EXPERT INTERVIEW – Almost from the day Russia launched its full-scale war against Ukraine, more than three years ago, officials in China and Taiwan – and experts around the world – have watched the conflict for lessons about modern warfare, and for a sense of how the U.S. would support a smaller democratic nation against a major-power aggressor. For Taiwan, a democratic entity threatened by China, there were obvious parallels in play. And now, in the wake of the Trump Administration’s pivot to Russia and halt to U.S. aid for Ukraine, there are fresh concerns in Taipei about the depth of the American commitment.
This week Taiwanese Defense Minister Wellington Koo said that the U.S. cannot “retreat” from the Indo-Pacific, as the region is part of its "core national interests." He made no mention of the U.S. shift away from Ukraine, but stressed that the longstanding U.S.-Taiwan relationship is based on "deterrence and strength to achieve peace."
The situations are different in many ways – not least the fact that Taiwan is an island in Southeast Asia, and Ukraine a large nation in Europe. But in both cases a larger authoritarian power has made claims against the smaller democratic one, and in both cases, U.S. support is a critical issue. After the Russian invasion in February 2022, the U.S. led a Western effort to support Ukraine; and under the 1979 Taiwan Relations Act, the U.S. is obliged to help Taiwan defend itself – but there is no stipulation that the U.S. must intervene militarily in the event of a Chinese invasion or blockade.
Donald Trump – as president and as a presidential candidate – has said that both Ukraine and Taiwan should lessen their dependence on the U.S.; he has called on Taiwan to build up its defenses, and demanded that Europe be responsible for the defense of Ukraine. The latter position came into sharp relief this week, when the Trump administration froze U.S. military aid to Ukraine.
Few Americans understand the strategic questions surrounding China and Taiwan better than Cipher Brief expert Rear Admiral Mike Studeman, a former Commander of the Office of Naval Intelligence who has traveled often to Taiwan and other parts of the Indo-Pacific region. He spoke this week to Cipher Brief Managing Editor Tom Nagorski about the news from the U.S. and Ukraine, and how it may impact the dynamic between China and Taiwan.
Rear Adm. Studeman said that officials in Taiwan believe the alliance structure in Asia is stronger than its counterpart in Europe, and therefore “they feel like they're in a pretty good position right now.” But he also said that if the Trump Administration is moving closer to Russia as a way to break the close relationship between Moscow and Beijing, it is misguided. “The idea that you're going to wedge between them here is very far-fetched,” he said.
Their conversation has been edited for length and clarity. You can also watch the interview on our YouTube channel.
The Cipher Brief: We had planned this conversation before the debacle at the White House the other day, between presidents Trump and Zelensky. How do you think that may have been received in Taipei?
RADM Studeman: I think there's a generic concern about the unpredictability of U.S. foreign policy. To this day, it's not clear exactly how President Trump will treat Taiwan and others in the Indo-Pacific, even as they talk about focusing more of their efforts there, maybe stabilizing Europe, having that be a place where Europe takes care of itself, freeing up the United States to take care of some other issues that are in the Far East. There is a sense that if President Trump was willing to go over President Zelensky's head to go directly to Putin, then why wouldn't he potentially do the same with Xi Jinping and cut out [Taiwanese] President Lai [Ching-Te] in some sort of future deal?
But all in all, despite those generic fears, which I think reflect the uncertainty of how to interpret where Washington is going, Taiwan thinkers and officials believe that is mainly a good turn for Taiwan, taking a look at the aggregate situation. The U.S. may need to do more in the Indo-Pacific, that's where a lot of its focus and emphasis needs to be, and the alliance system – to them – looks like it will be supported in Asia. The Taiwanese looked at [Japanese] Prime Minister [Shigeru] Ishiba and Trump's joint statement, where Taiwan was listed as a security concern, which requires both of the nations to work together. That was a good thing in Taiwan's eyes. They also looked at the Taiwan Fact Sheet that the State Department sent out where they had taken out the line, “We do not support Taiwan independence.”
And there are other things that the President of Taiwan is putting into play now that address what appear to be the core concerns that President Trump has with Taiwan. Taiwan has been investing in the U.S. like gangbusters — 40% of their overseas outbound investment goes to the United States, for 2023 and 2024. The U.S. is the biggest destination for Taiwan investment. They've already invested in Arizona, they've had some chip-making there. And President Lai intends to work some additional investments and deals, maybe investing a little bit in the U.S. company Intel to give it more legs and to help President Trump re-industrialize. And they're talking about LNG, maybe buying more agricultural products and things like that.
At the same time, President Lai has reassured that he is going to submit a budget proposal to try to get Taiwan's percentage of GDP spent on defense from 2.6 to 3 percent, and is appearing to address some of the main concerns that this new [U.S.] administration has.
So I think Taiwan believes that they're reading the issues accurately, that they're OK. They have some general concerns based on unpredictability, but by and large, I think they feel like they're in a pretty good position right now.
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The Cipher Brief: If you're sitting in Taiwan, I would imagine you also think of parallels with Ukraine – a small democratic entity next to a large, powerful authoritarian adversary. In the case of Russia, we had assumed that it was an adversary of the United States. Given President Trump's transactional approach to so much of this, if he wants to make a deal with Xi Jinping on any number of fronts, why wouldn’t he do with Taiwan what he’s doing with Ukraine?
RADM Studeman: The [Trump Administration] says that the European issue is idiosyncratic to Europe, that transactionally working deals there with Russia are designed in their core —whether or not they're well thought through or not, I don't think that they are —so that you can peel off Russia from China. But they think that anything that actually tries to wedge between Russia and China is a good thing for Taiwan.
Even as we might put pressure on Europe, even to the point of shattering the alliance, the Taiwanese believe that it's all designed to be able to lift and shift over into the Indo-Pacific, which then benefits them. So they see that the whole global policymaking is trying to re-engineer the focus on dealing with China, its main concern.
I think that the instability and the likelihood that maybe something could crack left or right on them without notice, that's a general fear in Taiwan. But so much evidence exists for them that in fact, they may be a net beneficiary in all of this. If we pressurize China more; if we are buying more military hardware, maybe having it forward deploy; if we are working with the Taiwan defense establishment to be able to make them more resistant to Chinese coercion and aggression; if we're strengthening what we do with Japan, with the Philippines, Australia, India, and the like, they see that that's actually a net good thing for them. And I don't think they think that right now there's a deal that's going to sacrifice Taiwan in the making.
They understand that Mike Waltz, as national security advisor, is very astute about these things, and has a lot of good experience on the matter. Ivan Kanapathy, who's the senior director for the Indo-Pacific [at the National Security Council], has spent time in Taiwan at AIT, the American Institute in Taipei.
The Cipher Brief: Vice President JD Vance had said on more than one occasion that part of his argument against robust U.S. support for Ukraine was that America's attention should be on the Far East and to China. He wasn't the only one who said that. On the other hand, Mr. Trump himself made a series of comments that Taiwan wasn't doing enough to build up its own defenses. Again, it sounded kind of like a Europe-Ukraine point. What is your read in terms of the approach that the president himself has vis-a-vis Taiwan?
RADM Studeman: I think his standard practice is to bargain high, and throw threats that scare to the core and cause people to rethink what could be if they don't cooperate to a certain level. I think that opening move, which may come off as very raw and coarse and upsetting, has a device associated with it, which is to set conditions for maybe rethinking the status quo. I think it does cause damage, in serious ways. At the same time, the unmooring that occurs allows for some things to be renegotiated. I think that ploy was used with Taiwan, as it has been with others, and the Taiwanese are responding. They're saying, OK, we got it. We're going to increase defense spending. We're going to do an emergency supplemental here. We know we have issues with the Legislative Yuan because they froze or cut some amount of the defense budget, but there are contingencies that allow them to go back and allow that to be unfrozen and potentially uncut.
We need to recognize that the domestic politics in each of these countries really matters. You can't just drive them to 5 or 10 % of GDP — we [in the U.S.] can't even get there that fast. I think so long as some of the demands don't become so arbitrary that they break some of these countries, but do reset where they are, that you can get to a new modus vivendi. But Taiwan is clearly playing. They are cooperating. They're doing the investments. They understand how to meet some of the goals of this new administration. That includes working on the trade deficit and doing more investments in the United States, plus many other things that they've asked for.
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The Cipher Brief: What you just said about defense spending – that they're getting the message and now they're going to do more – you could have substituted Europe for Taiwan in that sentence, right? It sounds similar.
RADM Studeman: Yes. The issue is, if you're dealing with the China problem, it's a global problem. It's not a Taiwan Strait fight. It's not that you defend Taiwan against an invasion, and if you do that, you're good. Or even having China cooperate on trying to strangle fentanyl exports to Mexico and the United States. If you only narrowly scope yourself to that, then you will never deal with the China problem the way it's showing up in every sector. It's about global influence at the end of the day.
The Chinese want to displace the U.S. as the leader of the world system. Right now, they take a look at what Washington's doing and they see opportunity. They'll talk about it this week at the National People's Congress, and they have a Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference along with that. So the next two weeks, they're going to be thinking about what they're seeing. But they can't see the changes with anything more than delight at this stage. They've already prepared counter sanctions to be able to go tit for tat and exact more pain on the U.S. than the U.S. can exact on them. They're willing to keep the rhetoric a little bit down so they can still have some negotiating room with the new Trump team. At the same time, they love the fact that the Americans themselves are going to dismantle major elements of the international order in the alliance system. That's been their objective throughout. They say alliances or bloc thinking interfere with their direction to try to have a common destiny for humankind. And a more stable Beijing becomes a more attractive government to deal with, than a very volatile regime in Washington that appears to rake people over the coals. And so they see opportunity in this.
The fact that we cut off our soft power with the cutting of USAID, that's an own goal of epic proportions. And the Chinese, already globally deployed with their capabilities, can step in even more into those vacuums to earn the hearts and minds of a majority of the globe in a way that I think we're underestimating.
The Cipher Brief: There has been some rumbling that the U.S. pivot to Russia is in part a counterweight to China, or a way to cleave the Russia-China partnership. Is that a strategic explanation, do you think, for anything that's going on?
RADM Studeman: I don't think it's well thought through. I think they need an azimuth and a velocity check right now. The fact of the matter is, if you take a look at that reverse-Kissinger effect, [in the 1970s] the Chinese were in a state of hostilities with the Soviet Union, which allowed for an opening. It was the predicate to be able to actually get China to come and work with the United States. It's because they had border wars, they had ideological differences globally, between Mao and Stalin and others. Those conditions do not exist now. China was there to provide a lifeline to Russia, to enable its ability to carry out the campaign in Ukraine and withstand global pressure. The idea that you're going to wedge between them here is very far-fetched.
The issue is that both of those countries have a historic aim. The aim is to see the reduction of U.S. power and to be able to reconstruct the international system in a way, revise it in critical ways that allow room for authoritarian governments to have their own spheres of influence and then some with regard to the international order. I don't see that Putin is going to change this long-standing aim where the distrust of the United States is so high. I think they'll play this administration and they'll look cooperative. You're already seeing that with mineral cooperation, things like this.
But if you're on the Xi Jinping side or you're on the Putin side of it, looking back at the United States, you can't ever trust one administration to actually set policy for more than four years. They know this. They've seen the whiplashing going back and forth and they know there's a strong cadre of people who are the traditional internationalists who rightly suspect what Russia is doing in the world and look askance at any acts of aggression and coercion in Europe and say this needs to be stopped because if you cooperate with it, it will continue. And if it's coming at the sacrifice of the NATO alliance, then that makes most sense. If your gambit is unlikely to succeed and you're actually forfeiting your strongest cards with the U.S. alliance system, and in particular NATO, you're automatically starting to become more isolated and unable to protect yourself in a way that you're going to need to. So I think this gambit was not thought through, and they need to listen to people who are actually more expert on these issues.
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