Like West Berlin in the 20th century, Taiwan is standing on the front line of a hegemonic battle between the leader of the free world and a rising authoritarian superpower. Washington has pursued a policy of “strategic ambiguity” in the past few decades, but now it must shift toward “strategic clarity” due to political realities.
The Taiwan Relations Act (TRA) suggests that any military threat to Taiwan should be of critical concern to the US. Yet incidents of Chinese military aircraft crossing into Taiwan’s air defense identification zone have become so common that it has been normalized for Taiwanese. This indifference to the threat should signal an alarm for the US.
