U.S.-Taiwan Relations in the Trump Administration: No Big Fixes Needed

Under the rubric of the 1979 Taiwan Relations Act, the United States has sustained a political commitment to defend Taiwan, and substantive military-to-military relations are broad and deep.5 Taiwan is thus a rare case where Washington has a security partnership with an entity with which it does not have diplomatic relations. [...]it has pledged to help defend this entity against a government with which the United States does have relations. Since the early 1980s, Beijing has urged the island to accept the unification formula used for Hong Kong ("one country, two systems"), an approach Taiwan has consistently rejected.6 China fears that Taiwan might move toward de jure independence.