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Bonnie S. Glaser is the managing director of the Indo-Pacific Program at the German Marshall Fund of the United States. She was previously a senior adviser for Asia and the director of the China Power Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Ryan Hass is director of the John L. Thornton China Center and the Chen-Fu and Cecilia Yen Koo Chair in Taiwan Studies at the Brookings Institution. From 2013 to 2017, Hass served as the director for China, Taiwan and Mongolia at the National Security Council (NSC) staff. Along with Richard Bush, Glaser and Hass wrote U.S.-Taiwan Relations: Will China’s Challenge Lead to a Crisis? (April, 2023). In this lightly edited Q&A, we discussed the book and the thorny issue of preserving peace and stability in the Taiwan strait.

Q: Why did you decide to write this book? 

Ryan Hass: We began by writing an op-ed, in response to Admiral Davidson’s March 2021 testimony to Congress warning that there could be conflict in the Taiwan Strait by 2027. We wanted to make the point that hyping the risk of conflict does Beijing’s work for it, and that we need to keep our eyes on the full picture of the challenges that Taiwan confronts rather than reducing the issue to a narrow military contest. We shopped the op-ed to various outlets, but basically, there was zero interest. After that experience, we felt like there was more that needed to be said, to really situate what our interests in Taiwan are, how the situation had arrived at the present point. Our hope is that the book provides a reminder of where our top interests lie, how we’ve been able to protect them over the past decades and what it’ll take to continue to do so going forward.

Bonnie Glaser: The conversation around Taiwan — especially in the aftermath of Admiral Davidson’s testimony — has been focused on the defense challenges. Those challenges are important and deserve greater attention. But we think that it is necessary to widen the aperture. It’s also necessary to look at this in the context of the history of the cross-Strait relationship, the differences and commonalities between the policy of Xi Jinping and prior leaders, understanding what has changed and what has not. It is also important to understand that Taiwan not only faces the risk of invasion and blockade and other use of force scenarios, but also for many years has faced threats of coercion and gray zone threats that are often dismissed by people who focus exclusively on preventing the PLA from landing on the beach in Taiwan. 

Why is Taiwan’s security important to the U.S.?

BG: Taiwan is a young and very vibrant democracy. The U.S. and Taiwan share values such as freedom, democracy, respect for human rights, and the rule of law. The future of Taiwan is important to U.S. economic competitiveness and prosperity. 

But even before Taiwan became a democracy, the United States had a close relationship with Taiwan. In 1954, we signed a mutual defense treaty with Taiwan. That was broken in 1979, as a condition of normalization of relations with China. Nonetheless, the Taiwan Relations Act passed in 1979. Members of Congress appropriately remind us, almost on a daily basis, that we have obligations to Taiwan under that act, and those pertain to the obligation to provide defensive weapons and services to Taiwan, but also to maintain a robust and capable presence of the U.S. military in the region — not only to prevent the use of force against Taiwan, but also to prevent coercion. That language was very prescient in 1979. Because who would have really foreseen the degree to which coercion is being used against Taiwan today? 

Taiwan is our tenth largest trading partner. For an economy that is supported by 23 and a half million people, that’s a very substantial trading relationship. The preservation of peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait is important for the entire world, for the United States, for our allies, for really any country that trades with either China or Taiwan: Because any kind of conflict in the Taiwan Strait would have massive negative reverberations for every trading country in the world.

In the book you lay out what the U.S.’s interests in Taiwan are, but at the same time you say that the U.S. should not try to determine the outcome of Taiwan-Chinese relationship. How does the U.S. balance maintaining its interests while not determining what the final state of the relationship will be?

RH: Neither side of the Taiwan Strait wants the United States to mediate or resolve their differences on their behalf. There is no market for the United States to dictate or determine a solution to what is in effect an artifact of an unresolved civil war between the Kuomintang and the Chinese Communist Party. 

More broadly, the purpose and goal of U.S. strategy is not to solve the problem at the heart of tension in the Taiwan Strait, but to keep a path open. So that some day, whether it’s next year, next decade, or next century, wise leaders on both sides of the Taiwan Strait are able to find a solution to their problems. This is something that cuts against the grain of America’s strategic culture, because we have a tendency to want to solve problems in the world. In the case of Taiwan, we’re trying to keep a path open for problems to be solved peacefully, in a manner that reflects the will of the Taiwan people. Period. That’s the goal. 

When viewed through that light, where the goal is to extend timelines and preserve space for solutions, it really brings into focus the types of actions that are unhelpful to America’s broader goals. Our goal is to preserve peace and stability, to keep this pathway open.

What are those unhelpful actions?

RH: Well, things that serve as accelerants to conflict rather than coolants would be unhelpful. So declaring that Taiwan is a strategic asset, or critical node in America’s defensive perimeter in Asia would be an example of something that would be unhelpful, because it suggests that Taiwan is an object to be fought over between the United States and China, rather than a society of 23.5 million people who have agency for their future.

BG: It also suggests that even if Taipei and Beijing agreed to implement some kind of integration — we won’t even call it unification, but whatever form it might take — that would be against the interests of the United States. That is contrary to long standing U.S. policy, which is that the U.S. does not take a position on future arrangements between the two sides of the Strait; it only insists that differences be worked out by both sides of the Strait peacefully, not through coercion or use of force. 

In other words, U.S. policy has focused on the process rather than the outcome. There’s been a widely held belief that our policies should not lead Beijing to conclude that reunification can only be achieved through the use of force. 

RH: And when our policy does what Bonnie just described, it puts the onus on Beijing to appeal to the people of Taiwan. When the United States preemptively forecloses outcomes to cross-Strait disputes, it allows the United States to be the obstacle, and for Beijing to blame the United States for intransigence. So it’s in America’s interest for Beijing to feel pressure to appeal to the interests and ambitions of the people of Taiwan.

And what does that appeal look like? How does China do that?

RH: There’s a popular perception in Washington that China is winning in the Taiwan Strait, in part because there’s a sense that our deterrence is eroding. But if you really step back and think about China’s approach, they’re in a bit of a cul-de-sac. Their original formulation of ‘one country, two systems’ really doesn’t have any purchase in Taiwan, particularly after events in Hong Kong. The idea that economic integration would pull China and Taiwan together is looking less and less sellable as China’s economy enters into terminal deceleration, and Taiwan’s economy remains robust. And so China’s a bit stuck. 

At the moment, what they’re trying to do is employ a strategy of coercion without violence, trying to wear down the psychological will of the people of Taiwan, and to convince them that resistance is futile, that the only path that Taiwan has to peace and prosperity runs through Beijing — and the sooner the people of Taiwan pursue peace, the better that will be. That’s the part of the story that gets lost when the entire focus of the discussion in the United States on Taiwan is around security issues. Part of the work that our book tries to do is to bring that to the foreground, so that our strategy and policy can address the two paths that China is pursuing towards its goal. One is military, one is non military; but they both lead to the same destination.

BG: Scholars in the United States and in other countries who are observing China’s approach to Taiwan often conclude that the Chinese have given up on using peaceful means, which in China’s definition includes coercion, and that they have already decided that they must use force. There isn’t evidence to support that conclusion. Moreover, even though we in the West believe Taiwan’s public opinion polls — which show that the majority of the people want to preserve the status quo, and only about 5 percent of people in Taiwan say that they want unification with mainland China, either now or in the future — the Chinese are skeptical. They contend that the DPP has brainwashed the people, and that their attitudes would change under a leader that favors better ties with mainland China 

I’ve asked Chinese experts ‘Why is it that in the Party’s authoritative documents, it states that time is always on the side of mainland China when it comes to reunification with Taiwan?’ Their confidence emanates from the vast gap in military and economic power between the mainland and Taiwan. They believe that if “foreign interference” is eliminated, the people of Taiwan would see clearly the benefits of becoming part of China.

China’s strategy today toward Taiwan is “integrated development.” The Chinese have not abandoned the approach of integrating the two sides’ economies, and they are trying to promote people-to-people exchanges. They want Taiwanese youth to come to China, to experience China firsthand. 

More world leaders have stood up to speak out on behalf of Taiwan… than ever before. And the Biden administration and the Tsai administration deserve credit for that.

Ryan Hass

It serves our interest for China to have continued hope, that through dialogue, through peaceful means, through exchanges, that they can work out some kind of arrangement with Taiwan. At least, this can enable the U.S. to buy time to develop and deploy more advanced capabilities, so that we can deny China the ability to take Taiwan by force. It’s a good strategy on the part of the United States to not signal to China that there is absolutely no hope of them achieving some kind of peaceful understanding with Taiwan.

On the U.S.- Taiwan side, there have been ebbs and flows in the relationship, but you write that it has trended towards increasing closeness over time. What accounts for that? 

RH: We have had increasingly convergent interests as Taiwan has entrenched its democratic institutions. So we have like mindedness. We have economic complementarity. We share common values. And we partner on just about every major challenge in the world today — which is a set of attributes that would resemble America’s relationship with many of its closest allies. So in spite of the fact that the United States has unofficial relations with the people of Taiwan, functionally speaking, the depth and strength of the relationship continues to grow. 

Taiwan has enjoyed more international recognition and support over the past year than any other year in modern history. More world leaders have stood up to speak out on behalf of Taiwan and to recognize the critical role that Taiwan plays for their interests than ever before. And the Biden administration and the Tsai administration deserve credit for that.

What are the main areas of divergence between Taiwanese and U.S. interests on these issues?

BG: Taiwan and the U.S. both seek to preserve stability in the Taiwan Strait. Both want to prevent the PLA from invading and occupying Taiwan. But Taiwan is also concerned about defending against the gray zone threats that I talked about earlier — cyber attacks, disinformation, international isolation, and the daily presence of PLA ships and aircraft around Taiwan. My sense is that although the Biden administration recognizes these challenges and wants to help to counter these gray zone threats, it is more focused on the invasion threat. 

You could cite Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan in August 2022 as one example, which enabled the PLA to change the status quo in the Taiwan Strait in ways that are very detrimental to Taiwan’s security. In the aftermath of her visit, PLA aircraft and ships routinely cross the center line and operate in close proximity to Taiwan. And there’s been a concomitant increase in the cyber areas and disinformation as well. So to my mind, that may be an example where in hindsight, the benefit to Taiwan was short-lived, but the negative impact endures.

Moving to the Biden administration, something that’s received a lot of coverage is all of the verbal gaffes on Taiwan. What explains that? Are officials and Biden himself just confused and saying different things? Are they trying to signal something? 

BG: President Biden has said now four times that he would defend Taiwan if China were to attack. He has his own personal memory, since he was in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee at the time when the Relations Act was written. There’s a record in the archives about the way that the TRA was pitched at the time that may have shaped then-Senator Joe Biden’s thinking. So when he says, ‘I will defend Taiwan if attacked, and the U.S. has a long standing commitment to do that,’ he is clearly saying that, in his view, the Taiwan Relations Act represents a commitment to defend Taiwan. If you read the text, you will not find that language. But at the time, many senators believed that that’s what the TRA represented because although we were breaking our mutual defense treaty with Taiwan, they wanted to signal that our commitments would still remain very robust. 

Initially, officials in the Biden administration may have seen some value in having the President say that he would defend Taiwan because they felt deterrence needs to be strengthened, and we can’t bolster our military capabilities overnight, so we have to do other things. And having the President make this statement that he would defend Taiwan was interpreted by some as a way to strengthen deterrence. 

But I hasten to add that the Biden administration has taken other steps that are very positive. For example, U.S officials have reached out to allies and partners around the world, and encouraged them to say that they have a stake in the preservation of peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait. The administration deserves enormous credit for recasting the Taiwan Strait as not just a U.S.-China or cross-Strait issue, but as crucial to the entire world.

I want to highlight something else that President Biden has now said twice, which is potentially worrisome, and even dangerous. He said, ‘Taiwan is independent, we should let it make its own decisions’ . It is not U.S. policy that Taiwan is independent. We don’t take a position on Taiwan’s sovereignty. We don’t recognize it as an independent sovereign state. 

So whether we talk about the Biden or the Trump administration, there has been this consistent problem of inconsistency in policy statements and policy actions. In order to have an effective policy, our messaging has to be consistent, especially at higher levels. 

What we see in every case [of Biden’s statements that he will defend Taiwan if attacked] is that the White House then comes out and says publicly that US policy hasn’t changed. So the world is left wondering whether this is a way for the Biden administration to deliberately erode strategic ambiguity and shift towards strategic clarity, giving Taiwan an ironclad commitment to its defense, when I don’t think that’s what it’s intended to do.

I have been personally advocating for about a year and a half that the administration give a speech that explains what our ‘one China’ policy is, and why Taiwan matters to the United States.

On the Chinese side, how has Xi changed the relationship with Taiwan?

BG: Xi Jinping inherited a policy of seeking peaceful resolution across the Strait from his predecessor, Hu Jintao, and he has not changed that bumper sticker for his strategy. But he has changed the implementation of the policy in important ways and has also made some rhetorical statements that are noteworthy. 

…Xi Jinping’s approach to Taiwan is increasingly relying on coercion. China now has a large toolkit of coercive measures and Xi is willing to deploy them.

Bonnie Glaser

In terms of rhetorical statements, in October of 2017, at the 19th party congress, Xi said that reunification of Taiwan with Mainland China is a requirement for national rejuvenation, the target date for which is 2049. Many people have interpreted that as a deadline, but that is debated among scholars, not only outside China, but also inside China. We take the view in our book that Xi has not set a hard deadline, but rather has issued a target date to work towards. 

The U.S. intelligence community has revealed that Xi has instructed his military to be prepared to take Taiwan by force by 2027. Xi’s predecessors also called for the military to prepare to take over Taiwan. Jiang Zemin reportedly tried to set a deadline for reunification. 

The other thing that Xi said that was new — first in 2013, and then again in 2019 — is that the differences between Taiwan and mainland China should not be passed down from generation to generation. It is noteworthy from my perspective that when he initially made that statement, relations across the Strait were actually quite good. Ma Ying-jeou, from the KMT party, was in power and he favored improved cross-Strait relations; there was official cross-Strait dialogue and various forms of cooperation. The Sunflower Movement – the student protests against the passing of the Cross-Strait Service Trade Agreement – had not yet taken place.

My guess is that [Xi’s statement] was not necessarily a threat, or a warning; rather, it was a hope and aspiration that the two sides should find a way forward, including implicitly, to have political talks. China has long wanted to conduct political talks with Taiwan. When Ma Ying-jeou came to power, he supported political talks with China; he later abandoned that goal, because he recognized that the majority of the people of Taiwan did not support it. 

The last thing that I would emphasize is that Xi Jinping’s approach to Taiwan is increasingly relying on coercion. China now has a large toolkit of coercive measures and Xi is willing to deploy them. Disinformation has grown. There’s more cyber attacks against Taiwan than any other target, anywhere in the world. And of course, there is unprecedented military pressure and diplomatic pressure. China has poached nine of Taiwan’s diplomatic allies since Tsai Ing-wen became president. So coercion has increased dramatically. 

Left: Solomon Islands’ Prime Minister Manasseh Sogavare with Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-Wen, July 25, 2016. Right: Manasseh Sogavare with Xi Jinping, October 9, 2019. In 2019, Prime Minister Manasseh Sogavare severed the 36-year relationship with Taiwan and began official recognition and diplomatic relations with China. Credit: 總統府, MOFA

In the context of that coercion and those gray zone tactics, what can the U.S. do? What are the concrete steps that the U.S. can take in that kind of shadow war?

RH: The more confident Taiwan is in its future, the less vulnerable to China’s coercion it is. China’s goal is to make the people of Taiwan feel isolated, alone and vulnerable. Our interest is in preserving peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait. We believe that a confident and secure Taiwan is supportive of peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait. In order for Taiwan to feel confident, and to secure its future, it needs to enjoy political autonomy, economic vibrancy and dignity and respect on the world stage. In order for it to feel those things, the United States needs to show visible support, to open up pathways for Taiwan to earn goodwill on the world stage through its own actions, to support Taiwan in stockpiling munitions, food, fuel and medicine, so that it’s less vulnerable to blockade or attack, and creating alternate pathways for Taiwan to trade and invest with others around the world so that it’s less dependent on the mainland as a source of growth. All these things are well within the bounds of existing U.S. policy. 

And then back to Biden’s comments and to ask the ever present question, has strategic ambiguity run its course? Does there need to be a new framework?

BG: When the United States abrogated the Mutual Defense Treaty with Taiwan in 1979, it no longer had an obligation to defend Taiwan and opted to remain intentionally vague about whether or how it would support Taiwan if China attempted to take it by force. By doing so, the U.S. intended to deter Chinese adventurism by introducing uncertainty into Beijing’s decision-making calculus.

Those who advocate that the U.S. jettison strategic ambiguity in favor of strategic clarity seek to strengthen deterrence — they think that if China is told unequivocally, the United States will come to Taiwan’s defense, that Xi Jinping will be deterred from using force against Taiwan. It’s my view, and the view of my co-authors, that at least since the mid-1990s, China has assumed that the U.S. would intervene in a conflict across the Taiwan Strait. We know this to be true from PLA writings and PLA exercises, and because the PLA developed anti-access area denial capabilities to deter the United States from intervening in a conflict long before they started focusing on developing amphibious landing capabilities on Taiwan. 

Since China already assumes U.S. military intervention in its military planning, if the United States gives Taiwan an ironclad commitment to its defense that will not meaningfully enhance deterrence. Instead, strategic clarity could provoke an attack. Beijing could conclude that the United States is reneging on the terms that were reached in the normalization of bilateral relations, which included ending the U.S.-Taiwan mutual defense treaty. Therefore, it’s my view that strategic clarity would not preserve peace, but instead would introduce greater risks.

What do you think the likelihood is that the U.S. would intervene?

BG: My view is that the likelihood of U.S. intervention would be very high, especially if China attacks Taiwan out of the blue. If a president in Taiwan was pursuing clearly provocative, pro-independence actions that the United States had warned against, [in those circumstances] there might be a debate in the United States about whether the U.S. should come to Taiwan’s defense. But I would argue that even then, we would have very strong supporters in the United States, certainly in Congress to defend Taiwan.

In the case of a Taiwan invasion, it would be harder to sanction China to the same degree [as we have targeted Russia] due to its importance to the global economy. What do you think that shows about sanctions as a tool in this conflict?

RH: While I hope we never will have to test this proposition, if we do ever find ourselves in that situation, we would exploit China’s weaknesses and vulnerabilities. It wouldn’t be to replicate the types of sanctions that we applied to Russia. China’s vulnerabilities are different from Russia’s. The battle would not be fought at the point of attack. It would be global in scope, and likely also would include space and cyberspace. There would be danger of escalation to the nuclear threshold. International pushback would aim to expose China’s very acute vulnerabilities, their dependence on the outside world for food and fuel, for access to the global financial system, for semiconductors and other technological components to continue to fuel their growth. And so China would have to put in tension its national ambitions for rejuvenation against its ambitions for unification with Taiwan.

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