Taiwan Doesn’t Need a Formal U.S. Security Guarantee

Ivan Kanapathy

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In September 2020, Richard Haass and David Sacks reignited a debate over providing a formal U.S. security guarantee to Taiwan, ending decades of strategic ambiguity regarding U.S. intentions. They reiterated their support for “strategic clarity”—“to make explicit to China that the United States would respond to an attack against Taiwan with … severe economic sanctions and military force”—in late 2021, two months before Russia’s latest invasion of Ukraine.

Following the invasion, former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe argued, “The time has come for the U.S. to make clear that it will defend Taiwan against any attempted Chinese invasion.” Similarly citing the Russia-Ukraine war example, Eric Edelman and Franklin Miller lobbied for “a clearly stated U.S. commitment to vigorously defend Taiwan against efforts to forcibly incorporate it into the [People’s Republic of China].”