On the 12th of January 1950, US Secretary of State Dean Atchison arrived at the National

Press Club in Washington, D.C. to give a speech that became notorious. Atchison set out

a defensive perimeter for the US in the Pacific, a line on the map which put career beyond

US influence. A new day has dawned in Asia, Atchison claimed, in which the Asian peoples

are on their own and know it. In future, Atchison declared, America would only help where

conditions of help are really sensible and possible. In June that year, North Korean forces

crossed the 38th parallel, and Atchison was accused, perhaps unfairly, of having encouraged

Kim Il Sung and Stalin to believe they could act with impunity. Perhaps the real lesson

from this is that what countries plan to do in the event of a crisis is often very different

to what they actually do when that crisis hits. The US did go to war to defend South Korea,

but would it fight for Taiwan now? This is Chex and Balance.

I'm John Prado, the economist's US editor, and each week we discuss one big theme shaping

American politics and explore it in depth. Today, would America go to war over Taiwan?

Taiwan is arguably America's defining foreign policy challenge. The islands at the center

of America's competition with China, both economic and ideological, America's carefully

calibrated ambiguity over whether it would defend Taiwan, which it's maintained since

it opened relations with China in 1979, is getting harder to sustain as Chinese power grows.

We'll ask whether a Chinese attack on Taiwan is likely, consider the new school of restraint

influencing Washington's hawks and doves, and look back at the origins of the strategic

ambiguity that has informed America's Taiwan policy for the past 40 years.

With me as ever to make sense of all of this, our Charlotte Howard, the economist's New York

Bureau Chief, and John Fasman, the US digital editor. Charlotte, how are you doing? What's going on

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