As the United States overhauls its foreign policy approach, Taiwan is on high alert. The Trump administration’s push for a Ukraine settlement has led many to question Washington’s commitment to Taiwan. What do leaders in Taipei think of these geopolitical changes? What’s the pulse of the Taiwan public?
To find out, American Statecraft Program and national security experts Christopher S. Chivvis, Stephen Wertheim, Brett Rosenberg, and Matthew Duss visited Taipei and met with Taiwan's officials and thought leaders. In this episode of Pivotal States, they share their takeaways and delve into the United States' policy challenge in Taiwan.
Transcript
Note: this is a rush transcript and may contain errors.
Christopher Chivvis:
This is Pivotal States. This is a longstanding series that we have here at the Carnegie Endowment. I'm Chris Chivvis, the Director of the American Statecraft Program. We've moved Pivotal States from an event format to a podcast format, and this is the first installment in that new podcast format that we're doing. I'm really excited to be here with some of my favorite analysts of foreign policy in Washington: Stephen Wertheim, Matt Duss, and Brett Rosenberg. We've just finished a trip to Taiwan where we learned an enormous amount, not only about Taiwanese politics, but also about the bigger strategic picture and what the United States might be able to do about it. We're at a moment where U.S. foreign policy is disruptive to say the least, going in directions that are unclear in a lot of areas. And one of the directions where I think it's unclear, and we can talk about this if you guys want, is on China policy, what the future of the Trump administration's China policy is going to look like.
So anyway, given all of that, we thought it would be a good idea to go to Taiwan, which is really sort of at the center of the maelstrom here, and try to get a sense of what it looked like from the island itself. And there's obviously tons of different issues that we can talk about and that we did talk about on the trip. You've got the state of Taiwan's own democracy, the nature of its domestic politics. You've got the condition of cross-strait relations, that's the relations between Taipei and Beijing. You've got also, one of the things we wanted to talk about is how they're viewing the United States and how are they making sense of the Trump administration and its policies towards Ukraine and other parts of the world. And then finally, since it's Taiwan, the military dimension is always really important and there are lots of other things that we could talk about.
But if it's okay with you guys, I thought we might just start with domestic politics and then move to the larger strategic questions. For me, I think on the domestic politics is where my eyes were open the most as someone who's not a resident China expert to the complications of Taiwan's domestic politics and the way in which those complications affect the broader strategic picture that we're talking about when we're talking about US-China relations and security across all of East Asia. And the thing that really struck me was the extent to which the politics of Taiwan are just so badly polarized and weirdly reminiscent of the United States. So at the same time I was there and I was thinking, "Okay, this is bad for Taiwan, but also it's an interesting case study in the effects of polarization."
Stephen Wertheim:
Absolutely. This was certainly a striking element of the trip. It seemed like if we were talking to somebody from the DPP, the ruling Democratic Progressive Party, it would be only a matter of time until they would express their animosity towards the other side, the KMT, the Kuomintang, in part because over the past year plus, there has been this rivalry between the two. The DPP won the presidency for a record third straight term. So President Tsai was replaced by her vice president, now President Lai. But the KMT ended up gaining the plurality of seats in the legislature. And since that point, the two sides have been at each other's throats, not only trying to obstruct the moves of the other one on policy grounds, but also trying to claw some of the power, the institutional power, of the executive branch into the legislature if it's the KMT or vice versa. This is an executive branch that's also trying to do big things to mobilize society. And then if we were talking to a KMT figure, once again, only a matter of time until they would suggest that the DPP was leading Taiwan down the path toward ruin. And I think this matters for Taiwan for sure.
Christopher Chivvis:
Bunch of unreasonable radicals was sort of the impression that you got from talking to the KMT.
Brett Rosenberg:
We had one person refer to the DPP as the DEI party, clearly importing in some American...
Christopher Chivvis:
But I think they would've been proud of that based on what we heard.
Brett Rosenberg:
Totally, totally.
Stephen Wertheim:
No. That some of the DPP people would bring up, for example, in a conversation about foreign policy, the fact that the DPP championed rights for same-sex marriage and they did so early in an East Asian context. So that's clearly part of the identity of this party. But I think this matters for the strength of Taiwan's own democracy. It also matters for the United States because it's very hard to forge a consensus in that system around an approach toward the United States and toward the PRC.
Matthew Duss:
I'd say, knowing kind of a little bit about Taiwan's domestic politics, but not a lot, I think we were able to dive in at a much, much deeper level that I really appreciated. And in a way, the positions of the two parties on the various domestic versus foreign policies are almost counterintuitive. The KMT, this is the Chinese Nationalist Party that literally fought a war against the Communist party and retreated to the island of Taiwan and still nominally claims to be the rightful government of all of China, and yet they are the ones who have the ongoing conversation with the CCP. Any channels that the Taiwanese government has are basically through the KMT. The DPP is much more forward-leaning in terms of an independent Taiwanese identity separate from the Chinese mainland. And yet, even though it seems a bit more hawkish on the foreign policy side, when it comes to domestic issues, gay rights, women's rights, a whole range of things that we associate with progressive politics here in the United States.
I thought that was really interesting. Yeah. And I do think it's important always to understand as much as possible the domestic drivers of any country's politics, because ultimately, that is what, in democracies, politicians — I hate to break it to people — are mainly concerned with. How do I get re-elected? How do I stay in power? How do I manage my own political coalition? So that's something that we have to contend with as we try to come to our own decisions about U.S. policy.
Brett Rosenberg:
And I was struck as well by, there's obviously this polarization between the two parties, but there was an understanding that the public I think is much closer to where the DPP's view is on the cross-strait approach, not necessarily in terms of a hawkish approach, but in terms of, we're already an independent sovereign nation. We have an independent Taiwanese identity and the KMT approach, it seemed like they even recognized that a lot of young people especially were not particularly drawn to any form of reconciliation with China. That said, there is a large, sizable majority that wants to maintain the status quo. And so reconciling those two things, a strong national Taiwanese identity with wanting to maintain an increasingly tenuous status quo, is something that the DPP is clearly struggling to uphold.
Christopher Chivvis:
Yeah, I agree. And I think we should get into that maybe a little bit more deeply in a couple of minutes, but I want to just stick with the question of polarization and what appears to be increasingly dysfunctional politics in Taiwan right now. So you've got the recall, which, it struck me, and I was glad that we had the opportunity to hear from a couple of objective observers who were outside of the politics of this, who basically were saying, so this is the effort by the DPP to basically overturn the election of some 35 KMT members of the LY, the Taiwanese parliament. I was glad that we had the opportunity to hear from some of those objective people who were outside of the political fray who said, "Look, this isn't so democratic of the DPP to try to do this. After all, those people were elected. And they're clearly doing it because they just to get control of parliament back."
But it speaks to this sort of, they justify it oftentimes by saying that, "Well, the KMT is essentially the party of China." It's almost as if they don't believe that followers of the KMT are part of the same country, which they do believe Taiwan is obviously. And so that sense of clash was very clear to me. And the other angle of it was we arrived just after the case of a woman who had been deported back to mainland China for saying very pro-Chinese things. I mean, frankly some really crazy stuff, like she thought China should invade Taiwan, stuff that clearly is not cool, and we don't know the background, whether or not she was actually getting paid by the Chinese security services or anything along those lines. And so they deported her. Maybe that was a decision that was made with some information that we don't have. We don't know.
But the thing that struck me was how sanguine so many of the DPP representatives who we talked to were about it when we raised for example, but that's not great, right? We understand that what she was saying wasn't cool, but to deport her, doesn't that raise issues of freedom of speech? And it's complicated when you're talking about disinformation, but for me, it was just an example of how adversary disinformation does more damage than disinformation itself, when it really makes basic trust in our capacity to communicate with opposition parties break down. And it really makes me worried about Taiwan.
Matthew Duss:
Yeah. I mean, I think it was not that this person was charged with activities, like they were ideas that were expressed, that were deemed so harmful to the security of Taiwan. And obviously that is a huge problem. The same with the recall effort. It's a foundational principle of democracies that you respect outcomes of elections when they don't go your way and you try again next time. Obviously we see echoes of all these problems here in our country. We should be humble about that. But it does really show the increasingly zero-sum nature of their politics. That's the phrase that kept ringing around in my head as we heard both sides describing the other.
Brett Rosenberg:
I just kept thinking about how hard it is to have a vibrant, flourishing democracy with this threat of invasion constantly overhead. It activates, I think, the worst impulses in democracy, including just the suspicion of one's fellow citizens, one's fellow non-citizens, and the opposition. It turns a sort of loyal opposition into potential plants of the CCP. And that's what the assumption is.
Stephen Wertheim:
Right. And a warning sign for democracy anywhere is when the political parties hate each other so much, distrust each other so much that they're willing to take liberties with the rule of law, with the election system, in order to prevent that other side from gaining power. And so there's a pretty clear reason why this would be a concern for Taiwanese with the threat of the PRC across the strait. We have similar dynamics in the United States without that kind of threat. Nevertheless, there was a real disjuncture between I think what we encountered and the strength on paper of Taiwan's democracy, which is quite an inspiring story if you go back to the period of martial law and the progress of Taiwan's democracy since the '80s.
Christopher Chivvis:
I mean, what you say, Brett, about feeling the pressure from China is something that we shouldn't skip over because it's very real, right? Both on the disinformation side, the concern is real. I have no doubt that that's actually going on and in an aggressive way. And then also you've got obviously the gray zone activities that we all know about and which came up in almost every conversation that we were having. And these are the consistent efforts of the PRC using the PLA to try to threaten and encroach upon Taiwan whenever they're unhappy with anything that either Taiwan does or potentially also the United States does, which puts Taiwan in a difficult position. And I completely agree that that makes it hard to have a functioning democracy, and we should be cognizant of that. Yet, Taiwan's claim to democracy is one of the main things that they are putting out there as the justification for why the United States ought to be willing to risk a war with China in order to defend Taiwan. And let's be clear about it, a war with China would be a massive conflagration. We're not talking about what a war with China would’ve looked like in 1990 or in 1978. We're talking about what a war with China would look like in the late 2020s. That is a very different story and a very scary one.
Brett Rosenberg:
Yeah, I mean, we're talking about nuclear World War III effectively.
Christopher Chivvis:
Quite possibly.
Brett Rosenberg:
Quite possibly. And I think to your point though about Taiwan, I think especially during the Biden administration, was putting out as one of its main reasons that the U.S. should be defending it that we are a vibrant democracy, that the democracies around the world need to stand together, need to fight the rising tide of authoritarianism. Obviously under President Trump, and maybe we want to get into this later, their approach has changed. They're no longer necessarily putting forth as their main reason that the U.S. should come to defend them that democracy is the reason, right? There's a lot of other things, I don't know if we want to shift there.
Christopher Chivvis:
Yeah, other arguments. Yeah, please talk about that.
Matthew Duss:
Heard about having cards.
Brett Rosenberg:
Right. Exactly. And so as Matt said, one of the things that constantly, that came up a bunch was clearly the Zelensky-Trump scene in the Oval Office resonated. We heard different interpretations in different ways. Some people repeated the line that I think has been in the news quite a bit, which was Ukraine today, Taiwan tomorrow. This idea that this bodes ill for Taiwan. Some referred to that as Chinese propaganda. It wouldn't surprise me if Chinese propaganda was spreading that, but it also seems like a reasonable interpretation that some people might have. And as Matt said, people kept coming back to this quote where Trump turned to Zelensky and said, "You don't have the cards." Saying that Ukraine just didn't have the cards to stand up to Russia. And that seemed to activate in quite a few of our interlocutors the notion that Taiwan needs to get some cards.
And I think that came up in two ways. One, they need to get some cards because they need to be able to deter an invasion and if necessary withstand it, fight back, things like that. But two, they need to be able to prove to the United States that they have cards so as to then bring the US in. And so, you know, the cards on the first front are things like raising the defense budget to 3%, increasing military service from four months to a year, doing whole of society resilience and civil defense efforts. Just really trying to strengthen their deterrence and defense capability.
On the other side with clearly trying to signal to Trump. Some of that is related, right? That first part about raising the defense budget to 3%, that is clearly something Donald Trump would like to hear, though he will see that as below a floor I think as he's expressed and other members of his administration-
Christopher Chivvis:
We've heard all kinds of numbers, 5%, 10%. Why not make it 25%?
Stephen Wertheim:
We certainly haven't heard 3%. 3% is not going to cut it.
Brett Rosenberg:
Exactly. So I think they saw 3% as the first step. They also though in what two other things that are I think signals to Donald Trump. One is trade imbalances, right? They're trying to deal with that by purchase agreements, especially around LNG. They recently signed a letter of intent with the Alaska governor to have LNG imports from the new North Slope project in Alaska. And then the third thing was a new $100 billion commitment from TSMC for semiconductor fabs built in the United States. That's on top of their already $65 billion commitment. So that's pretty massive.
Christopher Chivvis:
I mean I sort of felt that with those three dimensions, they were fairly confident or at least more confident than I would've expected about the future of the relationship with the United States. They seemed less shaken by the Zelensky Oval Office beating that had only taken place, what, two or three weeks before our arrival there. I expected them to be much more worried than they were. But I don't know, Matt, you seem to feel that maybe there was more concern there than I saw.
Matthew Duss:
I think it's a bit more concern, and just as Brett said, they had clearly heard that line, but they were a bit more, I guess, sanguine about the fact that, no Taiwan does have cards that Ukraine does not. TSMC being the most obvious example. But there's two-
Christopher Chivvis:
And we have a long-standing commitment to Taiwan that we did not have to Ukraine. Just to be clear here yeah.
Matthew Duss:
That's also true. I mean, again, placing a lot of stock in the kind long-standing political and cultural role that Taiwan has played in this relationship and going back to the Cold War. But it's also a general sense, to put I guess the nicest possible spin on Trump's approach, it's generally, “We're getting ripped off. These people are ripping us off. They should stop ripping us off.” And from Taiwan's perspective, it's okay, how can we show that we're not just consumers of American prosperity and security, but we also contributing to American prosperity, but also to our own security and to erase any concept that we are free riding or ripping Americans off? So again, the announcement of a rise in the defense budget is definitely a part of that. The announcement, all the things that Brett talked about, I think is a part of that. So again, I wouldn't overstate the amount of alarm, but I do think some people were perhaps a bit too relaxed and placing a bit too much stock in this kind of idea that oh, Americans will always support Taiwan because maybe Americans when you poll them. But the question is will they punish a politician or a president who changes that?
Stephen Wertheim:
Actually, when you poll Americans, only thirty-some percent say that they would support coming to the direct defense of Taiwan against a Chinese attack. That's a fairly low number if you compare that to the number that say that they would support defending a NATO ally, including the Baltic States. You know, these polls are only so valuable, but a notably higher percentage of the Taiwan public thinks that the United States would fight for Taiwan than Americans do. So I think there's an important gap there. And I share your worry, Matt, that there might be some overconfidence in Taipei right now about where things could go with the Trump administration. So some of the things that we heard reminded me a little bit of the position that Zelensky was trying to take in his Oval Office meeting with Trump, where Trump would say, "Look, first, you got to make peace, you got to reach out, you got to compromise and then we worry about the costly stuff for the United States, the security guarantees."
I think the Trump administration will want to see Taiwan step up on defense, which Taiwan to an extent is willing to do. But the approach of the current government led by President Lai is to also verbally shake his fist across the strait and be very assertive about the fact that there is a separate government in Taipei and Beijing. We've seen that throughout his-less-than-a-year of his tenure. And that's the kind of thing where I think the Trump administration has not yet focused on Taiwan as a problem yet. So I think some in Taiwan think that they're not having a problem yet and they're reading a green light from Washington. I think simply the Trump administration has not had a review of a Taiwan policy or events have not forced them to focus on the problem. So I could see some friction appear somewhat subtly in the coming months, years.
Brett Rosenberg:
Do you think the administration has some either strategic or non-strategic ambiguity about this, right, either because they haven't addressed it on a diplomatic level or because of some of the statements that Trump versus his administration, fellow officials have said? Trump right before he came into office, basically said, we are like an insurance company effectively. We provide insurance to Taiwan. Where's the payment? Right? Exactly as Matt said.
Matthew Duss:
Nice way to put it.
Brett Rosenberg:
Yeah, exactly.
Matthew Duss:
A protection racket.
Brett Rosenberg:
Exactly. Exactly. But if folks saw reporting about the interim national defense strategic guidance that just came out, it labeled China as the sole pacing threat for the Department of Defense and deterring an invasion of Taiwan as the sole pacing scenario. And so you can read lots of different things into lots of different appendages of the Trump administration, whether it's the president or some of his advisors. I think in the end, my view is it comes down to the president in this particular administration and they may well be misreading those tea leaves as I don't know what that man is thinking.
Christopher Chivvis:
I mean, it's interesting that you raised the interim national defense guidance. I had the same thought that you did, but the question that it raised with me is whether or not making China the pacing threat for defense planning and posture in the Pentagon is incompatible with demanding of Taiwan, that it's been 10% of its GDP on defense. Because I think actually both of those things can be parts of a congruent and cohesive strategy. I'm not saying whether or not it's the right strategy, but I think there may be less contradiction there than it appears, on the surface.
Brett Rosenberg:
Oh, I totally agree. I also think it's a question of how and when that actually gets implemented. As someone who helped write a national security strategy, I can tell you that it was implemented word for word.
Stephen Wertheim:
So the other thing that the interim guidance from that was leaked from the Pentagon does not exclude is the possibility that the Trump administration will be concerned about the political statements that the government of Taiwan is making. So, you know, that point, I think, even if this administration is willing to do a lot for Taiwan's defense, we don't know what it will demand of Taiwan in return by way of Taiwan's own defense preparations. And it may also have a different attitude toward Taiwan's political statements. It may want to see more effort to resume cross-strait dialogue, which this government doesn't seem to be very interested in. And I think this also relates back to the way we started, which is that the two parties have very divergent theories of the case when it comes to how to provide security.
And one party, the DPP, wants to be assertive, both in terms of defense preparations and in terms of asserting its sovereignty. The other party, the KMT, it's hard to characterize because there are a bunch of different factions, but generally they want to be more accommodating of China in both respects, both in terms of their material preparations, although some do support, they say more defense spending, but also in terms of political positioning vis-a-vis Beijing. And I think there are a lot more people in Washington who would like to split the difference, and I'm one of them, have Taiwan do a lot more to prepare itself on defense, but also have it seek some sort of dialogue with the PRC and at least try to avoid taking steps that could make Beijing fear that Taiwan is creeping closer towards some kind of irrevocable point past which the legitimacy of the Chinese Communist Party is being challenged through this Taiwanese attempt to assert its permanent separation from the mainland. But it's very hard to see how Taiwan's political system could at least voluntarily adopt that kind of approach.
Christopher Chivvis:
And I think it was really clear when we were there, and I completely agree that that's a really excellent summary of the strategic situation. We often think about the defense side of it, getting Taiwan to do more for its defense. Obviously that's what we've been asking of our European allies. There's good reasons for that. But in this case, as you pointed out, there's a flip side to it, which is Taiwan also needs to be demonstrating that diplomatically, it's willing to go out of its way in order to ensure that we avoid having to come to its rescue, that we avoid having to get into that war with China that would be so destructive.
But, you know, so we asked several times our interlocutors, especially on the DPP side, you know, how they felt about cross-strait dialogue. This would be trying to return to the constructive discussions that were going on between Beijing and Taipei from the early 1990s up until around 2016. And just I'll say off the bat, it's clear that China bears a lot of the responsibility for why these fell apart, but we were in Taiwan, so we were trying to get their sense of it. And I was just surprised that they not only, their talking points for all the reasons why it was impossible to go back to any kind of dialogue, were very well-practiced.
And what I was surprised about was that they didn't seem to grasp that this is something that the United States might actually really expect them to get to work on because of the fact that A, it's not incompatible with spending more on defense and B, they really are asking the United States to come to their rescue. It's not just to ask that they're making. The whole basis of the trajectory that their domestic politics is on, both in terms of democracy and in terms of the independence that they so clearly want is grounded on the idea that the United States is going to come to their rescue. And if they're not doing everything they can to prevent that on the defense and the diplomacy side, I think they're going to run into some challenges of the kind that we were talking about a few minutes ago.
Brett Rosenberg:
Yeah, I think something I was struck by in listening to especially the DPP interlocutors who as Stephen said, President Lai has become much more forward-leaning even than President Tsai who seemed to couch things a little more carefully. And to Chris's point, even then, China cut off diplomatic relations almost immediately after her inauguration. So to give the DPP some credit, they basically said, "We're open to dialogue, but China makes it impossible because they insist on a precondition which says that Taiwan needs to accept that they're a one country two states model." Which is basically that Taiwan needs to accept that they will become like Hong Kong, which of course, given the crackdown in Hong Kong-
Christopher Chivvis:
Especially after that. So not at all helpful. Yeah.
Brett Rosenberg:
Right. Exactly. It's not at all helpful.
Matthew Duss:
Not an attractive option.
Brett Rosenberg:
Right. And so I think what struck me about a lot of this was that one of the things that has allowed this pretty untenable situation to exist for decades, it is actually kind of remarkable that there hasn't been a violent conflagration so far is because both sides have allowed ambiguity to exist. Both have said in the '90s there was what we heard a lot about what was called the 1992 Consensus, which is basically both sides agreed, and it was the KMT, was the government in power then. Both sides agreed that there is one China, but they also agreed we're not going to have to have an argument over who the real one China is. We're just going to put that to the side and deal with all the other issues. That was an innovative form of ambiguity that has collapsed completely on both sides. Right? On the China side, we've seen the cutting off of diplomatic relations, we've seen the increasing gray zone activities. We've seen the anti-separatist laws. I mean, we've seen a clear encroachment, consistent squeezing of Taiwan.
Christopher Chivvis:
A lot of pressure. Yeah.
Brett Rosenberg:
A lot of pressure. On the Taiwanese side, we've also seen a hardening, right? We've seen a hardening in a very different way towards more explicit language about, President Lai will talk about that Taiwan is already an independent sovereign nation, less attention played to some of the semantics that China cares about, more of the hardening even in how the Taiwanese people think about this. As we said, the majority of the Taiwanese people support the status quo. If you look at the group that doesn't, vastly more support independence than do eventual reunification. I think it's at 7% according to INDSR right now.
Stephen Wertheim:
Yeah, really small numbers for both.
Brett Rosenberg:
Tiny, tiny.
Stephen Wertheim:
But yes.
Brett Rosenberg:
Yeah, it's like twenty-something percent for independence, 7%. Yeah. And so I think there just becomes less ambiguous space for an impossible situation to exist in, which really highlights the untenability of the status quo at the moment.
Matthew Duss:
Right. No, it's ripe for political actors on either side to disturb that status quo and political actors from the United States as we've seen in the recent past. But I was really struck by one conversation we had with a kind of progressive left DPP-affiliated journalist and activist.
Christopher Chivvis:
This was in that bar. The Home Run Bar. That was fun.
Matthew Duss:
Right, exactly. Who clearly was pro-independence. And then we asked, "Okay, so what's the pathway?" And he said, "Well, there's no path right now to achieving this." So there's at least a pragmatic-
Christopher Chivvis:
Which was surprisingly realistic for someone who was so aspirational about it.
Matthew Duss:
Right. A level of pragmatism to say, "Well, at the moment, there's no path to this." And that was one of the most interesting things I think we heard.
Christopher Chivvis:
The only thing is I was kind of like, well, then why are you talking about it? Because it's going to create a lot of problems.
Matthew Duss:
No, that's right. Because again, I mean this is something that has a large political constituency, so it does make sense. I think this is where good responsible leaders do make a difference. That's a challenge right now in Taiwan's polarized politics. But again, in thinking about, okay, what is the correct policy? What should we support? We, being the United States or the policy community here in Washington. That is one, just an unsatisfactory status quo, and something changes at some point that shakes loose the possibility of some other better policy outcome, but it's hard to really write that report.
Brett Rosenberg:
Yeah, the two other explanations we heard for how this changes in the end, we had a KMT person said that, pretty much everybody said we have to kick the can down the road. Nothing good is going to happen now. But a KMT person said, after Xi Jinping is gone, there is a chance that the Chinese people at some point will recognize that they want to be a democracy, and so they'll want what we have. That was one version which seemed-
Christopher Chivvis:
But it was sort of like, how is that going to happen? I mean, sounds good, but how is that going to happen?
Brett Rosenberg:
The other one from a DPP person was, she basically said, that seems unlikely, and if it were likely, it's going to happen a long time from now. Instead, right now, I think she said, and I haven't independently checked this, but she said about 20% of mainland Chinese people have said they don't care what happens to Taiwan. And so she said, at some point in the future, probably after Xi Jinping, the goal will be for that to grow exponentially and just the Chinese people will not care what happens to Taiwan. China will have to deal with its own internal issues, whether they're demographic issues, economic issues, things like that. And so it just won't be that much of a focus.
Stephen Wertheim:
Yeah. These arguments really concern me, because their ways of allowing people to not deal with the China that we see in front of us, and we have no really good reason to think that that China is going to transform into something fundamentally different. 20% of the population believes just about anything you can pull, right? So, I understand that there is a need to think about the end game, the future, and a need to create some sort of story that would underpin a modus operandi in Taiwanese politics and cross-strait relations. So, the story, for that strategic purpose, the story that one day something will change in China and unification could be a possibility is not a bad story so long as you don't really believe it's going to happen and have a certain time horizon on it for those purposes specifically.
But otherwise, you're left with the reality of trying to manage the de facto self-rule that Taiwan, thank goodness, enjoys, and the status quo is eroding to such a point that it's hard to see it going on like this. So, I worry about the stories people tell themselves to avoid confronting the question, what exactly is driving the PRC's behavior? Is it so obvious that the PRC is just in a vacuum trying to envelop Taiwan, or are the things that Taiwan might do or the United States might do that make a difference to the amount of pressure to the timeline to the near-term goals that Beijing has? And I was just-
Christopher Chivvis:
It's an important point because it's almost as if we, Taiwan, you, the United States have no agency in this, because the PRC is going to do what it's going to do. They're going to keep up the pressure, and any show of accommodation that we should put forward is only going to embolden them. I mean, that was a common theme that we heard from many people, but it sort of absolves their political leadership from doing things which obviously are difficult within Taiwanese politics, but that probably need to be done.
Brett Rosenberg:
We heard from multiple people the phrase “Taiwan's fate is not its own,” which I thought was interesting, because to a certain extent, they are caught between two global superpowers, right? Its fate is not solely its own, but its fate is not solely its own. It has a role to play in its own fate.
Christopher Chivvis:
Yep. I wonder if we should talk a little bit about the military side of it since it's Taiwan, and we did have some great conversations with some people who are really smart on military question. The obvious starting point is, like we were saying earlier, the gray zone activities that China has been pursuing in the Taiwan Straits and around it are intensifying pressure on Taiwan. This is a real problem. One of the things that was driven home to me is the concern that these exercises could suddenly turn into something more than just an exercise. And the PLA would already have crossed the Taiwan Strait and so be in a much greater, stronger position to strategically surprise Taiwan, the United States, and the rest of our allies in the region with some kind of a blockade or an actual invasion. So, this is a really big problem, and I don't want to diminish it.
One of the things that was interesting to me was the extent to which nearly everyone we talked to about the military issue made it a point of insisting on how important those conventional legacy systems were, the F-16s, naval systems, and so forth and so on.
Stephen Wertheim:
I agree with those who say that Taiwan needs to retain some legacy systems. They're right. They do need to do something to contest gray zone operations by the PLA.
Christopher Chivvis:
It seems silly to have no Air Force or Navy.
Stephen Wertheim:
Yeah. It's a good idea.
Christopher Chivvis:
You're an island.
Stephen Wertheim:
So I'm with them, but from the conversations we had and we certainly didn't speak to everybody in the course of a week, I didn't hear a way of trying to balance the competing demands that we need to find some way to limit what Taiwan will do to contest gray zone activities so that some limiting principle that would allow Taiwan to focus on a porcupine defense, to focus on building a reserve force, which it really needs to do, et cetera. People seemed concerned with the problem, and I didn't see a way to manage those competing demands.
Matthew Duss:
I mean, this is not strictly military, but one of the things we also heard was how much Lai has invested in a kind of society resilience strategy, not just a military response, but a society that can respond to various types of scenarios and how this has opened up other opportunities and channels for Taiwan's relationships around the world, including with countries that are very nervous about any kind of military-to-military cooperation because that's something that would annoy China and China would seek reprisals against whatever countries did that. But looking at a kind of whole-of-society approach again has opened up channels of communication at the civil society level, at the governmental level, Europeans and elsewhere. Being able to talk to other governments, other countries that have dealt with different, whether it's natural disaster or whatever, has been kind of a boon for Taiwan's diplomacy.
Brett Rosenberg:
And I think one thing that I also found interesting is obviously the PLA is doing these military exercises, but Taiwan is going to be doing apparently a civil defense exercise this summer sort of whole-of-society approach, which has not been done before. So, as you said, President Lai has really focused on this even as at the sort of military level. I think there's still questions about the legacy versus asymmetric approach.
Christopher Chivvis:
I mean, I think the politics of it are pretty interesting because I sense the reluctance of the KMT to get totally involved with this and the enthusiasm of President Lai. Clearly, if you've got people out there drilling the way that some of us did during the Cold War get under the desk kind of stuff, it immediately raises the question of, "Well, why are we doing this?" And so it is a way of inculcating a sort of sense of, yes, civic responsibility, but also nationalism against a particular external threat. Which clearly plays into the politics.
Matthew Duss:
And a sense of the stakes, right? I mean, this goes to what we were talking about. There could be some benefits in making clear to people like this is what we would face in the scenario, and it's not great that some politicians are playing a little bit too close to the edge.
Christopher Chivvis:
Yeah, that's a really interesting point, Matt. On the question of one of the things that was said to us, which was sort of a smaller detail, but really stuck in my head was that because Taiwan is behind on the cost curve and that the need to respond to Chinese gray zone activities is wearing out their military kit, they're going to need to loosen their rules of engagement. In other words, this person was advocating for allowing Taiwanese pilots and presumably also naval vessels to be much more aggressive when they intercept their Chinese counterparts. And the idea was, well, this would raise the risks for China and they would do less of these gray zone activities. And that was a moment where I said, well, I can see the interest from Taiwan's perspective, but from a US perspective, this sounds like a really bad idea. I mean, what did you guys, do you remember this?
Brett Rosenberg:
I was terrified by that. Yeah. The risks of escalation there, misperception, accident is just crazy.
Christopher Chivvis:
It seems to me that we don't want to have that happen. I mean, hopefully we would be able to control it, but the state of our emergency military communications last I checked remains pretty weak.
Stephen Wertheim:
Yeah. I also think it's not an easy problem how do you deal with gray zone activities. And one of the theories we heard was essentially a psychological theory that the point of contesting PLA gray zone operations is to maintain the resolve of Taiwan's population. I really have to wonder whether the number of F-16s that you scramble really has an effect on Taiwan's will to fight.
Christopher Chivvis:
What the effect is. Yeah, I get it. They're sort of saying, if we don't do this, everybody's going to feel really weak and vulnerable to China. But the fact that they're constantly having to do this and constantly talking about the threat is also making people feel very threatened. As we reflect on the trip, the big thing is I come away more concerned, not less, and it makes me think about where we would want things to be if we were to go back in 5 or 10 years. I mean, Stephen, you wrote this article that everybody was talking about when we were there in Foreign Affairs. You want to take a stab at that?
Stephen Wertheim:
Well, if you go by what my co-author Jennifer Kavanagh and I recommend, here's where we'd get in about 10 years. First of all, Taiwan would make much greater efforts to make itself a porcupine, make itself indigestible to an outside invasion.
Christopher Chivvis:
Militarily, right?
Stephen Wertheim:
Exactly. That would give it confidence that it would be pretty insane for Beijing to try an all-out invasion, so it could worry perhaps a little bit less about even gray zone activities and considerably less about being helpless in the events of a cross-strait invasion. It would also potentially put its relationship with Washington on a more stable footing, because the United States would have more options in the event of a crisis. Taiwan would not be left praying that the United States comes to the rescue and having to also fight off the PLA for a while until the United States arrived. It could hold its own for a good period of time, perhaps be resupplied by the United States in the event of a crisis. And so then I think that would put Taiwan in a better position, vis-a-vis it's two very difficult great power neighbors, so to speak, China and the United States. And it could also, you can see that around that kind of platform, one could imagine if you really want to fantasize the two parties, finding some degree of convergence, but to say-
Christopher Chivvis:
You mean in domestic politics?
Stephen Wertheim:
Exactly. The DPP and the KMT. That 10 years is a long way away from what we saw a few weeks ago.
Christopher Chivvis:
Matt, you want to take a stab at this? If you were to go back in five years, what would make you happy or unhappy?
Matthew Duss:
Yeah, I mean, I think there are definitely elements of what Stephen and Jennifer wrote in their piece, stronger investments in Taiwan's defense, certainly investments in its own resilience. One of the things we haven't mentioned yet is there's apparently an effort now to extend the amount of time that is required for national service for all young Taiwanese. Right now it's about four months, which one person referred to as just a kind of summer camp where they go and hang out and do drills, and that's their-
Christopher Chivvis:
Shot a rifle once or twice.
Matthew Duss:
Right, right. Exactly. And to extend that to one or two years as a lot of other countries do. But also it's just understanding that, I mean, given the various scenarios, the kind of least bad scenario is what we have now with a few changes as we just mentioned. Also having a president of Taiwan who is really willing to try harder to have engagement with Beijing, which Taiwan does not have now, unfortunately. I think that would be good, that opens possibilities in talks with Beijing, but also I think that would have benefits in terms of US public opinion and global opinion as well. And I do think that matters, but I think coming from a DC perspective, the idea of just there's not much we can do and we should keep this unsatisfying status quo is not a very attractive argument either there or here. And yet, that is I think probably the best option.
Christopher Chivvis:
Best option. Yeah.
One of the things that we haven't talked about as much is the politics of this, not just Taiwan's democracy and progress and success as democracy, but also how closely that's linked to eventual independence and the dream of independence. And one of the things that we heard so often was, especially from the DPP, well, this is what the people want. And so what that says is, well, so if the Taiwanese people are eventually going to vote in favor of independence, that's a huge challenge. I mean, obviously they're doing that incrementally, but if that force is really there, it's a real problem.
So as leaders, as political leaders, I understand your desire to respond to the will of the people, but you also have a responsibility to lead the people and to have some say in what they think. And so I felt as though occasionally the political leadership was maybe a little bit too hands off in terms of the way in which they were not doing enough to try to shape political opinion on this really, really crucial issue.
Brett Rosenberg:
Yeah, I think, Matt, you're saying how unsatisfying it is to, you're saying keep doing the same thing for this unsatisfying status quo. I think it will take an enormous amount of hard work to even preserve that unsatisfying status quo, because all forces, including political forces, just military forces, everything is pressing towards resolving that status quo. And the sooner that is resolved, the worse it is for Taiwan, right? The resolution does not go well.
Christopher Chivvis:
There's no way in which the resolution goes well. I mean, I just don't see how that happens. I didn't hear a compelling story for how the resolution would go well for Taiwan.
Brett Rosenberg:
Exactly. And so I think as we think through what is the hard work that has to be done to preserve this pretty unsatisfying approach, especially for a democracy with people who are extremely proud of creating this democracy, who have a vibrant culture where most people at this point now identify as Taiwanese, not Chinese. That is going to be unsatisfying. And there's a lot of domestic political work I think that has to get done not just on the DPP side, but also largely on the DPP side, just because they have the majority of political power at this point to actually work with and give some credibility to an opposition, if that makes sense. Not in terms of saying: vote for the KMT, but in thinking through-- a democracy is not healthy if you only have one party kind of in charge. Whereas as we talked to a lot of folks, most people saw very little future for the KMT, especially among young people. It's just young people are with the DPP in terms of Taiwan's eventual independence, sovereignty, things like that.
What does it look like to have a viable two-party system where there is a loyal opposition? Again, going back to Matt's point earlier, would that we also had that here, a really strong two-party system where we're arguing over policy principles and not over the viability of the other party. But again, these are the struggles of democracy, and I think that's what Taiwan is going to have to reckon with as they're trying to maintain this current status.
Christopher Chivvis:
That's really insightful. I just was reminded again how high the stakes are in this situation. I mean, given the commitment of really both political parties here in the United States to stronger and stronger backing of Taiwan that we've seen over the course of recent years, and my own deep concern about what a war with China would really look like as opposed to the way that we sometimes hear it talked about, the fact that it would be a world historical event. I just came away more concerned about Taiwan even than I was before going for all the reasons that we've been talking about.
Stephen Wertheim:
Can I just make one other point? A lot of the conversations we had were very US-centric and we're Americans, so that made sense. I do think though that... Well, I left with some questions about whether Taiwanese elites appreciate the importance of managing the perception of Taiwan in cross-strait relations in a regional context. It would be very important to Taiwan that if there were to be a large conflict, that countries around Taiwan would perceive the PRC to have been the aggressor. And it is not obvious that they necessarily will. I think the visit of Nancy Pelosi to Taipei in 2023 is instructive. I've had a lot of conversations with people in different parts of East Asia and Southeast Asia in which they said something like the following.
Initially, I thought it was good to see Nancy Pelosi show support to Taiwan, but look, it didn't make anybody else safer. It didn't make Taiwan safer. It provided the perfect pretext, or even rationale, for the PLA to increase its military activities. Taiwan lost the median line as a result. And so I think if there's an event that provides a good litmus test for thinking strategically about Taiwan's situation and the way in which unwise actions from Taiwan or the United States aside can make Taiwan less secure, that Pelosi visit stood out to be as a turning point and something that people still need to analyze.
Christopher Chivvis:
All right, so obviously a lot of this revolves around what the United States is going to do in the future, and especially some of the uncertainties surrounding Donald Trump's intentions for his relationship- or America's relationship- with Beijing. And obviously Taiwan is a key function of this. He has a new kind of foreign policy, we can say that. How do you think that's going to play out for Taiwan? Matt, what do you think?
Matthew Duss:
Yeah, I think as we mentioned earlier, he has surprisingly not said very much about China or Taiwan in his first couple months in office, given the prominent role that China policy played in his first term. That will clearly change. But what we've seen so far from him is whether we're talking about Russia and Ukraine or Israel and Gaza is: He takes strong countries, or at least as he perceives strong countries and strong leaders seriously. And they're the ones who make the decisions. And less strong countries or less strong populations just have to deal with the decisions that those powerful countries make. And that could have some pretty bad consequences for Taiwan, which is again, why I think their decision to move very early to demonstrate that they've got cards could be, is a pretty wise one.
Christopher Chivvis:
It serves them well. Yeah, certainly. Whether it's enough, another question entirely. Another question entirely.
Brett Rosenberg:
And again, I think Trump 1.0 and Trump 2.0, as we've discussed both on our trip and just together, looked very different and it’s hard to read onto the second what happened in the first. But in 2016, Trump actually made explicit exactly what you were talking about. He said basically Taiwan could just be part of some grand bargain with Beijing. He was very willing to think about it as a bargaining chip in a larger deal. So who knows if he returns to that.
Stephen Wertheim:
Yeah, I think that is the scenario that Taiwan should be worried about, that Xi Jinping decides to make some kind of demands on Trump in exchange for a larger grand bargain so there'd be linkage to some other non-Taiwan issue and Trump kind of figures, "Well, I didn't care about Taiwan that much in the first place, so let me get what I really do want." Probably in the trade space. That said, I also think there is a possibility that some US-China negotiation over Taiwan could have a positive outcome and shouldn't just be viewed as a source of trouble. Could certainly be that, but an exchange of assurances between Washington and Beijing that would help to convey that the U.S. One China policy is strong and durable, perhaps in exchange for China reducing some of its military activities around Taiwan, or declaring that it has no timetable to achieve unification or something else, that could actually help a situation, and be one of the ingredients that gets us off of what in a lot of moments looked like a collision course.
Christopher Chivvis:
Agree. I think that Taiwan has got, when it comes to the Trump administration, as we talked about, Brett, and as you laid out, clearly understood the importance of it's a hundred-billion-dollar investment in the U.S. It's got other dimensions of this that are all going to be helpful to it. It's serious about increasing its investment in its defense sector, but this is sort of the missing component is trying to demonstrate that they're also serious about the diplomatic angle here. And I think, Stephen, you just laid out some of the ways in which it's probably worth trying to pursue that. And I would favor the Trump administration actually strongly encouraging Taipei to take those steps, despite the reluctance that we've seen. And we know that it'll be different, but it would be a more positive outcome for everyone involved if they were willing to do so.
So, guys, it was really fun to have you guys on the trip. Learned a lot, had some good laughs. We'll have to talk about the Stephen-Meter another time.
Matthew Duss:
Yeah. Best meal?
Christopher Chivvis:
Best meal? I don't know that we have a consensus on that.
Brett Rosenberg:
I mean, there's a lot of national pride in Din Tai Fung.
Christopher Chivvis:
Pot stickers, I think.
Brett Rosenberg:
Dumplings.
Christopher Chivvis:
Dumplings? Dumplings were good too.
Brett Rosenberg:
Although I think Chris developed a bubble tea addiction while we were there.
Christopher Chivvis:
It's true. I did. I know.
Matthew Duss:
Yeah, Chris was turned into a bubble tea fan.
Christopher Chivvis:
I had a weakness. I never knew the weakness I had for bubble tea. So next time we go, the DPP knows how they can get me to say nice things by giving me bubble tea at every...
Stephen Wertheim:
Caffeine, sugar, what could go wrong?
Christopher Chivvis:
It was really awfully good, I got to say. I got to say.
This has been a new podcast version of our series, Pivotal States in which we look at US strategic options towards the most important countries in the world. I hope you'll tune in again if you've enjoyed this installment, when we talk about America's longstanding special relationship with the United Kingdom.
