We can’t let Trump make Taiwan a bargaining chip

A large country led by a strong man claims that the small neighboring democracy should be part of its territory, for no legitimate reason. The nuclear-armed autocracy is making threats and massing arms at the border. But its final decision rests on a calculation of the reaction of the rest of the world: how much value will be placed on the small democracy, how much the greater power stands to lose.

This describes Vladimir Putin’s decision to invade Ukraine in 2022. But it also describes the very similar calculations being made today in Beijing, about Taiwan, based on President Xi Jinping’s observations about what happened in kyiv and Moscow, but also in Kabul, Caracas, Tehran and elsewhere.

Behind every military action, retreat, compromise, arms sale or peace deal attempted or abandoned by the United States and its allies lies a numerator or denominator in the fractional mathematics of Beijing’s conquest.

And that equation has tilted against the Taiwanese people in recent months, as President Donald Trump has sent a series of messages, explicitly through his words and implicitly through his military adventures, suggesting that a Chinese absorption of Taiwan could be a negotiable issue.

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Mr. Trump’s abandonment of his support for Ukraine, his military failure against Tehran, his divisions and threats to his NATO allies, his decisions to betray the people of Venezuela and Iran in favor of their illegitimate regimes – all suggest that he might abandon island democracy if it serves his interests. On May 15, he said it explicitly: “I haven’t approved it yet, we’ll see what happens,” he said of $14 billion in weapons that the U.S. Congress voted to sell to Taiwan. “I’m keeping that pending and it depends on China. Frankly, it’s a very good negotiating point for us.”

The remark about “negotiating currency” found an echo in Beijing. In doing so, Mr. Trump “did not reduce the risk of conflict. He increased it.” wrote Ryan Hasswho served as Barack Obama’s National Security Council director for Taiwan, China and Mongolia.

“Trump’s public openness to negotiations with Beijing over the U.S. position on Taiwan will serve as the diplomatic equivalent of a matador waving a red flag in front of a bull. It will lead Beijing to intensify its efforts to test the limits of what it can gain in terms of easing the U.S. commitment to Taiwan’s security.”

Taiwan would arguably be the most important country in the world if China allowed it to be recognized as a country. Democracies and free societies are in decline, largely because of Mr. Trump’s influence, and people in emerging countries are tempted to view the stability of established dictatorships as a more desirable option, their money and treaties more reliable. On the other hand, there is an alternative model very visible in Taiwan’s vast economic and technological success, born of a healthy, competitive and ardently defended democracy and a resolutely open civic life.

It is in all of our interests to keep this model alive, to show that countries like Taiwan are worth defending, and that their transition to democracy is not something that world powers negotiate.

Mr. Xi has repeatedly shown that he does not believe that the democratic world is truly committed to its own defense.

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When the United States withdrew its military from Afghanistan in 2021, Beijing’s response was “Afghanistan today, Taiwan tomorrow”, as it puts it Chinese state media said sosending the official message that “the United States will abandon Taiwan in a crisis given its tarnished credibility… Afghanistan is not the first place where the United States has abandoned its allies, nor will it be the last.”

This triumphalism quickly faded. After the Ukrainians successfully prevented Russia from seizing their capital and taking control of their country, authorities in Beijing were reportedly surprised by the willingness of the Ukrainian population to give their lives, the lack of a pro-Russian faction, the speed and unity of Western support, and the inability of the large, high-tech Russian army to gain much ground. “Overall” an academic analysis of Beijing’s position concluded in 2023, “these lessons suggest that the costs of military action against Taiwan are higher than China could have anticipated before the Russian invasion… [they] This will likely prompt Beijing to be more cautious about the use of force to achieve unification.”

On some level, this lesson remains. Recent polls show that nearly 60% of Taiwan’s citizens would be willing to fight a Chinese invasion “at all costs” without U.S. support. Much of China’s influence in developing countries is based on the fact that it is not seen as an imperial aggressor like Russia or America. But Beijing must balance these realities with Mr. Trump’s eagerness to sell out the democratic island. Maintaining its freedom should be a condition of any deal with China.