Long-Lasting Strength

FORUM STAFF | photos by the associated press

The message from United States Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin in mid-November 2023 reaffirmed Washington’s commitment to Taiwan and to the federal law that has been the bedrock of U.S. relations with the self-governed island for more than four decades.

“With the Taiwan Relations Act [TRA], we are committed to doing what’s necessary to help Taiwan acquire the means to defend itself,” Austin said during the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) Defence Ministers’ Meeting Plus in Jakarta, Indonesia.

The TRA marked its 45th anniversary April 10, 2024. The U.S. Congress approved the act and then-President Jimmy Carter signed it in 1979 after Washington said it would formalize diplomatic relations with the People’s Republic of China (PRC). The TRA authorized economic and unofficial diplomatic relations between the U.S. and Taiwan and said that aggression and economic sanctions against Taiwan would be viewed as a threat to peace in the Indo-Pacific and a “grave concern to the United States.”

The law offered reassurance to Taiwan and is intended to deter the PRC from invading the island that Beijing claims as its territory and threatens to annex. It specified the U.S. will make available “defense articles and defense services” in necessary quantities for Taiwan to “maintain a self-sufficient capability.”

That commitment was evident with Congress’ 2022 approval of the Taiwan Enhanced Resilience Act, which authorized spending up to $2 billion annually through 2027 to aid Taiwan’s defense. U.S. military assistance to Taiwan focuses on helping the island build its self-defense capacity. In 2023, U.S. Congressional notification of military aid for Taiwan included:

• $619 million for F-16 fighter aircraft munitions and equipment.
• $500 million for F-16 infrared search and track systems.
• $332.2 million for ammunition and equipment. 
• $300 million for military command, control, communications and computer equipment.
• $108 million for logistical support and related equipment. 

Cybersecurity

In late 2023, Congress approved the National Defense Authorization Act for 2024 which includes provisions to assist Taiwan’s cybersecurity capabilities. It authorized the U.S. Defense Department to conduct cybersecurity training with Taiwan; defend the island’s military networks, infrastructure and systems; and help eradicate malicious cyber activity targeting Taiwan. The measure “helps arm Taiwan to the teeth in the cyber domain,” then-U.S. Rep. Michael Gallagher said in an April 2023 news release. Gallagher was chair of the U.S. House of Representatives’ Select Committee on Strategic Competition Between the U.S. and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and chair of the House Armed Services Subcommittee on Cyber, Information Technologies and Innovation.

The TRA gave Congress increased responsibility for reviewing U.S. relations with Taiwan, and lawmakers are central in ensuring defense procurements designed to assure stability in the Taiwan Strait, noted Kent E. Calder, director of the Edwin O. Reischauer Center for East Asian Studies at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies. “Given the responsibilities of Congress with respect to cross-Strait relations, it is not surprising that the Taiwan Caucus, which provides political support to Taiwan, has become the largest in the U.S. Congress,” Calder wrote in a December 2023 commentary published by Kyodo News, a Japanese news agency.

The U.S. has a “robust unofficial relationship” with Taiwan, according to the U.S. State Department. “In some ways, [the U.S.-Taiwan relationship] is better than it’s ever been,” Richard C. Bush, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and former head of the American Institute in Taiwan (AIT), the the entity responsible for implementing U.S. policy toward Taiwan, said in March 2023.

“The U.S.-Taiwan partnership is the strongest it has been since 1979,”  Derek Grossman, a senior defense analyst at the Rand Corp., wrote in December 2023. 

The U.S.’s “One China” policy is grounded in maintaining peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait, an international waterway key to global commerce. The policy also upholds the status quo by opposing unilateral changes by Beijing or Taipei. The policy recognizes Beijing as PRC’s “sole legal government” but takes no position on Taiwan’s status. “It’s really remarkable, looking back so many decades later, how it has stood the test of time,” Bonnie Glaser, managing director of the German Marshall Fund’s Indo-Pacific Program, said during a June 2023 forum hosted by the Asia Society, a Washington, D.C., think tank.

Bush, meanwhile, has described the TRA as “admirably flexible.” That was by design, according to one of the architects of the legislation. “You have an act that has survived for more than 40 years because of its ambiguity,” Lester Wolff, who served 16 years in Congress, told the Global Taiwan Institute, a Washington, D.C., think tank, in January 2021. That purposeful ambiguity, he said, allowed the TRA to gain approval among hard-liners supporting Taiwan and from others who didn’t want to damage the U.S. relationship being built with the PRC. The bill passed overwhelmingly.

Strategic Ambiguity

Specifically, the TRA seeks “to help maintain peace, security, and stability in the Western Pacific and to promote the foreign policy of the United States by authorizing the continuation of commercial, cultural, and other relations between the people of the United States and the people on Taiwan.” It is designed “to make clear that the United States decision to establish diplomatic relations with the People’s Republic of China rests upon the expectation that the future of Taiwan will be determined by peaceful means.”

Also, the TRA states the U.S. will provide Taiwan “with arms of a defensive character” and “maintain the capacity of the United States to resist any resort to force or other forms of coercion that would jeopardize the security, or the social or economic system, of the people on Taiwan.”  

Though the U.S. provides military aid, it adheres to a policy of so-called strategic ambiguity as to whether it would intervene militarily if Beijing invaded the island. The policy not only strives to deter the CCP from invading but also to keep Taiwan from officially declaring independence, analysts explained. 

Glaser noted the inclusion of “coercion” as a key component. “It’s remarkable that the drafters really anticipated the PRC coercion would become so central to Beijing’s policy toward Taiwan in the decades later,” she said.

 PRC’s coercion takes the form of gray-zone tactics — military and economic bullying to intimidate Taiwan — such as deploying People’s Liberation Army fighter planes near the island, firing ballistic missiles over Taiwan, staging major live-fire exercises near the island, and banning imports of produce and seafood.

 According to Bush, PRC leaders understand an invasion of Taiwan likely would lead to U.S. military intervention. “That is why they engage in coercion —  an intermediate option that is lower risk but still has a chance of success in the long term,” Bush said during a March 2023 forum in Taipei hosted by the Center for Asia-Pacific Resilience and Innovation.

The partnership between the U.S. and Taiwan began decades before the TRA. Beijing has threatened to annex Taiwan by force since 1949, the year the island became home to the Chinese nationalist government after its civil war defeat. The U.S. formalized protections for Taiwan in 1955 with the Sino-American Mutual Defense Treaty and an ensuing joint resolution of Congress that said the U.S. could employ its Armed Forces to protect Taiwan from armed attack by the CCP. In the following decades, the U.S. used diplomacy, legislation and military aid to assure peaceful resolution and regional security. The mutual defense treaty, which President Carter terminated January 1, 1980, after the TRA was enacted, effectively protected Taiwan from a potential CCP invasion through 1979.

Rock-solid Commitment

The TRA established the AIT to conduct Washington’s relations with Taiwan. Likewise, Taiwan maintains the Taipei Economic and Cultural Representative Office in Washington.

In recent years, the U.S.-Taiwan partnership “has substantially broadened and deepened under the Taiwan Relations Act — notably in our economic, security, and people-to-people relations, as well as in our cooperation to expand Taiwan’s role in the international community,” Laura Rosenberger, chairperson of the AIT, said in a November 2023 speech in Washington, D.C., a month after she met with Taiwan’s then president, Tsai Ing-wen. 

The TRA specifies that Taiwan be treated as other international entities by the U.S. agency now known as the International Development Finance Corp., which provides financing and insurance solutions for U.S. investors, lenders, contractors and others investing in developing areas.

Today, a prosperous Taiwan is hailed as the world’s leading semiconductor manufacturing hub. U.S. foreign direct investment in Taiwan exceeded $30 billion as of early 2023, said Rosenberger, noting that chip company Micron, the largest U.S. investor in Taiwan, has more than 10,000 employees on the island. U.S. direct investment is led by manufacturing, finance and insurance, and wholesale trade, according to the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative. As of November 2023, 18 U.S. states had opened or were planning to open trade representative offices in Taipei. In 2022, U.S. goods and services traded with Taiwan reached an estimated $160 billion. Taiwan is a top 10 trading partner with the U.S. and the U.S. is Taiwan’s second-largest trading partner.

“For more than four decades, this framework has supported the growth of Taiwan as a beacon of democracy in the Indo-Pacific, a thriving economy, and a technological powerhouse. And, of course, our ‘One China’ policy has also helped maintain peace and stability across the Strait,” Rosenberger said. “The United States and Taiwan share a deep and abiding interest in maintaining this peace and stability. … The U.S. commitment to Taiwan is rock-solid, principled and bipartisan. The United States stands with our friends, and we will continue to do so.”