Trump creates a Ukraine in Taiwan. And it reveals a surprising new level of American weakness.

AAn unreliable ally in the West, Donald Trump is now signaling that the United States is happy to abandon its friends in Asia with the suspension of a $14 billion arms sale to Taiwan after his visit to Chinese leader Xi Jinping.

The American president is attacking his country’s policy of “strategic ambiguity” regarding the delicate position of Taiwan, which China claims as its own, by moving towards Beijing.

“Right now, we’re pausing to make sure we have the munitions we need for Epic Fury — and we have plenty of them,” U.S. Navy Secretary Hung Cao said during a Senate hearing on Thursday.

“We’re just making sure we have everything, but foreign military sales will continue when the administration deems it necessary,” he added, referring to the U.S.-Israeli war against Iran, which has absorbed vast stockpiles of U.S. munitions and has achieved none of its stated goals.

Trump held intense discussions with Xi on Taiwan during his visit to the Chinese leader on his first trip to China since 2017.

Following a pattern he established in his behavior following meetings with Russia’s Vladimir Putin, he appears to have sided with a rival power that is also an enemy of longtime US allies.

Speaking to Fox News after his two-day visit to Beijing, Trump suggested that enabling Taiwan’s defense and defending its democracy was no longer a priority.

“I will say this: I’m not looking for anyone to become independent. And, you know, we’re supposed to travel 9,500 miles to fight a war. I’m not looking for that. I want them to calm down. I want China to calm down,” he said.

In Asia and Australasia, this attitude has caused quiet consternation, with Washington’s traditional friends seeking assurances from the Trump administration behind the scenes that it will not deviate from well-established US defense commitments.

There are fears that he will abandon long-standing strategic policies, just as he abandoned the principles that hold NATO together as a defensive alliance halfway around the world.

China covets Taiwan. It also claims the Senkaku Islands administered by Japan. It is building artificial islands to expand its claims to territorial waters in the South China Sea and has a highly effective long-term strategy for expanding its imperial reach across the globe through trade, mineral exploitation, and control of transportation hubs, from Mozambique to Macau.

Previous US administrations have said they are shifting their priorities to the broader Asia and Pacific to counterbalance and contain Chinese ambitions.

Taiwan had agreed to buy Lockheed Martin’s PAC-3 interceptor missiles and Nasm anti-aircraft weapons from the United States. The agreed sales were in response to China’s increased military activity, which included naval and jet fighter incursions near Taiwan over the past two years.

Regional powers will examine Trump’s threats to invade Greenland, part of NATO member Denmark, his threats against Canada, another NATO member, and his support for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine by ending all military aid to kyiv.

They will rightly fear that they will be the next to be abandoned to Trump’s strategic desire to divide the world into spheres of influence – in which the United States dominates the Western Hemisphere, Russia presides over Central Europe and part of Asia, and China is left in charge of the rest.

But by apparently kneeling before Xi, Trump also reveals a new level of strategic weakness.

The United States, like Israel, has failed to project military power on Iran, which survived an air attack.

Tehran closed the Strait of Hormuz to shipping in response to US bombing. Up to 85% of Asia’s crude oil is exported through this chokepoint, and Trump has been blamed for the economic fallout from his military adventure in the Middle East.

The military failure has reinforced the understanding, already enshrined in European strategic plans, that Trump’s American military power is further inhibited by his inability to engage in joint thinking.