The ambiguity that has defined America’s China and Taiwan policies for fifty years has run its course. Washington can no longer forestall a day of reckoning with an internally contradictory Taiwan policy. America could perhaps afford such luxuries when China was weak, but those days are long gone. Arguably, they ended a decade-and-a-half ago, when, beginning in 2009, defense analysts began warning policymakers that the U.S. military could no longer take victory for granted in a cross-strait war. Washington instead dithered and hoped for better days.
To quote a Department of Defense (DoD) aphorism, hope is not a strategy. What follows is an effort to account for America’s expired Taiwan policy, identify the ambiguities therein, and recommend ways to update U.S. diplomacy and, most importantly, bolster deterrence in East Asia.
