Asia Without America, Part 3: Liberal Taiwan In A Realist World

Latest stories

Beijing's blurred red lines and the strategy of ambiguity

Looks like Trump has abandoned his push to mediate Ukraine peace

New US nuke won't fix its China deterrence problem

The risk of Taiwan betting on liberalism is that it assumes the international system is not anarchic, that there is a higher power to whose authority it can appeal – namely, the United States of America. This bet has not had a great track record.

The US has a long history of stringing liberal partners along before hanging them out to dry. Think Hungary 1956, Czechoslovakia 1968, South Vietnam 1973, Lebanon 1984, Somalia 1993, Iraq 2011, Hong Kong 2019, Afghanistan 2021 and Ukraine today.

Taiwan President Lai Ching-te can play his semantic games to score domestic political points, but ultimately, he must understand Henry Kissinger's warning,“To be America's enemy is dangerous, but to be America's friend is fatal.”

In 1990, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), the PRC spent 71% more on defense than Taiwan. Last year, the PRC spent 18 times more. Over this period, the PRC's defense spending fell from 2.4% of GDP to 1.7% of GDP while Taiwan's collapsed from 5.2% of GDP to 2.1%.

Taiwan isn't just not matching the growth of PRC defense spending, it is not even pretending to care. With these numbers, Taiwan is purposefully not trying to credibly deter the PLA. This is strategic on a very paradoxical level.

To preserve the status quo, Taiwan is careful not to build up defenses that could actually deter the PLA... for fear that getting close to such a threshold would trigger a PLA invasion. All of this assumes that the US can credibly deter China from invading.

While the US spent three times as much on defense as China did in 2024, it is down from 39 times in 1990. Given purchasing power differences, the strength of China's industrial base and the multiple theaters the US is expected to secure, the 3x advantage should more than wash out.

Since the year 2000, the US Navy ship count has fallen from 318 to 298 while China's has grown almost fourfold from 110 to 400 (although China's navy is smaller by tonnage).

The US Air Force's 6^th-generation fighter program, now called the F47, is seriously behind schedule and is seemingly in disarray. Cost inflation and delays are scourges that the Pentagon has been powerless to rectify.

The higher power whose authority Taiwan is relying on has, for decades, watched its military advantage in Asia shrivel. Make what you will of reports that the US consistently loses to China in internal Pentagon war games.

What we do know is that China has built and militarized seven artificial islands in the SCS unchallenged and that, last year, the US Navy removed a carrier strike group from the contested maritime area rather than risk a confrontation with the PLA Navy and Rocket Force, thereby hanging the Philippines out to dry.

If realism is the ultimate arbiter of international relations, then internal politics has no effect on foreign policy. This is the billiard ball theory of state behavior. If realism is correct and China has closed the military gap in Asia, it should not make a difference which party governs Taiwan. It should not matter that Taiwan's President Lai is pro-independence or that the DPP is woke, progressive and pro LGBTQIA2S+.

The preponderance of military power, or, more accurately, the projection of future military power will result in Taiwan reaching the same conclusion and implementing the same foreign policy whether the DPP or the KMT were in charge.

Taiwan can choose passivity and let time and China's growing strength run its course, hoping to be rescued by unforeseen developments (e.g. China's economic collapse, US Navy AGI battleships, divine intervention). Or it can get in front of events, become emperor maker and negotiate a special place at President Xi Jinping's side.

The reunification of China will make America's continued military presence in Asia far more costly if not untenable. An Asia without the distorting presence of an alien power (see here ) would usher in a modern renaissance.

Taiwan is a perfect conduit to channel Asia's modern renaissance between mainland China, Asian neighbors and even the West, guiding it towards an open, cosmopolitan Tang Dynasty version rather than something more insular and political like the later Ming Dynasty.

The danger of passivity for Taiwan is that multiple players in the region also have the opportunity to become emperor maker. America's alliance partners South Korea, Japan, Taiwan and the Philippines are all arranged like dominoes along China's maritime borders – the fall of one threatening to topple others.

Lee Jae-myung, front runner in South Korea's upcoming presidential elections, is seen as pro-China as is Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba. Midterm election results in the Philippines favored pro-China former President Rodrigo Duterte's clan over pro-US President Ferdinand Marcos.

Any one of these dominoes could decide that their alliance with the US is untenable in the long term and that they could negotiate better terms with Beijing by being the first mover.

The biggest domino is not even in the region. The United States has twice elected a transactional president who specifically rejects liberalism and the rules-based international order.

If President Donald Trump could hobble China's economy and military modernization, transfer trade and wealth to the US and maintain American primacy in Asia, he would. He has certainly tried with the“Liberation Day” tariffs.