PLA attack on Taiwan ‘unlikely' but ‘not impossible' with Trump in White House: report
People's Liberation Army (PLA) attack on Taiwan is 'unlikely in the near future' but 'not impossible', given the risks of misperception and miscommunication with the US under President Donald Trump , a British think tank has warned.
The US–China relationship is 'more strained than it has ever been at any other point in the 21st century', according to the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS), which published its latest Asia-Pacific Regional Security Assessment on Wednesday.
The release of the report's 2025 edition comes ahead of this week's
Shangri-La Dialogue , Asia's premier annual defence summit held in Singapore and co-organised by the IISS.
Tensions between Washington and Beijing over issues such as trade, technology and Taiwan were setting the tone of a relationship characterised by 'deep mutual distrust and a lack of dialogue mechanisms', the report said.
It noted some tactical improvements during the previous Biden administration, such as the resumption of military-to-military dialogue and an agreement not to include artificial intelligence in nuclear decision-making, but cautioned that these were unlikely to 'significantly alter the strategic direction of the two great powers' during Trump's second term in office.
'Trump's first term [2017-2021] saw the US launch its first Indo-Pacific strategy in 2017, which made clear that the region had become a priority for Washington. Central to this strategy was an acknowledgement that Chinese coercion and influence undermined the interests of the US and countries in the Asia-Pacific,' the report said.
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