US President Donald Trump is bringing significant changes to US foreign policy, with governments around the world, allies and foes alike, scrambling to adjust. This is no less the case for firm friends of the US such as Taiwan.
Trump is shifting the US’ relationship with its allies to one in which self-interest and mutual backscratching play a larger role, rather than relations built solely on shared values. This is not such a bad thing. While shared values are an important component of any international relationship, they have never been and never will be decisive.
Taiwan must learn to adapt and shape its foreign policy accordingly to safeguard its interests in a more competitive world. It has already made great strides in this adjustment. President William Lai (賴清德) has announced that he would introduce a special budget to lift defense spending to more than 3 percent of GDP (original spending had been earmarked at about 2.45 percent). This would not only meet US expectations to boost defense spending, but would also help reduce Taiwan’s trade deficit with the US. Some reports have said the nation expects to purchase at least US$7 billion of US arms.
Not only would the Trump administration see this as a win, but it would also improve Taiwan’s national security and regional stability by bolstering deterrence.
However, in other areas, the government has been slow to react. In meeting Trump’s threats to impose tariffs on chips, rather than discussing how Taiwan’s high-tech manufacturing could help to revive US manufacturing, Lai has touted “semiconductor supply chain partnerships for global democracies.”
As Ryan Hass, director of the Brookings Institution’s John L. Thornton China Center, wrote on X on Friday last week, such rhetoric “does more to expose divergence between Washington and Taipei than it does to signal solidarity.”
Elsewhere, Minister of Foreign Affairs Lin Chia-lung (林佳龍) has talked of “integrated diplomacy” built on democratic values. While this rhetoric worked before Trump’s second term, it might be less effective now.
As Hass wrote in the Taipei Times (“Ryan Hass On Taiwan: What does Trump want from Taiwan?” Feb. 17, page 8), the US president does not care for ideology or political systems, but prioritizes reindustrializing the US, reducing immigration and deterring wars.
“If Taiwan’s leaders are looking for ways to build inroads with Trump and his advisers, they could find fertile ground by highlighting Taiwan’s current and future contributions to America’s industrial expansion, its commitment to its own defense and its responsible management of cross-strait tensions,” Hass wrote.
Given Taiwan’s importance in high-tech manufacturing, which is crucial to reviving US jobs and industry, and its location in the first island chain — a friendly Taiwan helps the US project power, is crucial for the US to defend the likes of Japan and the Philippines, and counterbalances China’s ambitions — the nation has a firm foundation to build even stronger ties with Washington on the basis of mutual self-interests.
Taiwan is a proud liberal democracy facing threats from a far larger neighbor that seeks to undermine its values, freedoms and democracy, which Taiwanese have fought hard for. Taiwanese identify with their democracy, and that is reflected in the nation’s diplomacy. It also has democratic partners in Asia and Europe with the same values binding those ties.
So while it would not be easy for Taiwan’s leaders to shun talking about values altogether, in a new geopolitically self-interested era, national leaders must adapt and find a new balance between values and interests in the nation’s rhetoric and policies.
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