In this episode of Battlegrounds, H.R. McMaster and former Prime Minister Shinzō Abe reflect on his service as prime minister, shared security challenges, and the vision of a free and open Indo-Pacific.
In this wide-ranging conversation, Professor Zegart discusses the US relationship with China and how she views that country’s aggressive stance toward Taiwan; why big tech companies are a potential threat not only to privacy, but also to our national security; and why the next war may well be fought with a keyboard rather than on a battlefield.
In this wide-ranging conversation, Professor Zegart discusses the US relationship with China and how she views that country’s aggressive stance toward Taiwan; why big tech companies are a potential threat not only to privacy, but also to our national security; and why the next war may well be fought with a keyboard rather than on a battlefield.
Marking its centenary, the Communist Party is using this past — selectively — to try to ensure its future and that of Xi Jinping, who may be eyeing, as Mao Zedong did, ruling for life.
1. For the same reason the Americans defended West Berlin during the Cold War, because we all knew if West Berlin fell, freedom would die in that part of the world.
In retrospect, the Reagan Administration made one of its very rare foreign policy errors when it forced Taiwan to abandon its nuclear weapons program in 1988. If Taiwan today had the capacity to threaten devastating retaliation against Beijing for an invasion, we would not even be having this debate.
Taiwan is a problem. It is a problem for China, and that makes it a problem for the United States and for what used to be called “the Free World.” There are two reasons for this. The first is geopolitical; the second is technological, economic, and strategic.
There appear real moral reasons why the United States should do everything it can to protect the independent state of Taiwan diplomatically, politically, and militarily as long as the People’s Republic of China represents a direct threat to American interests directly and globally.
Taiwan has enjoyed the protection of the U.S. defensive umbrella ever since the fall of Nationalist China to Mao’s Communists in 1949. Although the United States ended its mutual defense treaty with Taiwan in 1979, it has continued to deter China from invading Taiwan by selling arms to Taiwan and maintaining the specter of military intervention.
As with so many foreign policy and national security issues today, the U.S.–Taiwan relationship stems back to World War II and U.S. policy in the post-war period.
