How Long Will the U.S. Have Taiwan's Back Against China?

As Taiwan's voters decide how strong a stand it will take in relations with China at this weekend's presidential election, a bigger question looms for the island and the world: How long can it count on America in the event of an attack?

With U.S. military capabilities stretched by support for wars in Ukraine and the Middle East, American voices are growing ever louder in pushing back against the spending and complications involved. And China, with its constant threat to invade Taiwan—if not imminently—is a much more powerful authoritarian adversary than Russia on the European front in Ukraine, or Iran with its support for Hamas, Hezbollah and the Houthis opposing Israel in the Middle East.

All of that adds to jitters in Taiwan, which the People's Republic of China considers to be part of its historical territory, even though it has never come under Beijing's rule since the Communist takeover of the mainland in 1949.

"If the United States abandons it or chooses another path, it is not only about Taiwan. It is about all global order," Frederick Tsiam, a policy analyst at Taiwan's Institute for Defense and Security Research, told Newsweek. "Taiwan is not only fighting for itself. It is fighting for the United States' security."

Questions are being asked about both Washington's will and its capability. Not only right now, but also how that might change after the U.S. presidential election in November, in which leading Republican candidate and former President Donald Trump is the standard bearer for a more isolationist stance that is increasingly popular in America.

Despite not having a formal defense treaty, the United States provides defensive equipment to Taipei under the Taiwan Relations Act and has made clear its commitment to the island's defense—a policy that has long had support from both Democrats and Republicans in Congress.

But increasing challenges from some Republicans to the funding of Ukraine's deadlocked war against the Russian invasion and a drop in U.S. popular support have shown that nothing can be taken for granted. And as Israel wages war on Hamas following the October 7 attack, the Biden administration has been coming under growing political pressure for its strong backing as the Palestinian death toll in Gaza soars.

A bill to provide funding for Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan stalled in the Senate late last year amid wrangling over funding for U.S. border security.

"Taiwan is still a bipartisan issue in Congress, but the delays in approving more funding to support Ukraine and the fights within Congress over supporting Israel, I think, also create some new uncertainty about the U.S.'s willingness to sustain a commitment to Taiwan over the long term," Kharis Templeman, a research fellow with the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, told Newsweek.

Strategic Value

Taiwan's strategic significance is very different to that of Ukraine and Israel. It sits on major shipping routes not only for China, but also for Japan and South Korea. Gaining control could allow China's navy to operate more freely in the Pacific Ocean, if not dominate it, military analysts say.

U.S. trade with Taiwan was more than three times that with Israel in 2022 and more than 50 times that with Ukraine. As the center of the global microchip industry, Taiwan and its factories are vital for U.S. defense as well as its industry.

Taiwan uses the same argument as Ukraine and Israel that the defense of democracy anywhere is the defense of democracy everywhere. But what happens comes down to America's democracy, which faces its own test again this year.

"Once a slam dunk in the U.S. Congress, aid for Ukraine has now become a highly contentious issue, infused with the dark spectre of the kind of 'America First' isolationism not seen since the days before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941," wrote the independent Taiwan Strait Risk Report. "Taiwan is not necessarily immune from this America First thinking, even if it prefers to think otherwise."

Barely one third of Taiwanese considered the U.S. to be a trustworthy country, according to a poll conducted last fall. Beijing has long tried to sow doubts over U.S. support in Taiwanese minds.

Authorities in Taiwan stressed that they believed in continued U.S. support whatever happens in Saturday's elections. While all main parties back the status quo to keep the peace with China, there are important differences.

The ruling Democratic Progressive Party's candidate, Lai Ching-te, promises a more independent-minded stance with Beijing, but he is far from sure of winning the presidency or control of the national legislature in the face of rivals more open to cozying up to China—if not to the ultimate Chinese demand of "unification" that is opposed by the vast majority of Taiwanese.

"There is a bipartisan consensus in support of Taiwan, both from the Democratic and Republican aisles. The bipartisan support for Taiwan will continue no matter who is elected," Taiwan's foreign minister, Joseph Wu, told a news conference in Taipei this week.

For Taiwan, there is not only the question of U.S. will, but its capability against an ever more muscular China that has massively ramped up spending on military modernization under President Xi Jinping.

"Walk and Chew Gum"

The U.S. Defense Department did not respond to a Newsweek request for comment, but Adm. Christopher Grady, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was quoted in December as saying that the U.S. would be able to defend Taiwan alongside Ukraine and Israel.

"Is it challenging? Sure," Stars and Stripes reported him as having said. "We have to be able to walk and chew gum at the same time."

China's military has repeatedly voiced confidence of winning what one general said would be a "just and legitimate war" if it ever comes to that. President Joe Biden has said he would use military force to defend Taiwan against a Chinese invasion.

"There is a lot of talk about how the PRC navy is now bigger than the U.S. Navy. I think there's some hype to that, meaning to say that while you look at the U.S., it's not just the U.S. alone. It has allies in the region," said Chong Ja-Ian of the National University of Singapore.

"You don't need parity or even dominance, in order to deter, you just need an adequate force to get the Chinese side to believe that the use of force is costly," he said.

There are areas in which Chinese technology has shown greater advances than in the United States, such hypersonic missiles, but those have also been used by Russia in Ukraine, and it has been shown that it is possible to defend against them, Chong said.

Tsiam, of the research institute based within military headquarters in Taipei, said Taiwan believes it would need to hold out against any Chinese invasion with 90 days of supplies. Unlike Ukraine and Israel, Taiwan has the defensive advantage of being an island with a mountainous interior. But with no land borders, it is also vulnerable to a naval blockade.

"The question we are most asked is what if the United States doesn't come?" he said.

"I believe the answer is straightforward. Look at what Ukraine did when Russia invaded Crimea and other territories. They stood up and fought back. Similarly, when Hamas carried out a terrorist attack against Israel, Israel stood up and fought back. We Taiwanese, of course, when the Chinese attack us, we fight back."

Even without the United States, Taiwan might get support from democratic countries such as Japan or South Korea that might find themselves next in line if U.S. security promises in the region were to fall short of expectations.

Like Ukraine and Israel, it would also need a mass mobilization of reservists and volunteers to try to fight off any attack, but questions have been raised over whether it could match their ability to do so as well as how long infrastructure might hold out.

"According to some observers, Taiwan's civil defense preparedness is insufficient, and Taiwan's military struggles to recruit, retain, and train personnel," said a document from the Congressional Research Service last September. "At a societal level, it is not clear what costs—in terms of economic security, safety and security, and lives—Taiwan's people would be willing or able to bear in the face of possible PRC armed aggression."

For Tsiam, Taiwan also has to believe that it would not be abandoned by the United States and other democracies because of the message it would send to other dictatorships.

"The domestic politics of the United States, of course, affects the region's security situation, but we tend to believe that if we make more people understand the intent of China, the expansionism of China, people will understand the importance of defending Taiwan," he said.

"People will understand they are not only defending a far eastern territory, but also they are protecting the world order and freedom."