There will be a new presidential administration in the United States in January 2025. It will be important for the Lai (賴清德) administration and America’s next administration to get on the same page quickly and visibly in respective efforts to bolster Taiwan’s security, economic vitality, and dignity and respect on the world stage. One key measure for doing so will be whether Washington and Taipei can coalesce around a common narrative for moving US-Taiwan relations forward.
In recent years, Washington and Taipei have leaned into fear as a motivator for coordinated action. For a time, both sides publicly reinforced each other’s concerns about China’s Belt and Road Initiative, a sprawling global effort by Beijing to finance and construct infrastructure, including strategically located ports that could service the PLA Navy. Leaders and leading thinkers warned of China’s use of “debt-trap diplomacy” to amass leverage with recipient countries.
President Biden favored describing global competition as a contest between democracy versus autocracy. The Biden administration spurred into action three Summits for Democracy. These summits sought to support democracy at home and confront autocracy abroad. Taiwan officials participated in these summits, although their involvement was occasionally overshadowed by questions of how Taiwan was treated relative to other participating countries.
American domestic politics factored into Biden’s drive to convene these summits. Biden sought to contrast his global leadership in support for democracy versus former President Trump’s absence of leadership on such issues. In the end, experts and commentators panned the summits for generating a diplomatic mess over which countries to include and exclude, and with little to show in terms of results. It is unlikely that Washington will be an energetic promoter of future Summits for Democracy, regardless of whether Vice President Harris or Trump prevail in America’s upcoming election.
More recently, American grand strategists and security officials have sounded alarms about the rising risk of China using military force to seize Taiwan. For some, an invasion could come in 2025, or perhaps 2027. China may act like a “peaking power,” according to some analysts, and follow a pattern set by past autocracies that lashed out before they descended in national power. These American strategists urge Taiwan to act with greater urgency in strengthening defenses against Chinese aggression. Many of these commentators are critical of Taiwan for spending less as a percentage of their gross domestic product than other front-line democracies that face threats to their survival, like Israel, South Korea, and Poland.
And in recent months, a new narrative has emerged in Washington that an “axis of upheaval” is emerging. This axis includes China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea. All these countries oppose American global leadership and Washington’s promotion of liberal values and democratic ideals. China has breathed life into this concept through its critical enablement of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, as well as its deepening relations with Iran. This concept has gained further impetus from Putin’s efforts to deepen ties with Iranian and North Korean leaders.
What this new concept of an “axis” enjoys in terms of marketability it lacks in terms of rigor. To be sure, Beijing sympathizes with and supports each of these other countries in their opposition to a Western-led international system. Beijing differs from the rest, though, in that it has not abandoned hope of developing productive relations with advanced economies. China’s leaders recognize their country’s growth prospects would be severely stunted if Beijing’s connections with the developed world atrophy and China instead becomes captain of a coalition of outcasts. Beijing still aspires to become a leading actor of the existing order and not just a chaos agent in toppling that order. China’s relationship with North Korea is frosty. Chinese leaders are wary of Russia emboldening North Korea and are worried about Iran destabilizing a region from which much of the country’s energy imports originate.
It would be a bad bet for Taipei to hang its strategy of aligning with the United States on a notion of shared opposition to an emerging axis of the aggrieved. In addition to latching on to a concept that has an uncertain shelf life, such an approach also would organize US-Taiwan relations around what both sides are against as opposed to what they are for.
A shared affirmative vision of what the United States and Taiwan stand for would provide a much stronger foundation for developing the relationship. This would position Taiwan not as a US-China issue, but rather as a partner of the United States in advancing core priorities. These include supply chain security, pandemic preparedness, clean energy transition, and development and deployment of asymmetric military capabilities, such as next generation drones and sea mines.
Such an approach would position Taiwan as a partner and not a problem, as a giver and not a taker. It would allow the relationship to develop simultaneously from the top down through government statements and actions, and from the bottom up through densifying connections between American and Taiwan businesspeople, scholars, and scientists. The more Taiwan can be seen by American leaders and citizens as a vital partner and contributor to shared challenges, the more potential there will be for joint efforts to strengthen Taiwan as an innovative and dynamic society that stands for freedom in a tough neighborhood.
Ryan Hass is a senior fellow, the Chen-Fu and Cecilia Yen Koo Chair in Taiwan Studies, and the Director of the China Center at the Brookings Institution.
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