How would America respond if China attacked Taiwan? The pressure to defend the island would be compelling, if not overwhelming. Washington nominally maintains a ‘strategic ambiguity’ towards the defence of Taiwan, but the two countries are linked in many ways and the Biden administration recently reiterated its ‘rock solid’ commitment to the island.
Beijing clearly wants to subordinate self-governing Taiwan. American credibility, meanwhile, is connected to its protection. The island is also militarily significant. Its fall would seriously undermine the defence of Japan, South Korea and the Philippines, and open up the central Pacific to the Chinese military.
We have left the post-Cold War world and are now fully immersed in an era of new great-power rivalry
Beijing knows heavy sanctions and harassment are unlikely to force Taiwan to give up its freedom. A quick and decisive air and sea invasion would, though. And while China has spent the past 25 years allocating resources to getting ready to take the island, the US has unwisely focused on other things.
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