Forty years of failed U.S. policy have led to this precarious moment for the embattled island democracy. Thankfully, it’s never too late to change course. Speaker Nancy Pelosi's visit to Taiwan was a watershed event, and not just because it provoked an angry military response from Beijing that threatens to renew fears of a shooting war breaking out over that embattled island democracy. It also marked a point of no return for America's 42-year-old policy of refusing to recognize our Taiwanese allies as an independent nation.
In deciding how to handle U.S.–Taiwan and U.S.–China relations going forward, we have to confront head-on the many major failures of American China policy since the passage of the Taiwan Relations Act in 1979. As China launches missiles into the Taiwan Strait and our relations with Beijing sour, it's clear that a new era is upon us – and understanding how we got here is the key to knowing how we should proceed.
First, we have to confront the failure of four decades of appeasement of the Communist regime in Beijing. That policy of appeasement was undertaken in the hope that economic growth and improved relations with the U.S. and the rest of the West would move China's leaders to accept a constructive role in our post–World War II liberal international order. Instead, it has created a monster that now threatens U.S. power not only with regard to Taiwan but around the world, a totalitarian superpower that is openly enabling Russia and Iran in their striving for regional hegemony versus the U.S. and its allies – not to mention killing thousands of Americans through the deadly export of tons of illegal fentanyl.
Second, we must reckon with the consequences of the decades-long process by which we've deliberately moved our manufacturing base offshore. These consequences are especially acute with respect to important strategic commodities such as advanced microchips. Thirty years ago, more than one-third of all microchips were made by the American companies that gave Silicon Valley its name. Today that number has slipped to only 12 percent – while 92 percent of the world's most advanced semiconductors are made in Taiwan. This is a crucial reason why China's control of the island could be so devastating – and also a great reason for the U.S. to re-industrialize.
The recent passage of the CHIPS Act has gotten plenty of conservative criticism, some of it justified. But the legislation does recognize that the private sector alone can't shoulder the burden of regaining American leadership in a high-tech sector that can take up to five years and $20 billion to build a single new semiconductor plant. If decades of government policy – specifically tax breaks and other incentives – led our manufacturing base to be moved overseas, it will take government policy to reverse that process.
Third, we must recognize the consequences of having allowed America's traditional edge in naval power to steadily slip away, decade by decade. From the Reagan-era 600-ship navy that acted as global peacekeeper during the Cold War, we are now down to 295 ships. As Jerry Hendrix has pointed out, the billions invested in the Ford class supercarrier, the Zumwalt destroyer, and the LCS program have absorbed resources and drawn focus away from a modern naval strategy, all while China has been building one generation of anti-ship missiles after another to render vessels such as the Ford carrier obsolete.
The Trump administration's national-security team tried to end the long, slow decline of our Navy, touting a plan to bring us back to a 355-ship fleet – a fleet fit to confront the Chinese challenge – within ten years. But the Biden Pentagon thinks we can wait until 2043 before approaching the 355-ship threshold, even as we face the growing menace of the Russian and Chinese navies in the Indo-Pacific, the Black Sea and Mediterranean, and even the Arctic.
Fourth, for four decades we systematically undervalued Taiwan as a potential ally in the fight to keep the Indo-Pacific open and free. In a misguided effort to appease Beijing, the Taiwan Relations Act put in place a policy of refusing to recognize the island – which we'd previously considered the one legitimate government of China – as an independent nation. Where once the Taiwanese had been a key part of our approach to the region, now they were kept at arm's length. The Communists on the mainland noticed that shift, and began a series of increasingly aggressive moves toward the island democracy that continues to this day.
The Biden administration has proved unable to arrive at a coherent or effective policy regarding Taiwan; the consternation Pelosi's visit caused proves it.
So what can we do?
The first step is to avoid getting bogged down in a sterile debate over whether the U.S. should engage in a One-China Policy or maintain a One-China Principle. Instead, we must turn the ambiguity over Taiwan's ultimate status as an independent nation into a strategic advantage, leveraging it to keep Beijing guessing about what we will and won't do in response to Chinese aggression. This is where not having a red line can work in our favor, by preventing Beijing from knowing what's coming and developing an effective counter-strategy for it.
The second step is to arm Taiwan and Taiwanese citizens to confront the Chinese threat head-on, just as Ukrainians have been able to respond to Russia's invasion. For example, while Beijing conducts its four days of military exercises in the waters around Taiwan, we should supply the Taiwanese armed forces with a fleet of unarmed, high-altitude, long-endurance drones like the Block 30 Global Hawks the Air Force is currently retiring, to keep close and unrelenting watch over every Chinese move.
As for Taiwan itself, we should turn the island into an arsenal, with every police and fire station storing weapons and ammo to meet a Chinese invasion. Chinese officials have watched the videos of the brutal fighting in Ukraine; the last thing they want is a similar war of attrition for control of Taiwan. Taiwan understands that self-arming is about deterring an invader or oppressor; Americans need to realize the same and arm the Taiwanese to fight for their country so we don't have to.
In the end, policy follows events, not vice versa. In 1996–7, Chinese leaders used the humiliation of two U.S. carrier groups cruising the Taiwan Strait with impunity to reassess their entire thinking about geopolitics and China's place in the world. Today, we need a similar reassessment of our four decades of failed policy toward China and Taiwan. Thankfully, as the Chinese themselves have shown, it is never too late to change course.
Arthur Herman is a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute, a Pulitzer Prize finalist, and the author, most recently, of The Viking Heart: How Scandinavians Conquered the World.