Taiwan–United States relations

Based on Wikipedia: Taiwan–United States relations

The Diplomatic High-Wire Act

Here's a strange fact about American foreign policy: the United States maintains a full diplomatic relationship with a country it doesn't officially recognize. Taiwan has an embassy in Washington that isn't called an embassy. American officials visit Taipei regularly but pretend these trips aren't quite official. And the whole arrangement has kept the peace in East Asia for nearly half a century.

This elaborate diplomatic fiction—part international law, part gentlemen's agreement, part Cold War relic—represents one of the most successful acts of strategic ambiguity in modern history. It has prevented a superpower war, enabled Taiwan's transformation into a thriving democracy, and created one of America's most important trading partnerships. But the system built in 1979 is now under unprecedented strain.

The Geography That Shapes Everything

To understand why the United States cares so deeply about Taiwan, you need to look at a map of the western Pacific Ocean. Taiwan sits at the center of what military strategists call the "first island chain"—a string of islands running from Japan through Taiwan and the Philippines down to Indonesia. This chain forms a natural barrier between China and the open Pacific.

General Douglas MacArthur, during the Korean War, captured this strategic reality with memorable bluntness. He called Taiwan an "unsinkable aircraft carrier."

The description remains apt. If China controlled Taiwan, it would break through that island chain and gain direct access to the Pacific. American military planners in the 1950s understood this. Their successors understand it today. Geography doesn't change.

Before the Split: A Complicated History

American interest in Taiwan predates modern geopolitics by more than a century. In the 1850s, two American diplomats actually suggested that Washington should acquire the island from China. The idea went nowhere, but it shows how early American eyes turned toward this strategically positioned territory.

The island proved dangerous for American sailors who shipwrecked along its coasts. In 1867, indigenous Taiwanese attacked a wrecked American vessel and killed the entire crew. When the American military sent a retaliatory expedition, the indigenous fighters defeated them too, killing another American soldier in the process. Taiwan was not a place that submitted easily to outside force.

Japan seized Taiwan in 1895 and held it until the end of World War II. During those fifty years of Japanese colonial rule, the United States maintained a consulate in Taipei—then called Taihoku under Japanese administration. That consulate building still stands today, designated a historic monument by Taiwan's government. The Americans closed it in 1941 when they declared war on Japan.

After Japan's surrender in 1945, representatives of Chiang Kai-shek arrived in Taiwan to accept the Japanese capitulation on behalf of the Allied powers. This act would become legally significant in ways no one fully anticipated at the time. The United States never formally recognized that Taiwan had been incorporated into Chinese territory—a legal ambiguity that persists to this day.

The Chinese Civil War Changes Everything

The Nationalist government under Chiang Kai-shek had ruled mainland China since 1928, when the Kuomintang—often abbreviated as the KMT—unified the country after years of warlord chaos. The United States recognized this government as China's sole legitimate authority.

Then came the Chinese Civil War.

By 1949, Mao Zedong's Communist forces had swept across the mainland. The Nationalists retreated to Taiwan, bringing with them the government, the army, and China's national treasures. Suddenly, "China" existed in two places: a Communist-controlled mainland of hundreds of millions, and a small island holdout of about eight million.

The United States initially seemed ready to let nature take its course. On January 5, 1950, President Harry Truman announced that America would not become involved in "the civil conflict in China" and would provide no military aid to the Nationalists on Taiwan. The implication was clear: Taiwan would likely fall.

Five months later, North Korea invaded South Korea.

The Korean War transformed American policy overnight. Truman reversed course completely, sending the Seventh Fleet into the Taiwan Strait and resuming military aid to Chiang's government. Taiwan's strategic value—that unsinkable aircraft carrier—suddenly outweighed any qualms about propping up a government that had lost its country.

The Cold War Partnership

For the next three decades, Taiwan and the United States operated as close allies in the global struggle against Communism. American money flowed into Taiwan—financial grants under the Foreign Assistance Act, military hardware, technical expertise. Taiwan became one of the largest recipients of American aid anywhere in the world.

In 1954, the two countries signed the Sino-American Mutual Defense Treaty, formalizing their military alliance. American troops stationed on the island. Nuclear weapons were deployed there as part of the United States Taiwan Defense Command—a fact that remained classified for decades.

Vice President Richard Nixon visited Taiwan in 1953 and declared that the United States would help turn the island into "an anticommunist military and cultural bastion." American funding poured into Taiwanese education, including programs designed to attract overseas Chinese students. This wasn't entirely altruistic—the money also helped the KMT consolidate its authoritarian control over the island.

The relationship had its darker elements. Taiwan lived under martial law from 1949 to 1987, and during this entire period, the Taiwanese government surveilled its citizens abroad, particularly in Japan and the United States. The American Federal Bureau of Investigation, remarkably, often cooperated with or simply allowed the KMT to monitor Taiwanese students and immigrants on American soil.

A 1979 Senate report described Taiwan's government as operating "one of the two most active anti-dissident networks within the United States," with agents infiltrated into universities and campus organizations. In 1979 and 1980, a series of bombings targeted KMT offices and officials in America—the violent backlash against this surveillance. The FBI placed the World United Formosans for Independence on its terrorist watch list.

Nixon Goes to China

The great pivot came in the 1970s. President Richard Nixon, the same man who had once promised to make Taiwan an anti-Communist bastion, now saw a different strategic opportunity. The Soviet Union and Communist China had split bitterly, and Nixon recognized that an opening to Beijing could help America against the Soviets.

Nixon's 1972 visit to mainland China shocked the world. As part of the normalization process, he ordered nuclear weapons removed from Taiwan—a symbolic and practical step toward distancing America from its longtime ally.

The KMT government watched these developments with mounting alarm. Under Executive Yuan Premier Chiang Ching-kuo—Chiang Kai-shek's son—Taiwan launched what it called a "people's diplomacy campaign" to mobilize American sentiment against recognizing Beijing. The KMT worked with the John Birch Society, a conservative American organization, to flood local politicians with letters urging them to "Cut the Red China connection."

It wasn't enough.

On January 1, 1979, the United States formally recognized the People's Republic of China as the sole legitimate government of China. The American embassy in Taipei was "migrated" to Beijing. Taiwan's embassy in Washington closed. Exactly one year later, the Mutual Defense Treaty expired.

The Taiwan Relations Act: Diplomacy Without Diplomacy

What replaced formal diplomatic ties was something unprecedented in American foreign policy: a legal framework for maintaining a complete relationship with an entity the United States officially pretended didn't exist as a separate country.

President Jimmy Carter signed the Taiwan Relations Act on April 10, 1979. This law created "domestic legal authority for the conduct of unofficial relations with Taiwan." Read that phrase carefully—it's a masterpiece of bureaucratic creativity. The United States was authorizing itself to have unofficial relations, which sounds like a contradiction until you understand that this is how diplomacy often actually works.

The practical arrangements were clever. Instead of an embassy, the United States operates through the American Institute in Taiwan, technically a "private nonprofit corporation" headquartered in Arlington, Virginia, with offices in Taipei and Kaohsiung. This institute issues visas, accepts passport applications, and provides all the consular services an embassy would—it just can't be called an embassy.

Taiwan, for its part, operates the Taipei Economic and Cultural Representative Office—not an embassy, of course—with a main office in Washington and twelve other locations across the continental United States and Guam. The current head of this non-embassy carries the title "Representative to the United States," not ambassador.

The Taiwan Relations Act did something else crucial: it preserved America's commitment to helping Taiwan defend itself. The law enshrined continued arms sales and military cooperation, infuriating Beijing but providing Taiwan with a security guarantee that has held for decades.

Strategic Ambiguity: The Policy That Dare Not Speak Its Name

What exactly would the United States do if China attacked Taiwan? The official answer is: we're not going to tell you.

This policy of "strategic ambiguity" represents the core of American Taiwan policy since 1979. By refusing to say clearly whether America would intervene militarily in a cross-strait conflict, Washington has tried to achieve two goals simultaneously. First, deter China from attacking by preserving the possibility of American intervention. Second, discourage Taiwan from declaring formal independence by leaving unclear whether America would support such a move.

The policy has worked remarkably well for four decades. There has been no war in the Taiwan Strait, despite regular tensions. Taiwan has developed into a prosperous democracy without provoking a Chinese invasion. The People's Republic has grown into a global economic power without resolving the Taiwan question by force.

But strategic ambiguity depends on both sides remaining uncertain. As China has grown more powerful and more assertive, some analysts question whether the ambiguity still serves its purpose. If Beijing concludes that America won't actually fight for Taiwan, the deterrent value evaporates. If Taiwan concludes America will definitely intervene, the restraint on independence moves weakens.

Presidents have occasionally seemed to pierce the veil of ambiguity. In April 2001, President George W. Bush was asked directly: if Taiwan were attacked by China, does the United States have an obligation to defend it?

"Yes, we do," Bush responded, "and the Chinese must understand that. The United States would do whatever it took to help Taiwan defend herself."

His advisors quickly walked the statement back, insisting there was no change in American policy. But the words had been spoken.

Arms Sales: The Permanent Point of Friction

The Taiwan Relations Act requires the United States to provide Taiwan with "arms of a defensive character." This provision has been the single most consistent source of tension between Washington and Beijing for over forty years.

China considers Taiwan part of its territory—a renegade province that will eventually be reunified with the mainland, by force if necessary. From Beijing's perspective, American weapons sales to Taiwan amount to foreign interference in a Chinese civil war, arming rebels against the legitimate government.

The United States sees things differently. The official position holds that the status of Taiwan remains undetermined, and that any resolution of the cross-strait dispute must be peaceful. Arms sales to Taiwan support this goal by making a military conquest more costly and therefore less attractive to Beijing.

In 2010, the State Department announced a shift from "foreign military sales"—government-to-government transactions—to "commercial sales" of military equipment, hoping this technical change might reduce political friction with China. It didn't work. Beijing protests every significant arms sale, recalls ambassadors, threatens consequences, and then the relationship continues much as before.

The weapons Taiwan has sought but not received tell their own story. Advanced submarines and modern jet fighters remain politically impossible to sell, despite Taiwan's repeated requests. The American calculation balances Taiwan's defense needs against the desire to avoid provoking China beyond some undefined threshold.

Taiwan's Secret Nuclear Program

There was a period when Taiwan tried to solve its security dilemma another way: by building nuclear weapons.

The program remained secret until 1987, when it was exposed in the most dramatic fashion imaginable. Colonel Chang Hsien-yi, the Deputy Director of Nuclear Research at Taiwan's Institute of Nuclear Energy Research, had been secretly working for the Central Intelligence Agency. In December 1987, he defected to the United States, bringing with him a cache of documents that proved Taiwan was developing nuclear weapons.

The CIA then oversaw negotiations that led Taiwan to abandon its nuclear ambitions in exchange for security guarantees. The program ended, but the "nuclear card"—the implicit threat that Taiwan could restart the program if American protection wavered—has remained a factor in the relationship ever since.

Taiwan had also pursued ballistic missiles. President Ronald Reagan pressured the government into abandoning its Sky Horse missile program, another capability that could have threatened China but that America found destabilizing.

The Trading Relationship

Beyond security, the United States and Taiwan have built one of America's most important economic partnerships. Taiwan is currently the ninth largest trading partner of the United States—remarkable for an island of about 24 million people.

This trade has continued to expand since 1979, despite the lack of formal diplomatic relations. Taiwan enjoys normal trade relations status, Export-Import Bank financing, and ready access to American markets. The economic ties give both countries additional reasons to maintain the relationship and additional leverage over each other.

Much of the recent focus has been on American concerns about intellectual property protection—copyrights, patents, the technologies that drive the modern economy. Taiwan has become crucial to global technology supply chains, particularly in semiconductor manufacturing, which makes these discussions more consequential than typical trade negotiations.

Opening Doors

Despite the official policy of unofficial relations, the United States has gradually loosened restrictions on contact with Taiwan. Each relaxation provokes Chinese protests, is implemented anyway, and eventually becomes the new normal.

In 1997, Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich visited Taiwan and met with President Lee Teng-hui—the highest-level American official to visit the island since the 1979 break in relations. In 1999, former President Jimmy Carter visited, though as a private citizen.

In July 2002, Taiwan's Minister of Justice became the first Taiwanese government official invited into the White House since 1979—a small symbolic step but a significant one after more than two decades of exclusion.

The Taiwan Travel Act, passed by Congress in March 2018, explicitly allows high-level American officials to visit Taiwan and vice versa. In January 2021, the outgoing Trump administration removed remaining self-imposed restrictions on executive branch contacts with Taiwan.

In September 2019, the two sides signed a consular agreement formalizing their consular relations—another step toward making the unofficial relationship look more and more like a regular diplomatic partnership.

A System Under Strain

The framework built in 1979 was designed for a world that no longer exists. China was then emerging from the chaos of the Cultural Revolution, economically backward, and strategically focused on the Soviet threat. Taiwan was an authoritarian holdout with uncertain long-term prospects.

Today, China has the world's second-largest economy and a military that can project power across the Pacific. Taiwan has transformed into a vibrant democracy with a distinct national identity that most of its citizens feel no desire to subsume into the People's Republic.

The strategic ambiguity that kept the peace may be reaching its limits. In academic and policy circles, the debate has intensified: Should the United States make clearer commitments to Taiwan? Would explicit security guarantees deter China or provoke it? Can a system of deliberate vagueness survive in an era of great power competition?

These questions have no easy answers. What's clear is that the diplomatic high-wire act continues—unofficial offices doing official work, arms sales that aren't supposed to happen, a relationship that doesn't officially exist but shapes the future of Asia.

The unsinkable aircraft carrier remains anchored in the Pacific, and the United States remains committed to ensuring it never sinks. How that commitment will be tested in the decades ahead is a question that keeps strategists on both sides of the Pacific awake at night.