This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Monday, November 20th,

2023. I'm Caleb Brown. Taiwan has a security problem with respect to

mainland China. The US has delivered promises to Taiwan, but it's not

totally clear what those promises mean if and when China decides to take over the island country.

Cato's Eric Gomez argues it's time for Taiwan to beef up its own defenses,

and U.S. policy can play an important role.

We spoke last week.

For the benefit of listeners who do not very closely follow the relationship between or among

China, Taiwan, and the United States, what has been the U.S. posture with respect to Taiwan over the course of the last several decades?

In 1979, the United States finished this shift in recognition from Taiwan to China.

And as part of that, we did three communiques with the Chinese. We did the Taiwan Relations Act, which governs our relationship with Taiwan.

And Reagan in the early 80s issued these six assurances to Taiwan about US support continuing

despite closer US-China relations. Those three things form the basis of America's one China policy, which basically says that we

acknowledge China's position that there's only one China, but we don't fully accept that Taiwan

belongs to China either. Sort of like a I understand why you say that, but, you know, and I'll acknowledge that you said that, but I'm not going to fully agree with it.

So we do this thing called Strategic Ambiguity where we say, all right, you know, we don't want anyone to use violence in the Taiwan straight.

We don't want China to invade Taiwan. We don't want Taiwan to declare independence and force China to invade it.

And we've sort of been walking that tight rope since 1979.

So let me make a pitch against strategic ambiguity and you tell me where you think that this

idea is wrong and that is the United States makes certain assurances not totally clear. They're not certainly not formalized into some sort of defense pact with Taiwan, but the United States has made gestures toward Taiwan indicating that the United

States will have their back in some sense should most notably China make less than welcome entrees into Taiwan.

Now to the extent that the United States genuinely and I think appropriately wants to do everything it can to avoid a war with China, certainly a war with China across an ocean.

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