A second summit, fresh jitters

Xi Jinping meets Trump at the White House on Sept. 24, their second summit this year. Taipei and Washington's China hands are braced for what gets traded away.

The fear is horse-trading

Observers worry Trump's deal-making instincts and disinterest in strategy turn Taiwan's security into a bargaining chip with Beijing.

The deeper worry

Even with policy formally unchanged, US support is quietly drifting toward something weaker. That drift invites Chinese miscalculation.

“The slow death of strategic ambiguity, in turn, risks miscalculation by China.”

From trade deal to stability

May's summit was consumed by trade. This one is about managing what both sides now call a relationship of constructive strategic stability.

Nine thousand five hundred miles

Taiwan came up only glancingly in Beijing. Flying home, Trump said Xi feels very strongly about it, then added a line that stuck.

“The last thing we need right now is a war that's 9,500 miles away.”

What ambiguity actually was

Built in the late 1970s and 1980s after Washington recognized Beijing, it refused to say whether the US would fight for Taiwan. Both sides were left guessing.

It restrained both sides

Ambiguity deterred a Chinese invasion and also kept Taipei in check, since no blank check meant no incentive to provoke.

Built for a different era

The policy was designed when the US vastly outmatched China. Hawks say it no longer deters a military that has closed much of the gap.

The case for clarity

Richard Haass argued in 2020 for strategic clarity: say plainly that Washington would defend Taipei. Biden echoed it in public while policy stayed put.

Drifting the other way

Now the risk runs in reverse. Trump's statements, intended or not, leave the impression the US is edging toward staying out.

Trump's suspicion of Taipei

He treats the island like a freeloading ally and says Taiwan stole America's semiconductor industry. First island chain arguments do not move him.

“We're supposed to travel 9,500 miles to fight a war? I'm not looking for that.”

Arms sales as chips

A record $11 billion package passed last year. A further $14 billion deal now sits unapproved, with Trump calling such packages leverage over Beijing.

The linkage past presidents avoided

Previous administrations, including Trump's first, walled Taiwan's defense off from wider China policy. That wall is gone, handing Beijing an effective veto.

Restraint goes mainstream

Michael Anton, who helped draft the 2025 National Security Strategy, argued in 2021 against fighting for Taiwan at all.

“There is no core American national interest that would compel us to go to war over Taiwan.”

Nonintervention, on the record

Defense Priorities' Jennifer Kavanagh wants ambiguity replaced with explicit nonintervention and a pullback from the first island chain. Once fringe, now not.

Officials say nothing changed

Undersecretary Elbridge Colby told an audience in Manila the Pentagon is rebuilding deterrence along the first island chain. The US is digging in, not leaving.

Ambiguity curdles into clarity

A near-term invasion is unlikely; Xi wants a quiet run at a fourth term. But if Beijing decides the risk has fallen, it may test that sooner than expected.

“Strategic ambiguity had a deterrence effect that will now likely be lost.”