America is arguably failing to comply with its own Taiwan Relations Act (TRA), enacted by Congress in 1979.
Many know that the TRA established a framework for unofficial US relations with Taiwan after the US ended its defense treaty with the Republic of China and switched formal diplomatic recognition from Taipei to Beijing. Many also (incorrectly) believe the TRA requires the US military to defend Taiwan if China attacks.
Perhaps less well-known are two other actual requirements. First, the TRA obligates the US to provide arms “necessary to enable Taiwan to maintain a sufficient self-defense capability.”
Second, the TRA requires “maintain[ing] 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.”
Superficially, the US checks both boxes. Washington sells arms to Taiwan and maintains significant combat power in the Asia-Pacific region. These actions by themselves, however, do not satisfy the law.
In fact, Washington is clearly not fulfilling the first requirement, and compliance with the second is increasingly in doubt.
At the time the TRA was written, ensuring that both Taiwan and the US could defeat a Chinese attack were reasonable goals. Through the 1980s and into the 1990s, China’s abilities to project power over the sea, coordinate joint operations by its different armed services and transport sufficient numbers of troops, equipment and supplies across the Taiwan Strait were minimal.
US forces could sink Chinese ships before the Chinese had a chance to target American platforms. Taiwan’s navy and air force had qualitative, if not numerical, advantages over their Chinese counterparts.
At the time of the Third Taiwan Strait Crisis in 1995-1996, when then-President Jiang Zemin asked his military advisors what options China had for responding, they reportedly told him China was incapable of effectively invading or blockading Taiwan or driving off nearby US Navy warships.
To maintain Taiwan’s security, the Republic of China armed forces needed only periodic top-ups with occasional shipments of US weapons systems, and the Americans needed only to maintain their ample margin of superiority.
The situation is much different today. China not only has quantitative advantages in major weapons systems, but its capabilities in military technology in many important areas are comparable or close to those of the US.
China’s military forces can strike US bases in Asia and the Pacific and target moving US warships far beyond the horizon with anti-ship missiles. With its world-leading defense industrial base, China can out-produce the US in ships, aircraft and missiles, giving Beijing a decisive advantage in any protracted conflict.
In the TRA’s requirement that America ensure Taiwan’s ability to defend itself, the key word is “sufficient,” as in “sufficient self-defense capability.” Different interpretations are possible, but any assertion that the US still fulfills this TRA requirement no longer passes the smell test.
Many experts estimate Taiwan could not hold out against a determined Chinese invasion attempt for more than a couple of months without US military intervention. Taiwan would also likely eventually succumb to a Chinese blockade without robust and sustained external military assistance. Taiwan is almost totally dependent on imports for its energy supply.
Chinese warships outnumber Taiwan’s opposite numbers by a factor of four, and Beijing has six times Taipei’s inventory of combat aircraft. Both gaps continue to widen. The US has provided no ships to Taiwan since two frigates in 2017-2018.
Since 2000, America has supplied Taiwan with 12 maritime patrol aircraft and is working to deliver 66 new F-16 fighters, but these have scarcely affected the massive imbalance.
A major threat to Taiwan’s security is China’s missile arsenal. There is no US plan to help Taiwan build a Golden Dome missile defense system. Against a possible onslaught of thousands of Chinese missiles of different types, the US has supplied a few hundred Patriot interceptors.
The US Department of Defense’s annual reports on Chinese military power began noting as early as 2004 that with “steady improvement in the PLA’s military capabilities, the cross-Strait balance of power is steadily shifting in China’s favor.” That steady shift has continued during the intervening 22 years.
While the US is helping to strengthen Taiwan’s defenses, there clearly is no serious effort by Washington to ensure that Taiwan has a sufficient capacity to defend itself against a Chinese attempt to seize control of the self-governing island.
US arms sales, already far from adequate, now face two additional obstacles. First, the US is struggling to deliver promised weapons systems because other conflicts are diverting already limited US stockpiles.
Acting US Secretary of the Navy Hung Cao announced on May 22 that weapons sales to Taiwan are on “pause in order to make sure we have the munitions we need for Epic Fury,” the ongoing US war against Iran.
Second, Trump said after his meeting with Chinese Communist Party General Secretary Xi Jinping earlier this month that he sees arms sales to Taiwan as a “very good negotiation chip” with China.
For weeks, observers have expected Trump to give the final okay for a relatively large US$14 billion US arms package for Taiwan already approved by Congress. Now Trump says, “I may do it. I may not do it.”
The TRA would allow the US to delay or cancel an arms sale if doing so would improve Taiwan’s ability to defend itself. This could be the case if Beijing agreed to take a less aggressive posture toward Taiwan as part of a bargain — for example, renouncing the use of force to compel unification.
If, however, the bargain was for the US to cancel an arms sale in exchange for a Chinese concession that benefitted the US (such as China buying a large amount of US products) but did not proportionately enhance Taiwan’s security, this would violate the TRA.
It is true that determining what Taiwan needs for its defense is not just a simple matter of comparing the order of battle on both sides of the Strait. The amount and quality of armaments the US provides for Taiwan are adjustable based on China’s intentions as well as its capabilities.
This principle is clear from the circumstances surrounding the US-China Joint Communique of 1982. In that statement, the US government said it “does not seek to carry out a long-term policy of arms sales to Taiwan” and “intends gradually to reduce its sale of arms to Taiwan, leading, over a period of time, to a final resolution.”
Focusing on those passages, the Chinese government has complained that every subsequent US arms sale to Taiwan is a violation of the 1982 Communique. But this misses the underlying principle.
In a memo commenting on the communique, US President Ronald Reagan said “any reduction of such arms sales depends upon peace in the Taiwan Strait. . . . US willingness to reduce its arms sales to Taiwan is conditioned absolutely upon the continued commitment of China to the peaceful solution of the Taiwan-PRC differences.”
In theory, the TRA could countenance Taiwan having military forces too small and weak to repel an attack by the larger and stronger PLA if there were no grounds for believing that China harbored any intent to attack.
No US senator, for example, would argue that the president must ensure that Taiwan can protect itself against a possible attack from Japan just because Japan is nearby and has strong armed forces.
But, of course, China does evince abundant intent to attack Taiwan, to the point where US Indo-Pacific Commander Admiral Samuel Paparo calls recent Chinese military exercises near Taiwan “rehearsals” for war. So this possible exemption from the TRA requirement does not apply.
As for the other TRA requirement, that the US itself “maintain the capacity to resist” a PRC attempt to conquer Taiwan, the key word is “resist.” The spirit of the TRA suggests the intended meaning is to successfully resist, not just get some forces into a fight, but to win the fight. The question, then, is whether the US has kept itself in a position to prevail in a cross-Strait war.
The net assessment of much expert opinion is that under current conditions, the US would probably succeed, but that outcome is uncertain, and US losses would almost certainly be very high. (Here are links to some representative studies.)
Furthermore, China would be able to rebuild its lost forces more quickly than the US would, positioning China to fare better in a second round of conflict.
In sum, the trend over the last few decades has seen the US move from presumed superiority in a potential regional war against China to uncertain, at best costly, and possibly pyrrhic victory. This doesn’t indicate fidelity to the TRA.
There are two possible ways the US might return to full compliance with the TRA. The first would be for Washington to focus its military resources on preparing for a Taiwan Strait scenario.
That appears infeasible at present, given the current administration’s forays into other places such as the Middle East and Venezuela, as well as continued expressions of interest in Cuba and Greenland that may have military implications.
Another path would be to vastly expand America’s defense manufacturing capacity. This would obviate the need to make Taiwan wait in line for weapons deliveries behind other US clients, and would also reduce US vulnerability to munition stockpile shortfalls vis-a-vis China.
Achieving this outcome, however, would require a massive, costly and coordinated effort over about a decade involving federal and local governments, key companies and higher education. As for how the US is doing so far, the proposed SHIPS for America Act, which aims to revitalize US shipbuilding capacity, is currently stalled in Congress.
Realistically, either of these major policy changes is less likely to occur than is a change in the circumstances of the US-China-Taiwan relationship that would render the TRA obsolete.
Most of the TRA remains useful, but parts of it have diverged from reality. The sections requiring the US to ensure that Taiwan can defend itself and that the US can defend Taiwan are now dead letters.
In a sense, the TRA has become the opposite of Japan’s “peace constitution.” In that case, the Japanese government has found ways to pursue a more robust security policy than allowed by a literal reading of Article 9. With the TRA, on the other hand, the US government is implementing a less robust policy than the law requires.
Denny Roy is a senior fellow at the East-West Center in Honolulu.
