Over the past decade, concerns about a Chinese campaign to take Taiwan by force have risen rapidly among U.S. policymakers and military planners alike, especially as China’s military power and assertive activities around the island have increased.[1] For Taiwan’s strongest supporters in the U.S., any change in the cross-strait status quo poses an unacceptable threat to American interests. They see Taiwan as a “critical node” that must be protected at all costs, whether that means higher defense spending or a deeper U.S. military commitment.[2]

This is a mistake. The greatest threat to U.S. interests is not a successful Chinese campaign to seize Taiwan, but rather a U.S.-China war fought over the island. With the right investments, the United States can manage the consequences of unification between China and Taiwan without compromising its core interests. Washington cannot, however, manage the likely fallout of a war with China, a conflict that would be fought against a peer military 90 miles from that country’s own coastline. 

The United States, therefore, needs a policy toward Taiwan that definitively closes the door on the risk of such a war, and rules out the direct intervention of U.S. military forces to defend the island in case of a confrontation with China.

Could the United States Save Taiwan?

Before considering whether the United States should defend Taiwan, we need to ask if it actually could. The answer to that question is increasingly in doubt, because the military balance in the region has shifted decisively in Beijing’s favor.

China’s military development over the past decade has been rapid and comprehensive, surpassing the expectations of U.S. military planners. The PRC has expanded its nuclear arsenal, the size and sophistication of its naval fleet, and its missile capabilities. It is slowly eliminating whatever battlefield advantages the United States continues to enjoy, namely undersea and in space. And it has demonstrated its ability to encircle Taiwan and project naval power far from its shores.[3]

Trends on the U.S. side are less favorable. U.S. weapons stockpiles, including high-end precision munitions and expensive air defense, have been depleted by large outflows of military aid and by U.S. military operations against Iran. At the same time, the U.S. ability to reconstitute them is constrained by insufficient industrial capacity—the same problem that creates barriers to its ability to build more ships, submarines, and aircraft.[4]

U.S. failures in Iran also have highlighted gaps in U.S. military planning. In the weeks after the start of Operation Epic Fury, Iran was able to severely degrade U.S. air defense networks across the region and impose significant costs on U.S. bases and assets. This should ring a cautionary note. U.S. military installations in Asia will be as or more vulnerable in the face of Chinese missiles. Furthermore, U.S. stand-off air and naval strikes could not suppress Iran’s missile or drone fire sufficiently to keep the Strait of Hormuz open. China would fare at least as well.

A U.S. military that cannot defeat Iran certainly cannot defeat China. To be sure, the United States could complicate a Chinese effort to seize Taiwan and might be able to deny China a quick victory if it received sufficient allied support. After all, a Chinese campaign against Taiwan would be one of the most difficult ever attempted, and any U.S. intervention would only add to the challenges Beijing would face.[5]

However, even in the case of a successful initial denial, the United States would likely run out of munitions more quickly than China, especially if the conflict took place in the near term. At that point, China could blockade Taiwan, relying on its massive fleet of civilian and military ships, and bleed the island into capitulating.[6] In other words, China’s military advantages may give it an edge, even if the United States can force China’s invasion attempt to stalemate. Beijing’s understanding of this reality, meanwhile, may erode the U.S. ability to deter such an invasion as well.

Win or lose, however, the costs of a war over Taiwan would be catastrophic for the United States (and the world), including tens of trillions of dollars in damage to the global economy, at least as much in destroyed military equipment and munitions, and more U.S. casualties than any war since Vietnam.[7] The U.S. military would lose dozens of warships and hundreds of aircraft. It would be less able protect U.S. interests elsewhere and even the homeland might be vulnerable to infiltration and threats. The consequences of such a war, in other words, would be large and enduring no matter the result.

Should the United States Defend Taiwan?

The high price tag and uncertain prospects for success associated with a U.S. defense of Taiwan should give policymakers pause. Clearly, avoiding such a war should be a top national security priority, but a more important question remains: if China were to attack Taiwan, could the United States afford to stay on the sidelines, or would the stakes simply be too high?

Clearly, a successful Chinese campaign to take Taiwan would have implications for the United States, both economic and military. But these implications can be mitigated without compromising core U.S. national interests—namely the physical security of the U.S. homeland and U.S. economic prosperity. As a result, a U.S. defense of Taiwan cannot be justified, and should be ruled out explicitly.

Any link between China’s seizure of Taiwan and the security of the U.S. homeland is indirect at best. China poses a missile, nuclear, and cyber threat to the United States, but its capabilities in these areas would not be meaningfully changed by its control of Taiwan.

The more reasonable concern is that if China were to successfully hold Taiwan, it would be able to tilt the regional balance of power in its favor, dictating the terms of U.S. economic engagement in Asia. However, while Taiwan’s advocates use this argument to justify continuing U.S. support to Taiwan, there is little evidence to back up their case. 

For starters, China’s military gains from seizing Taiwan would be modest at best, and would neither swing the balance of power in China’s favor nor give it an easy pathway to regional hegemony. With control of Taiwan, China would be able to base submarines on the east coast of Taiwan, where they would be able to evade some underwater sensors used by the United States, making them harder to track. It might also be able to base radars or launch missiles from Taiwan, improving its ability to hold at risk U.S. military forces along the second island chain.[8]

However, these gains would affect the regional military balance only on the margins. The United States still has many ways to identify and track Chinese submarines, and local, underwater sensors are only one. In any case, as Chinese subs become more advanced, they are also getting quieter, which means that it is only a matter of time before China’s underwater vessels can escape U.S. underwater sensor detection regardless of Taiwan’s status.[9] Fighting a war over an advantage that the United States is likely to lose in a short period of time hardly makes sense. 

As far as missile capabilities, it would take years for China to build the logistics, radar, and launch systems on Taiwan needed to use it as a base for operations, giving the rest of the region plenty of time to improve their defenses. And given China’s growing satellite capabilities, being able to operate from Taiwan might not improve China’s targeting precision or range all that much.[10]

Beyond these limited military gains, China would face serious challenges on its path to regional hegemony. To achieve this goal, China would need to have at least Japan (the true lynchpin of the region’s balance of power due to its geographic location, industrial capacity, and economic strength) and probably also South Korea within its direct sphere of influence—if not fully conquered, then at least as vassal states. 

But this is a remote prospect. Not only are Japan, South Korea, and the Philippines well protected by water, they are also fiercely nationalistic. If China were to invade and seize Taiwan, the most likely response would be for these countries to increase investments in their defenses to fortify their security. As they are already, countries in the region are more likely to band together in the face of perceived Chinese aggression (or fear of U.S. abandonment) than to accommodate Chinese demands.[11] In fact, the region’s efforts to balance against China and the United States over the past 18 months, both by increasing defense spending and forming new self-reliant cooperative security mechanisms, should serve as evidence against arguments that the consequence of a U.S. decision not to defend Taiwan would be the collapse of U.S. alliances or the region’s wholesale bandwagoning with China.[12]

The same might not be true of Taiwan itself, of course. Without U.S. backing, it is plausible that Taiwan would decide that political accommodation with China is preferable to the risk of war. This outcome would be acceptable for the United States and consistent with the Taiwan Relations Act, which takes a stance against unilateral changes achieved by coercion, but not those occurring through peaceful means.[13]

Even if it cannot gain regional hegemony, however, some U.S. foreign policy analysts are concerned that control of Taiwan might be sufficient to give China the ability to cut off U.S. access to the South China Sea or Taiwan Strait, thereby complicating access to key regional markets.[14] This is a reasonable fear but misunderstands both the status quo and the region’s geography. 

China can already shut the United States out of the South China Sea if it wanted to, even without direct control of Taiwan. It has, however, shown no intention of doing so, largely because China depends heavily on trade and would damage its own interests with such interdictions. Even so, if such a contingency did arise, the United States has alternative trade routes it could use and the naval capacity to protect its access to them, including the use of sea lanes running through the Indonesian and Philippine archipelagic waters and through the Philippine Sea, to the east of Japan. 

The most direct threat to U.S. interests in Asia that might result from a change to the cross-strait status quo comes not from Chinese military power but from the economic implications of Taiwan’s semiconductor production, which is required to power U.S. military systems, artificial intelligence, and consumer electronics. If China were to successfully take control of the island, U.S. access to these chips would certainly be disrupted.[15]

A war over the island would likely destroy semiconductor fabs in Taiwan. If this didn’t wipe out Taiwan’s semiconductor capacity or if China took the island through political accommodation, the United States would likely withhold access to intellectual property needed to produce the thinnest chips, which is U.S.-owned, cutting off U.S. supplies all the same. 

A loss of access to needed semiconductors would be a blow to the U.S. economy, but the best solution is not a war over Taiwan or a military buildup that doubles down on deterrence (which would be difficult at present, as the United States remains bogged down in the Middle East). It would make much more sense for the United States to reduce its dependence on Taiwan by reshoring semiconductor capacity, including the relevant manufacturing and supply chains, to the United States as quickly as possible. Washington is already moving in this direction, and industry estimates suggest that about 30 percent of the thinnest chips will be able to be produced domestically by 2032.[16] Made a higher priority, this transition could occur even more quickly. 

At the same time, the United States might start stockpiling older chips that are in less high demand but could serve as “almost as good” substitutes in case of a crisis. Since China is reliant on Taiwan for semiconductors too, for now this dependence may act as a deterrent on any intention it might have to attack the island.[17] That would buy the United States time to make the transition now. And with control of the necessary technology, Washington has an advantage.

The bottom line is that even if it can, the United States does not need to defend Taiwan to safeguard core U.S. interests. It can manage or prevent any challenges posed by unification by adjusting its economic and security policy toward Taiwan now and modifying its posture across the region to ensure that U.S. interests are safeguarded no matter Taiwan’s final status.

An Unacceptable Risk

A policy that explicitly closes the door on a U.S. defense of the island, then, represents the best move for U.S. national security. To support this policy, however, Washington would have to make some policy changes. It would need to reposition U.S. forces away from vulnerable locations closest to Taiwan, such as Okinawa and Luzon, where they might get dragged unintentionally into a war, and ensure sufficient air and naval capacity in the region to protect U.S. trade routes. It would also need to invest in domestic semiconductor production capacity on an accelerated timeline. Finally, Washington would want to open a dialogue with China and with allies, to reinforce its intentions to remain a presence in Asia.[18]

Far from leaving the United States less secure, these moves would leave the country better off, by reducing the U.S. security burden and eliminating the biggest U.S. strategic liability: its continuing commitment to Taiwan and the risk this brings of a war with China.