Shelley Rigger
Maintaining constructive relationships with both Beijing and Taipei is a perpetual challenge for American leaders. With the end of the Cold War and the rise of a strong, globally engaged China, some American policy analysts have begun to question whether the delicately balanced Taiwan policy the United States has followed since the late 1970s still serves US interests. According to these observers, US defense assistance prevents Taipei from making hard decisions about its future and undermines a much more important relationship—the one between the United States and the People’s Republic of China (PRC). Therefore, they argue, the United States needs to phase out that aid and let Taiwan and China work through their relationship without US interference. These arguments promise a magic-bullet solution to one of the most intractable problems in US foreign relations, so it is not surprising that they have received a lot of attention. As persuasive it may be on its face, the case for rethinking US Taiwan policy and, more specifically, withdrawing American security assistance, is overstated. Such a policy change would not serve the interests of the United States, Taiwan, or China; nor would it solve the problems its proponents claim they want to address.
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