For the US, the primary objective is to maintain the status quo, by dissuading Taiwan from actively seeking independence and discouraging China from forcing Taiwan into a speedy reunification.
In another tweet, Trump asked why he shouldn’t engage with Taiwan at the presidential level when the US is selling Taiwan billions of dollars worth of weapons. Feigned or not, such bafflement from the American president-elect is truly worrying.
The US sells Taiwan military equipment mostly for self-defense, and as a signal to China that the US will not stand idly by in the event of Chinese military action against the island.
But the US deliberately attenuates this message by refusing to engage with Taiwan at the highest levels, which is meant to disabuse Taiwan of the notion that it can count on American support if the island ever actually declares independence.
For more than 40 years, this doctrine of “strategic ambiguity” has worked brilliantly. Peace has survived multiple leadership changes on both sides of the Taiwan Strait. And trade and investment between Taiwan and mainland China have flourished.
A break with long-established policy by Trump would be damaging in many ways.
For starters, he could embolden Taiwan to be more aggressive in trying to upend the status quo. Indeed, Tsai’s own Democratic Progressive Party is officially committed to Taiwan’s independence, and while Tsai herself has not yet sought to realize revisionist goals, that could change if she feels that Trump is sympathetic to her cause.
Trump could also do damage by inflaming Chinese government and military hardliners, if he confirms their belief that the US wants to undermine their country’s “core interests” – namely, sustaining the appearance, if not the reality, that there is only one China.
The Chinese foreign ministry initially voiced mild criticism of Trump’s call with Tsai, but People’s Daily, the Chinese Communist Party’s house organ, has since issued a far stronger rebuke, warning that “creating troubles for the China-US relationship is creating troubles for the US itself.”
Soon after, the Chinese Navy temporarily seized an American submersible drone in international waters. China is clearly signaling its agitation.
There is no method to Trump’s madness.
In the same tweet justifying his phone call with Tsai, he repeated a false charge that China is devaluing its currency to gain export advantages vis-à-vis the US.
His knowledge of international economics is either non-existent or ten years out of date.
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