Thu, Apr 23, 2026 page8

• As with Hormuz, so with Taiwan

  • By Joseph Bosco
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  At 10am on Monday last week, US President Donald Trump announced that the US Central Command would immediately begin imposing a naval blockade on all ships leaving or entering Iranian ports, or that have paid a toll to Iran, physically boarding them if necessary. The stoppage does not apply to vessels transiting the Strait of Hormuz to or from non-Iranian ports, but it does bring greater scrutiny to shipping that has been sanctioned for supporting Iran and to shadow fleets operating to evade sanctions for carrying Iranian oil. No ships transited to or from Iranian ports in the first days after the US blockade was announced, indicating the threat of US naval power was enough to deter Tehran for a time as the US blockade essentially superseded and overwhelmed Iran’s.

  Iran’s blockade was also only partial, blocking vessels from other countries while selectively allowing passage for those transporting Iranian oil and goods, such as ships heading to Chinese destinations. While there are important differences between the Middle East and the Indo-Pacific region, a blockade is a blockade and Trump should inform Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) when they meet next month that he can and would do the same thing in the Taiwan Strait if China attempts to blockade Taiwan.

  The most important difference between the two situations is that China’s People’s Liberation Army is a far more powerful adversary than Iran’s non-nuclear military ever was, even before it was hammered by US and Israeli attacks. A second difference, which at one level can work to the US’ advantage, is the relative width of the two straits. The body of water separating Iran and the Arabian Peninsula is only 33.8km wide, which means that, even with only a few ships on each side confronting each other in the relatively confined space, the likelihood of contact — and conflict — would be dangerously high.

  The Taiwan Strait, by contrast, is about 160km wide at its narrowest point, providing much greater space for naval maneuvering, avoidance of kinetic escalation and opportunity for negotiation to avoid direct conflict.

  That scenario works to the West’s advantage only if US and allied navies establish a more durable presence off Taiwan before China preempts that possibility with a new “status quo” that would require aggressive US or Western action to disrupt after China has hardened its maritime dominance. Western navies need to preemptively establish a more commanding presence than they presently enjoy with their sporadic Freedom of Navigation Operations (FON) by cruisers and smaller combatants such as frigates and destroyers. Unfortunately, no US or allied aircraft carrier has entered the Strait since 2007 and only one other has done so since 1979 when then-US president Jimmy Carter terminated the Mutual Defense Treaty with the Republic of China. Yet, like the Strait of Hormuz, the Taiwan Strait is an international waterway open to passage by commercial and military traffic of all nations despite China’s incessant efforts to treat it as a Chinese lake and to intimidate others to accept it as such. As the West’s FON program demonstrates, Beijing’s strategy has been partially successful in denying access to the Strait by carrier battle groups even though Chinese carriers routinely pass through the Strait. Regularizing Western transits before cross-strait conflict breaks out would reinforce its international status and could prevent the worst from happening.

  With the relative success of the US blockade and overall operations against Iran — except for the critical failure to achieve genuine regime change — and the upcoming summit in Beijing that Xi wants at least as much as Trump does, this is an optimum time for Trump to lay down a strategic marker regarding Taiwan. He should scrap the US policy of deliberate strategic ambiguity on defending Taiwan against a Chinese attack or blockade — as former US president Joe Biden tried to do several times, only to have his words walked back by his administration. Sustainability of any US intervention in a Taiwan contingency is critical — deterrence would be defanged if Beijing sees it as a one-and-done deal or a symbolic scare tactic and would be strongly tempted to call its bluff. Of such strategic miscalculations, major wars have ensued. Beijing has to understand that the US is at least as committed to protecting democratic Taiwan and its strategic importance as China is bent on crushing it, so escalation would not serve its interests.

  Beijing must be convinced that war against Taiwan would automatically mean war with the US. More than that, the US needs to make clear that it is reversing the oft-repeated Chinese mantra that independence means war: instead, war would mean US recognition of Taiwanese independence. Trump’s unpredictability might inject some much-needed caution into our adversaries’ deliberations — as long as he stays the course he has put us on in Iran and gets on the right course with Ukraine.

  Joseph Bosco served as China country director for the US secretary of defense from 2005 to 2006, and as Asia-Pacific director of humanitarian assistance and disaster relief from 2009 to 2010.
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