pence has made it very clear that the concern for neoconservatives is holding Taiwan as a strategic asset to contain China and not, as Haley said in Taipei, the threat facing 24 million Taiwanese. “What is distance,” Pence asked, waxing lyrical about U.S. interventionism, “to a global superpower?”
But neoconservatives are living in the past, perhaps best evidenced by Pence’s characterization of Taiwan as a “barrier” against expanding communist influence in Asia. His reference to General Douglas MacArthur’s 1950 memorandum on Taiwan’s strategic importance is curious yet fitting, considering MacArthur was fired by Truman the following year for sabotaging a ceasefire by pushing past the 38th parallel during the Korean War. MacArthur also wanted to extend the war into China and consider using nuclear weapons against China, risking killing millions and plunging Asia into a larger regional war.
Then, as now, U.S. foreign policy should lean on diplomacy to achieve stability, and sideline those whose thinking essentially boils down to “might is right” or “our way or the highway.”
But Pence and others have dropped the pretense, making it clear that for some in the U.S., reunification on any terms is unacceptable. The more Washington treats Taiwan like a strategic asset, the more threatened Beijing feels, and the likelihood of a globally destructive war grows.
China’s responses to U.S. and Taiwanese actions are not those of a confident actor. Chinese propaganda will always be gung-ho about its military capabilities, but Chinese military analysts say the quality of their troops still lags far behind that of the U.S.. Moreover, China’s military saber-rattling around Taiwan is not only morally wrong, but also strategically misguided; the more military exercises Beijing conducts, the more ammunition the interventionist crowd in Washington gains.
China also seems aware that there are many factions jostling for control of U.S. policy on Taiwan. The Chinese readout from Wang and Sullivan’s meeting quoted Wang as saying that maintaining the correct direction in U.S.-China relations requires that the two countries’ presidents “take the helm.” This may be a subtle reference to the actions of American politicians outside the executive branch hurting the bilateral relationship for political gain; “tough on China” has become a bipartisan mark of pride in the U.S. Unfortunately, China will never truly accept or believe the fact that the White House cannot restrict the actions of lawmakers, but Wang’s nod to the importance of presidential control shows how important it is for the next administration to avoid treating Taiwan like a strategic holding.
The U.S. must avoid strategic myopia on Taiwan and on China overall. The status quo over Taiwan is a U.S. creation, one that underpins the bilateral relationship between the two most powerful countries in the world. Washington cannot walk away from it just because its foreign policy goals have changed. Doing so would put the lives of millions of people across Asia at risk, and Pence makes it clear that neoconservatives are happy to do so for the sake of U.S. strategic goals. After all, what is distance to a global superpower?
