Asia without America, part 3: liberal Taiwan in a realist world

Asia Times

21-05-2025

Mornin' will come, and I'll do what's right
Just give me till then to give up this fight
And I will give up this fight
– Bonnie Raitt
Liberalism – in the Wilsonian international relations sense – has had a few very lousy decades. History has been unkind to Francis Fukuyama, and yet liberalism, with major exceptions, still maintains a vice grip on democracies across the world. Taiwan is not one of those exceptions.
Frequently, regularly and obligatorily referred to as a 'vibrant' democracy by the mainstream Western media (it has got to be some kind of conspiracy), Taiwan has become the Asian darling of global liberal elites who wax lyrical over every bit of island culture.
Returning the regard, the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) swallowed wholesale the entire woke progressive agenda. In 2019, Taiwan became the first Asian country to recognize same-sex marriage, despite public referendums in opposition. The DPP has since embraced LGBT… QIA2S+ even more enthusiastically.
Local talent Nymphia Wind celebrated his/her win in RuPaul's Drag Race 2024 by performing a burlesque show for outgoing President Tsai Ing-wen at her official offices, right beneath a bust of Chiang Kai-shek, longtime leader of the Republic of China and the Kuomintang (KMT) party, who was surely turning over in his mausoleum.
Meanwhile, average monthly People Liberation Army (PLA) aircraft traversing Taiwan's Air Defense Identification Zone (ADIZ) doubled from approximately 150 in 2022/23 to 300 in 2024/25.
In the past decade, the PLA Navy has grown from 255 to 400 ships (including three aircraft carriers, four large amphibious helicopter ships and eight smaller amphibious transport docks); the PLA Air Force's fleet of 4th and 5th generation fighters has increased from approximately 600 in 2015 to 1,600 today.
From 1,300 ballistic missiles in 2015, the PLA Rocket Force now has the largest arsenal in the world with over 3,000 ballistic missiles designed to hit targets as disparate as Taiwan, Japan, Guam and North America.
The PLA Air Force is very publicly conducting almost weekly tests of two 6th-generation fighter prototypes concurrently with its second 5th-generation fighter, the J-35, which should be close to deployment. China also recently showcased a mammoth landing barge, which may negate the necessity of having port access in an invasion scenario.
And, serendipitously, the recent India-Pakistan conflict scored major propaganda points for the PLA as its J-10C fighters and PL-15 missiles reportedly far outperformed India's French and American weapons systems.
So, is realism or liberalism the arbiter of international affairs? The fate of Taiwan depends on the answer. The People's Republic of China (PRC) has been betting on realism and hard power, while the Republic of China (Taiwan) has put its money on liberalism and soft power.
The PLA conducts salami-slicing operations in Asia, increasing PLA aircraft and naval patrols in the Taiwan Strait, militarizing artificial islands in the South China Sea (SCS), preventing Filipino ships from supplying marines stationed on a contested SCS atoll and daring the US Navy to do anything about it.
Taiwan also slices salami but in its own way by hosting visits from Speakers of the House Nancy Pelosi and Kevin McCarthy, participating in liberal flag-waving exercises with Baltic States and playing political semantics like saying Taiwan doesn't need to declare independence because it already is independent.
The risk of Taiwan betting on liberalism is that it assumes the international system is not anarchic, that there is a higher power to whose authority it can appeal – namely, the United States of America. This bet has not had a great track record.
The US has a long history of stringing liberal partners along before hanging them out to dry. Think Hungary 1956, Czechoslovakia 1968, South Vietnam 1973, Lebanon 1984, Somalia 1993, Iraq 2011, Hong Kong 2019, Afghanistan 2021 and Ukraine today.
Taiwan President Lai Ching-te can play his semantic games to score domestic political points, but ultimately, he must understand Henry Kissinger's warning, 'To be America's enemy is dangerous, but to be America's friend is fatal.'
In 1990, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), the PRC spent 71% more on defense than Taiwan. Last year, the PRC spent 18 times more. Over this period, the PRC's defense spending fell from 2.4% of GDP to 1.7% of GDP while Taiwan's collapsed from 5.2% of GDP to 2.1%.
Taiwan isn't just not matching the growth of PRC defense spending, it is not even pretending to care. With these numbers, Taiwan is purposefully not trying to credibly deter the PLA. This is strategic on a very paradoxical level.
To preserve the status quo, Taiwan is careful not to build up defenses that could actually deter the PLA… for fear that getting close to such a threshold would trigger a PLA invasion. All of this assumes that the US can credibly deter China from invading.
While the US spent three times as much on defense as China did in 2024, it is down from 39 times in 1990. Given purchasing power differences, the strength of China's industrial base and the multiple theaters the US is expected to secure, the 3x advantage should more than wash out.
Since the year 2000, the US Navy ship count has fallen from 318 to 298 while China's has grown almost fourfold from 110 to 400 (although China's navy is smaller by tonnage).
The US Air Force's 6th-generation fighter program, now called the F47, is seriously behind schedule and is seemingly in disarray. Cost inflation and delays are scourges that the Pentagon has been powerless to rectify.
The higher power whose authority Taiwan is relying on has, for decades, watched its military advantage in Asia shrivel. Make what you will of reports that the US consistently loses to China in internal Pentagon war games.
What we do know is that China has built and militarized seven artificial islands in the SCS unchallenged and that, last year, the US Navy removed a carrier strike group from the contested maritime area rather than risk a confrontation with the PLA Navy and Rocket Force, thereby hanging the Philippines out to dry.
If realism is the ultimate arbiter of international relations, then internal politics has no effect on foreign policy. This is the billiard ball theory of state behavior. If realism is correct and China has closed the military gap in Asia, it should not make a difference which party governs Taiwan. It should not matter that Taiwan's President Lai is pro-independence or that the DPP is woke, progressive and pro LGBTQIA2S+.
The preponderance of military power, or, more accurately, the projection of future military power will result in Taiwan reaching the same conclusion and implementing the same foreign policy whether the DPP or the KMT were in charge.
Taiwan can choose passivity and let time and China's growing strength run its course, hoping to be rescued by unforeseen developments (e.g. China's economic collapse, US Navy AGI battleships, divine intervention). Or it can get in front of events, become emperor maker and negotiate a special place at President Xi Jinping's side.
The reunification of China will make America's continued military presence in Asia far more costly if not untenable. An Asia without the distorting presence of an alien power (see here) would usher in a modern renaissance.
Taiwan is a perfect conduit to channel Asia's modern renaissance between mainland China, Asian neighbors and even the West, guiding it towards an open, cosmopolitan Tang Dynasty version rather than something more insular and political like the later Ming Dynasty.
The danger of passivity for Taiwan is that multiple players in the region also have the opportunity to become emperor maker. America's alliance partners South Korea, Japan, Taiwan and the Philippines are all arranged like dominoes along China's maritime borders – the fall of one threatening to topple others.
Lee Jae-myung, front runner in South Korea's upcoming presidential elections, is seen as pro-China as is Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba. Midterm election results in the Philippines favored pro-China former President Rodrigo Duterte's clan over pro-US President Ferdinand Marcos.
Any one of these dominoes could decide that their alliance with the US is untenable in the long term and that they could negotiate better terms with Beijing by being the first mover.
The biggest domino is not even in the region. The United States has twice elected a transactional president who specifically rejects liberalism and the rules-based international order.
If President Donald Trump could hobble China's economy and military modernization, transfer trade and wealth to the US and maintain American primacy in Asia, he would. He has certainly tried with the 'Liberation Day' tariffs.
Unfortunately, Trump quickly discovered that running US$1 trillion trade deficits with a deficient industrial sector does not, in fact, give the US leverage (see here and here). The US is similarly hemmed in by $36.2 trillion in government debt, a corrupt and sclerotic military-industrial complex and a litany of domestic social ills.
Donald Trump could become the ultimate realist and transactional president and prove Churchill's quip, 'Americans can always be trusted to do the right thing, once all other possibilities have been exhausted.'
A creature of pure id, unhindered by ideology, it is perfectly imaginable that Trump could swing from trying to hobble China's economy to striking a grand bargain that relieves the US of its Asian security burdens in exchange for, say, Chinese investment in US manufacturing and purchases of US Treasuries. For a transactional creature like Trump, a win is a win is a win.
We are already hearing hints of this. After the US and China announced their tariff pause, Trump raised eyebrows with the comment, 'They've agreed to open China, fully open China, and I think it's going to be fantastic for China, I think it's going to be fantastic for us, and I think it's going to be great for unification and peace.'
Officials were quick to clarify that this referred to economic unification between the US and China. Taiwan's President Lai followed up, further raising eyebrows in an interview, by comparing the PRC's 'One China' framework to a large company insisting on acquisition before engaging with a smaller company.
Political opponents jumped on the statement, accusing Lai of implying that Taiwan's status was up for negotiation.
Of course, in a realist world, Taiwan's status has always been up for negotiation and every semantic utterance on the subject, every dollar spent or not spent on Taiwan's defense, every foreign dignitary Taiwan receives and every mainland ancestral village opposition KMT leadership visits are all part of one giant bargaining exercise.
And every Type 55 destroyer patrol of the Taiwan Strait, every PLA fighter flight through Taiwan's ADIZ, every irresponsible and unprofessional interception of Australian reconnaissance planes and every test flight of new PLAAF 6th-generation fighters are also part of the negotiation.
A deal will be made – one way or another. The trick for everyone involved is to make the deal without a shot fired.