President Trump’s two greatest achievements in foreign policy have both included deviating from outdated paradigms that had enraptured bipartisan neoliberal elites for decades: unprecedented Arab-Israeli rapprochement in the Middle East and an assertive China containment strategy in Asia. -Pacific.
On the first front, Trump boldly deviated from the misguided “inside-out” approach to conflict resolution, which brought the need for Israeli capitulation to the fore to Palestinian Arab intransigence; on the last front, Trump became the first president since Richard Nixon on his famous trip to China in 1972 to openly question our relationship with that emerging, hegemonic communist regime.
The main difference is that as Trump prepares to ride into the sunset, the latter’s progress is likely to be at greater risk of an immediate reversal following the inauguration of his Democratic successor.
The physical move of the U.S. Embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, one of the Trump administration’s numerous expressions of loyal friendship with the Jewish state, is unlikely to be reversed. Nor would a sane politician try to ignore the Abraham Accords, the series of historic peace accords between Israel and Muslim nations that the government helped negotiate.
But belligerent China-skeptical rhetoric, hard opposition to Huawei’s emerging 5G telecommunications network, and tough tariffs on Chinese imports are the kinds of moves an old Chinese pigeon like Joe Biden could all too easily reverse.
Above all, to aid his successor and ensure the continuity of our long-awaited recalibration with our foremost geopolitical threat of the 21st century, there is, above all, one farewell action that would keep the Chinese Communist Party or the CCP in the bud. and sent back to America’s essential benefit.
Trump should formally recognize Taiwan (aka the Republic of China) as an independent state, separate from the Beijing-based regime – and he should, with all the diplomatic attributes that such formal recognition entails, post-haste.
There are few territorial disputes over which the CCP holds more than its insistence that both mainland China and Taiwan are part of a single, unified Chinese state – with the Beijing-based People’s Republic of China, or the PRC, as the sole legitimate representative of that state. state. It has also been de facto, if not completely official, US policy since Jimmy Carter’s administration.
As with most of the Carter-era foreign policy initiatives, which are remnants of a Cold War capitulating stance, this position is misguided and counterproductive: it is high time for the US to adopt the ‘one China policy ‘to formally reject and open an embassy in Taipei.
The one China policy was based on the belief that through reconciliation and economic liberalization, the People’s Republic of China could become less authoritarian and ultimately better ‘integrated’ into the much-discussed ‘liberal world order’.
Whatever merit such an idea might have as theoretical reverie has now been definitively refuted by history. The PRC under CCP Secretary General Xi Jinping is a predatory hegemony that commits genocide against unwanted minorities, exploits a nonpareil system of Orwellian state surveillance, steals intellectual property, commits predatory trade practices and unleashes deadly pandemics around the world.
Worse, that same critically acclaimed post-1972 economic liberalization has made both Americans complicit in the CCP’s crimes against humanity – think Disney filming her recent ‘Mulan’ movie partially in Xinjiang, where a genuine genocide against Uyghur Muslims is set in motion – and has contributed to the erosion of our industrial base, the loss of massive worker jobs, and the concomitant increase in drug overdoses in the interior of America.
Trump had both the instinct and the courage to change course. He can help consolidate those achievements by ending the one China policy, transforming the de facto embassy, the American Institute in Taiwan, into an official embassy and formalizing all relevant diplomatic channels to the Taiwanese government.
Taiwan is everything the PRC is not: it is a free market-oriented, pro-Western bastion that, with proper Western fortification, would do wonders to keep the People’s Liberation Army at bay due to its strategic position.
It would meaningfully deter Jinping’s impending “ wolf fighter diplomacy ” and help anchor a comprehensive containment strategy for China that would spread from South Korea and Japan through the Philippines and all the way to Australia. And like Trump’s move of the US embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, a formal baptism of a US embassy in Taipei is an action that is difficult to undo politically.
Earlier this week, John Fund of National Review reported that many US officials have urged Trump to officially recognize Taiwan. It would be a fitting conclusion to its first presidency in half a century to recognize the PRC as the nemesis it is.