Challenging the U.S. foreign policy consensus on Taiwan

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DAN RICHARDS: From the Watson school of International and Public Affairs at Brown University, this is Trending Globally. I'm Dan Richards. In October, President Trump and China's President Xi Jinping met for the first time in Trump's new presidential term. The meeting ended with commitments from both countries designed to lower trade and economic tensions, something many observers greeted with relief. But according to Watson senior fellow and director of the Watson school's China Initiative, Lyle Goldstein, the meeting left a lot to be desired.

Most notable to Lyle is what appears to have not been discussed-- almost all of the pressing security issues that exist between the two countries, including the one that Lyle sees as the most dangerous of all - the issue of Taiwan. On this episode, I spoke with Lyle about the state of US-China relations over Taiwan, why he believes this issue represents such a grave risk to humanity, and why he thinks it's time to reconsider the US foreign policy consensus on this geopolitical flashpoint.

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Lyle Goldstein, thank you so much for coming back on to Trending Globally.

LYLE GOLDESTEIN: Thanks, Dan. Really glad to be back.

DAN RICHARDS: So before we get to US-China relations, more specifically on Trump's recent trip to Asia, he met with Malaysia's prime minister. He also met with the prime minister of Japan in Tokyo. What were the most significant outcomes from those legs of the trip?

LYLE GOLDESTEIN: Sure, and we may add to that. He met with the new president of South Korea, where there was some big news actually. One of the big outcomes was it looks like we'll be possibly cooperating closely with South Korea on not just shipbuilding that was already in the works, but also even on possibly nuclear submarines together. So that's quite a major development, and it seems likely that Japan will jump on board as well for that.

But to speak to the other segments of the trip, we saw a lot of focus on trade. We can talk about the successes and failures of the tariff policy, but surely it has prompted foreign leaders to try to make sure that they are both investing in the US economy, but also looking out for the particular interests of this administration. For example, in Malaysia, they talked about securing rare earths. That's been a focus of US-China relations, but of course.

DAN RICHARDS: And these are rare minerals needed for batteries and electrical equipment?

LYLE GOLDESTEIN: Yes, exactly. And of course, the cliche is that rare earths aren't so rare, but the ability to refine them is quite rare, and China has a pretty good lock on that ability, probably for the next several years. So we've seen that has really reached a very prominent role in US-China relations.

And rare earths are used in so many aspects of the economy, including, by the way, within some of our most sophisticated weapons systems like submarines and fighter jets are surprisingly reliant on quantities of rare earth from China. So this is a delicate issue. And we can almost say this is the main pivot point in the US-China trade tensions that arose over the last. There are others too we can discuss.

DAN RICHARDS: So would you say that a lot of the trip, even though it wasn't Trump directly engaging in talks with China was related to issues having to do with US-China relationship if we're talking about rare earth mineral security in Malaysia or military buildup in South Korea?

LYLE GOLDESTEIN: That tends to be the case. China is the elephant in the room or the dragon in the room in almost every foreign policy conversation. We could be talking about Africa or Latin-America or the Arctic or something like that and China would also be a large part of our conversation. So it's not that strange. But yes, in Asia that's particularly the case.

Although I'd point out, you raised the issue of South Korea, and we should keep in mind that South Korea's foremost concern is always North Korea. Now, North Korea has a particular relationship with China and Russia these days. But I'm just saying, these issues are all around the compass are rather nuanced. So no, it's not all about China. But of course, China does play a role in almost all these conversations.

DAN RICHARDS: So let's get to where that entered into the trip more explicitly, which was at the end of this trip, Trump met with Xi Jinping in South Korea, and this was their first meeting of Trump's new presidential term. Trump had described it the meeting after the fact, in a somewhat classic Trump manner, he said, on a scale of 1 to 10, he'd rate the meeting as a 12. And I wonder is that just a typical hyperbolic boastfulness, or was there something President Trump felt like was unusually beneficial about this meeting?

LYLE GOLDESTEIN: I think it was mostly hyperbole there. He's a businessman and so, of course, he's interested in the commercial aspect of this, which is, let's say, not a bad thing. I think US-China commerce is incredibly important. And I think it has been a political football really batted around, let's say battered and bruised. And so I am glad that he's giving that priority. It seems to me that things have been stabilized. I think that's probably as high a mark as I could give it. I would like to see more progress on that front. But there were some wins, certainly for American farmers.

DAN RICHARDS: In the sense that China has agreed to begin buying more agricultural exports from American farmers.

LYLE GOLDESTEIN: Yes. Now, these are all short-term ish contracts. So I think this will continue to be a point of leverage for China. And speaking of leverage, the main point is we already broached concerns, those rare earths. So I think the American side was very keen to take that off the table.

Well, let me raise one more issue, which I think is critical in stabilizing the economic relationship, which I believe has been underplayed in the press, that there's a lot talk about trade restrictions, export restrictions, chips and this kind of discussion.

DAN RICHARDS: Preventing American technology and products from making their way to China.

LYLE GOLDESTEIN: Yes, and that the so-called entity list, where certain US companies are basically forbidden to export to China. A lot of people were saying that was the root cause of the latest round of escalation in US-China trade frictions. My interpretation is a little different though.

I would pinpoint also the shipping issue where there was a plan, which I think started up in February, March time frame Twenty Twenty-Five and then was about to be implemented. And this would put a very high tax on every Chinese ship that was entering US port. And from the US perspective, the aim was basically to encourage American made ships to carry some of this trade or at least Japanese or Korean or just non-Chinese.

The Chinese not surprisingly, did not want their shipping trade targeted and viewed this as a major threat that would be highly destabilizing to basically all aspects of US-China trade. And frankly, to my assessment would hurt American consumers prompting inflation, really just be incredibly disruptive. So I'm glad that these port fees that were to be charged on Chinese ships were suspended at least for a year. So we'll see in this tit for tat game that we've been playing, which to my estimate has been highly destabilizing destructive. I think both countries have suffered.

DAN RICHARDS: As you're saying though this meeting began to at least stabilize some of these trends in ways that--

LYLE GOLDESTEIN: That's positive, but I think we can hope for more. It seems like all these measures were paused. So I think the debate will continue in both countries. And unfortunately, I don't know that we're in a truly stable place yet.

DAN RICHARDS: You've written that this meeting, despite whatever progress was gained in stabilizing relations between these two countries, was really an opportunity missed. Specifically, you write how really no progress was made on the pressing security issues that exist between these two countries. The most significant issue in your mind being Taiwan. And I want to spend most of the rest of the conversation looking at US, China, and Taiwan. But just to start, what are the sweet of issues that you would have liked to see these two leaders discuss? And why is it so critical that these issues be made a priority in these meetings?

LYLE GOLDESTEIN: Well, Dan, we're talking about two superpowers, by far we can talk about the exceptions, but really the largest and most powerful militaries on the planet. And we need to do everything we can to mitigate the risk of direct or indirect, frankly, armed conflict between these two superpowers. Now, I would suggest for areas that they should talk about, but we're really not discussed as far as I can tell.

The first concerns nuclear weapons. And China is in the midst of a major nuclear buildup. North Korea and the Korean Peninsula is always a perennial flashpoint that needs to be kept under control, partly by the US and China working together the South China Sea is another perennial flashpoint that the two countries are not going to see eye to eye here, but they at least can agree on some measures to prevent this from spiraling out of control.

And then, of course, finally, and I think we'll talk more about this, is the issue of Taiwan. And Taiwan is far and away the most dangerous of all these issues. And it's quite disappointing that the two leaders are-- well, maybe it's commendable at some level that they want to put it aside if you will and not let it, let's say, disrupt other parts of the relationship. OK, I'll agree with that. But if we ignore the issue, which seems to be what happened, then there is a major possibility of misperception, miscalculation, and ultimately, a catastrophic war which would not serve either country.

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DAN RICHARDS: Lyle believes that to lower the risk posed by this issue, the US needs to reconsider certain aspects of its relationship to Taiwan. But before we get into the changes that Lyle advocates, here is a brief, very brief overview of some of the key points in China, Taiwan's, and the United States history for understanding Lyle's position.

In Nineteen Forty-Nine, the Chinese Civil War ended in victory for the Chinese Communist Party. The leaders of the opposition, known as the Republic of China, fled to Taiwan. The United States had supported the Republic of China during the Chinese Civil War, and continued to support the Republic of China after they fled to Taiwan economically and militarily, which caused considerable tension in US-China relations.

LYLE GOLDESTEIN: We almost went to war over it several times in the Nineteen Fifties. We even went so far as deploying nuclear weapons to the Island in '50s and '60s. Finally, we came to a workable compromise that was through the Kissinger-Nixon diplomacy that enabled the US to have relations with China on the condition that we would remove all those troops and so forth. So that inaugurated what we call the One-China policy, where the US effectively does recognize that Taiwan is part of China. We don't recognize Taiwan as a state. It doesn't have a seat at the UN. It's not included in most international institutions. And we don't have an embassy.

DAN RICHARDS: Ever since the US has officially maintained its One-China policy. But at the same time--

LYLE GOLDESTEIN: We've cushioned that blow if you will when we ceremoniously unseated Taiwan at the UN with some other policies--

DAN RICHARDS: Including--

LYLE GOLDESTEIN: The Taiwan Relations Act in Nineteen Seventy-Nine. This act of Congress said that we would look gravely upon any use of force, and that we would take actions to ensure that Taiwan had its own robust defenses.

DAN RICHARDS: Today, the US has deep economic ties with Taiwan and continues to provide military support to the Island. If the United States position towards Taiwan sounds a little ambiguous that's because it is. In fact, when it comes to the topic of the United States military or security assistance to Taiwan, the US adheres to a policy called--

LYLE GOLDESTEIN: What we call Strategic Ambiguity, which says that we will not say in certain terms what we will do in the circumstance of a Chinese use of force on the Island.

DAN RICHARDS: It's a position that Lyle thinks may become increasingly unstable as China's military and economic power grows.

LYLE GOLDESTEIN: I think a lot of tensions today are a result of the fact that we want to have our cake and eat it too. Unfortunately that's, I think, increasingly unrealistic. China is it's just too powerful and won't accept that anymore.

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DAN RICHARDS: So this history is important for understanding why Taiwan is such a fraught issue for the Chinese government, and how the us really became intertwined with this issue decades ago, which I think is all helpful grounding for the rest of the conversation. But I'd like to turn to some of the reasons why so much of the foreign policy establishment in the United States still today thinks that being closely aligned with Taiwan and just being involved period in this tension between Taiwan and mainland China is important and is part of the US national security interest.

So I wonder if we could go through some of the rationale that is given for maintaining this relationship despite the risk it poses to the stability of US-China relations. And one argument that many observers and analysts make is that Taiwan plays a really critical role in providing certain types of advanced technology and technological hardware to the US and the world. It's one of the only places in the world that can manufacture certain types of chips that are needed for all sorts of electronics. And the idea is that if China were to invade Taiwan, that could really risk cutting off the US from these strategic technologies. How do you think about that line of reasoning?

LYLE GOLDESTEIN: I do think there's been some misperception here. Taiwan plays a major role in producing microchips. However, I've investigated this, asked a leading microchip expert what would be the military implications of a Chinese invasion of Taiwan. And they said there would be no military implications. I said, really?

And they said, no, these chips are not for military hardware. They said, these advanced microchips are for really one purpose and one purpose only, and that is for phones. Phones are of incredible importance. They have changed modern life truly. And Taiwan's gotten fabulously wealthy and many other countries and businesses. By the way, a lot of the technology Taiwan is using is American technology or European technology.

There are other countries that make microchips-- Japan, South Korea, and so forth. I think people have really overestimated what the economic disruption would be. Well, it might be substantial. I can imagine certain supply chains would be disrupted. There would be probably inflation and no doubt some delays on parts of manufacturing sectors. But the point is we're not going to risk a nuclear war over this supplier of chips.

DAN RICHARDS: Another argument that's often made about Taiwan from the perspective of US national security, global security is its geographic importance, that there's something critically important about US presidents in that particular geographic region. What do you make of that argument? Does that hold any more water than the idea that they provide important military technology?

LYLE GOLDESTEIN: Yeah. For me, this argument is especially interesting. I consider myself a realist for this question of, does Taiwan, the Island itself, its position, does it function as a cork in the bottle effectively to prevent Chinese aggression writ large in the Asia-Pacific region? My conclusion is that this doesn't really make sense. That in fact, Taiwan really doesn't function as a cork in the bottle.

China's forces already are, let's say, a quite common sight throughout the Pacific and frankly, on all the world's oceans these days. But also the so-called military advantages of holding this ground, if you will, hundreds of miles off of China are, well, oversold. Just to give you a couple of examples, a lot of people will maintain that the radars on Taiwan that the US is able to access are very powerful and can look into Chinese airspace. And we literally can see birds flying in Central China with these radars that we have in Taiwan. So you have these intelligence advantages.

DAN RICHARDS: Well, that sounds like something.

LYLE GOLDESTEIN: It is something. But to my estimate, it's not a game changer, not nearly. For example, we have this incredible system of satellites that looks down into China. By the way, they have quite an incredible system of satellites that look down at the United States. So really everything is very visible.

The other example besides the radars that's often given is Taiwan basically enables us to have undersea listening posts, so we can monitor the movement of China's submarine force. And again, there is some gain there in a military sense, I acknowledge that. But the idea that you would take the risks that I've laid out before of going to war over this to keep these acoustic sensors or these radars, it's just not justified.

And the bottom line is, we have a very strong position in general in the Pacific. Our allies-- Japan and the Philippines, also present very favorable geography. They give us a lot of the same kinds of military advantage. So to me, the juice is not worth the squeeze here is what I'm saying.

DAN RICHARDS: What do you make when you look around the foreign policy establishment or conventional wisdom that, I think it would be fair to say, maybe skews a little more hawkish on Taiwan than your views? What do you think is going on to make that such a consensus topic or more of a consensus? I know it's a changing topic.

LYLE GOLDESTEIN: Well, I hope it's a changing topic. For too long I think we've been utterly complacent on this, and there really hasn't been a national debate. So really that's in some ways what I'm trying to do is catalyze this national debate. After all that's what our country is premised on is debate. And just like many other hard issues, we had better discuss it.

Yeah, getting inside the head of the other side is a bit difficult. I'm not trying to insult anybody, but I mean, I do want to say that if you look at Washington and think tanks and how they're funded, guess what, Taiwan spreads millions and millions of dollars around to the major think tanks. And I don't think that's coincidental. Well, I'm focused on the question of money. Let's face it.

A lot of the big defense corporations, whether Raytheon or Northrop Grumman or whatever it is, they have a lot at stake in the US-China rivalry. And if the temperature drops, then it's not so easy for them to get the big items that they want. And of course, remember the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and Whatnot, you can bet the military industrial complex is fighting many times harder for this mission because I think we could triple or quadruple our defense budget, but still probably a not have what it takes.

DAN RICHARDS: What it takes to defend.

LYLE GOLDESTEIN: To defend Taiwan. Because again, if you look at a map of the amount of firepower that China can put against the Island is extraordinary because it's so close, it's so easy for them, but it's so far and so difficult for us. So when you try to challenge that geographical reality and really think through this war, the defense requirements are obscenely high.

Let's face it, it's not just money that's motivating the other side. There's a lot of ideology too. Even some of cultural issues a lot of China experts these days are educated in Taiwan partly because they're not allowed to go to the mainland or COVID prevented them and so forth. So many of them have this built in sympathy for Taiwan.

Taiwan has some really admirable elements including quite a vibrant democracy. And that is an issue here. But as a realist, I do want to say we need to follow our national interest and not to be swayed by what I would say are ideological arguments. And indeed, I would argue that if you want to preserve Taiwan's autonomy, then we should look for diplomatic compromise here, not push it to the limit. After all, look what happened to the folks in Hong Kong. They pushed it to the limit and they have lost what a lot of aspects of their democracy and their autonomy. So to me, let's be judicious, cautious, be cognizant of the balance of power, not push our luck.

DAN RICHARDS: Do you think if the US more formally withdrew military support or removed all ambiguity that they would not be involved in a Chinese military action in Taiwan? Do you think that Chinese government would attempt to do some of military action invading Taiwan in the near future?

LYLE GOLDESTEIN: I mean that's a natural follow-up question. And I think the reason why I suggest we probably should just to be prudent and a bit careful here is probably stick with strategic ambiguity is because yes, I acknowledge that it gives Chinese leaders some pause on that question of whether to use force or not, although I think it's decreasing. That is, I think they're becoming more and more confident. At some point, they will or they're likely to challenge and more or less call our bluff.

And to my estimate these days, it really is a bluff now. If that's all you got is a bluff, maybe you want to use it, and we are. But my view actually is that if we extricate ourselves that the danger to Taiwan will actually decrease. Why is that? Because part of the reason why China is so obsessed with Taiwan is because they don't want an American base situated right in their border in the same way that the Americans would never accept a Chinese base on the Mexican border or the Canadian border. So if the tables were turned and this was in our backyard, we'd also be obsessed with it and going crazy.

So Taiwan is safer by holding us at arm's length and not having Americans truly involved. Actually, many people in Taiwan are starting to recognize that themselves, which I think is a positive step. China does not want to invade Taiwan. They don't want to cause all this destruction. So the idea here that I'm advocating is we should give them reasons to believe that they don't need to do this, that in fact, there'll be a reconciliation of this civil war, that there is a diplomatic path forward, that we are not opposed to that reconciliation. We're not going to try to stop it.

The idea that if we wrap up our involvement that China will attack the next day, no, I don't think that's true. I think Chinese are pragmatic. China hasn't really used force in almost half a century, which is pretty amazing and shows a lot of restraint for a great power. So the expectation that they will be go about this calmly and not rush into a war I think we can be pretty confident in that.

DAN RICHARDS: You just said that you think strategic ambiguity is still the right posture at this moment for the United States. Is that how you feel or do you think this needs to be a little bit more explicitly spoken about as something the US should back out of? I guess, what do you think of the role of strategic ambiguity?

LYLE GOLDESTEIN: I think it's still useful for the time being. But as Americans, I think to each other, we ought to be clear in our minds that we are not going to go to war over Taiwan because it is having an immense disruption on our debate about national security. There are a lot of people in Washington who walk around saying this is the pacing threat, the scenario that we need to prepare for, and they want to double or triple our defense budget and put all effort at trying to defend this Island. And that is just a massive distortion in our national priorities.

That's money that we could spend on improving our infrastructure, improving our housing stock, our schools, and our health care system. We're talking about trillions of dollars. We're talking about the future of our country and the prosperity and freedom frankly of future generations.

So do you want to put all our eggs in this basket of defending Taiwan and hope for the best, hope that we can avoid a nuclear war, or any way a catastrophic conventional war, or should we reprioritize? That's what I'm advocating. And there are a lot of other things that our country should focus on including more positive relations with China, which are incredibly important in all respects, whether climate change or nuclear proliferation, you name it, we've got to work with China.

DAN RICHARDS: You've looked into estimates of what the real cost of a military conflict with China could be. And I don't mean just a financial cost, I mean a human cost. And I think it's worth pausing for a moment on just what the costs of a US-China conflict over something like Taiwan might be.

LYLE GOLDESTEIN: The costs really could be immense. I'm frequently citing this reasonably well done study by CSIS called the first battle study that was done a couple of years ago. And they themselves admitted that the cost would be huge, possibly hundreds of American aircraft and dozens of American ships. But if you look into the details, they iterated their game I think something almost 50 times. So they ran this test over and over. They experiment.

They said invariably in almost every experiment, the United States in the first turn, meaning essentially the first week of the war, would lose two aircraft carriers. So that's 10,000 Americans in the first week of the war. At other points in the study they said that we could lose every single surface ship in the Western Pacific.

Now, I looked at the details of this wargame, which are it's hundreds of pages long. It is a long and very detailed, incredibly realistic war game. And I assessed that they underestimated US losses. Now, of course, the Chinese also suffer devastating losses. So I don't want to say it's all on one side. But I think it is a reasonable possibility that we would lose a third or even half of our Navy in such a conflict. So catastrophic losses that could effectively end the United States as a superpower. That is possible.

Nobody knows what would happen. I don't want to pretend that I'm only person who can look into this crystal ball. Other people come to different conclusions, but that's how I see it. I haven't even mentioned the nuclear issue. And by the way, that report I mentioned by CSIS, they assume out nuclear weapons. They say, well, let's see what happens if no nuclear weapons are used, but they don't make any claim that will happen. In fact, they recognize that nuclear weapons do cast a shadow over this, and nuclear weapons could be used. Nobody knows because two nuclear powers have never ever gone to war. There's been some skirmishing between Pakistan and India and so forth. But we don't know. It's just not worth those risks and the risks are there.

DAN RICHARDS: You mentioned how you hope to be part of a renewed debate that gets to the issue of the real costs of this type of military involvement, and challenging some of the conventional wisdom around the US, the US's strategic ambiguity or military investment more generally in Taiwan. After President Trump's trip to Asia on an interview with 60 Minutes, he said something to the effect that President Xi Jinping knows the consequences of military action in Taiwan. And when asked exactly what he meant, he responded--

PRESIDENT TRUMP: I can't give away my secrets. I don't want to be one of these guys that tells you exactly what's going to happen if something happens. The other side knows, but I'm not somebody that tells you everything because you're asking me a question.

DAN RICHARDS: In some ways that sounds like ambiguity, but also a little bit not in the sense that the consequences are known. I wonder just how you think about the current leadership and consensus in Washington over Taiwan and how it's changed?

LYLE GOLDESTEIN: Yeah, that's a important point. And I think all of us are left scratching our heads. And yes, clearly that is partly the intention of President Trump here. And at some level, I support that. I think that is a pretty close adherence to what has been our policy, strategic ambiguity. By the way, Biden-- President Biden unfortunately in my view, departed strongly from strategic ambiguity. He said very emphatically four times. In fact, he said that the US will defend Taiwan.

At one point even compared our alliance with Taiwan to our alliance with Japan and with our NATO allies, which is just far beyond what any previous statements had made. And frankly, was extremely disturbed by this kind of lurch away from strategic ambiguity in the direction of what we call strategic clarity, which I think would be a huge mistake and could even set the war in motion to be perfectly frank.

So I think Trump's approach is a correction here that is absolutely necessary. The Trump administration I think has done some other things which are quite positive here. They seem to be putting some limits and some breaks on our relationship with Taiwan. During the summer, there were a number of moves. They canceled a visit by the Taiwan defense minister and generally, downgraded these US-Taiwan defense relations and also cut off aid program, a military aid program to Taiwan.

So they seem to have taken a number of steps toward, I think, a more prudent policy here, one that doesn't hold Taiwan very closely and put some distance between us. And I think that has had already a positive effect on US-China relations interrelations. Generally, I think we could be in a much more dangerous place if we adhered to that older policy.

By the way, the first Trump administration marks quite a contrast, because in the first Trump administration, particularly under very hawkish Secretary Mike Pompeo, Secretary of State, what I think we're seeing is a corrective, although let's face it, there seems to be a big China debate underway within the Trump administration. And there are plenty of let's say, China Hawks, if I can say still in there among them, I think the Secretary of State, Marco Rubio.

So my read again, I don't have any special window into the Trump administration, but my sense is that Trump as a businessman sees a lot of promise in US-China relations and is reluctant to get crossways with China because he's aware of their major economic power and prowess.

DAN RICHARDS: Beyond Taiwan specifically, more generally, Trump spoke about China with a much more of heated and intense rhetoric at the beginning of his term when he announced the massive tariffs he was putting on Chinese goods. And like you said, his first administration had a really different and more hawkish, as you see it, approach to China. Some of that might have been due to personnel as you were saying. But I wonder if there are other factors at play that you see as contributing to Trump's change, not just from his first administration, but from six or eight months ago.

LYLE GOLDESTEIN: I think there's been a lot of inconsistency to put it mildly in the current administration blowing hot and cold. I could imagine it's partly affected by what seemed to be if not complete failures, but leaning toward failure on trying to end the Ukraine war and bring peace to the wider Middle East. Those are enormous projects that have not gone well, not gone smoothly, have absorbed a huge amount of administration time, but I think China has been almost put on the back burner. And the hope is that just stabilize US-China relations. So at least that's not another major area where the administration is falling flat.

I will give the president some credit here. He seemed to more or less consistently himself, again, not his lieutenants, but himself hold the view that we need to get along with China. It's very fashionable in Washington to heap insults on China and also on Xi Jinping as an autocrat and so forth, and use a lot of high voltage and very negative language with respect to China.

And I think there's a lot that we're upset with in China. But we also have to recognize that constantly, as I'm always saying, we've got to find a way to get along with this country. And nor are we going to dictate that China's future and we shouldn't try. I mean, that very ambition is arrogant. And just beyond the realm of our reach, of our power. And we will be faced a very dangerous future if we try to stir the pot there, meaning this cross-strait struggle.

So to my estimate, the world will be better off and our country will definitely be better off if we're able to extricate from that conflict and try to reach some compromises on these other-- I talked about the Korean, Peninsula, and the South China Sea. We have plenty to talk about with China outside of the Taiwan Strait, and we should.

DAN RICHARDS: If you were in the room advising President Trump or his national security team, what do you think is the appropriate balance or the appropriate way to look at balancing the United States national security with not necessarily going in on military defense of Taiwan in a way that you've painted could be utterly disastrous? How do you think about that balance of backing off of certain issues, but where to stay involved militarily or to keep pressing China on?

LYLE GOLDESTEIN: I would advise future presidents including our current president as follows. I think we have quite a strong position in the Pacific. Our forces remain formidable. I worked for the Navy for 20 years. I advocate for strong defense. Our defense relationships with Philippines and Japan are reasonably strong, and I think we'll want to maintain those, including with South Korea as well.

Now, our approach on the other side should I think move in the direction that we seem to be at least making some progress in which is, like I said, that move toward extrication from the Chinese Civil War. And here I would advise the following. One, at this point, we have said things like we do not support Taiwan independence. I think we could move toward a position of saying, we actually oppose Taiwan independence. And I think that is consistent with US policy.

Other things we can do, we can reduce congressional visits. I think that's been a problem and these high level visits. Remember when Pelosi went, Taiwan was a lot worse off after the speaker went to Taiwan. We can lower the number of warships-- our warships transiting the Taiwan Strait. We could do it occasionally. I think it is an international Seaway. Fine, but not every month the way it's been the last few years.

Most important in my view, this is critically important. We seem to have American troops on Taiwan now. That is clearly a violation of agreements we've made with China. And they're very perturbed by this as well. This could in itself be a casus belli. I would advocate for removing American troops from Taiwan immediately.

And in general, I believe we can lower to some extent what our clearly preparations for war in that area. I'll give you an example that happened earlier in Twenty Twenty-Five. The United States seems to have decided that Luzon, which is the island in the Philippines closest to Taiwan, should be a springboard for operations in and around Taiwan. And we seem to be preparing accordingly with all refurbishing airstrips and even doing exercises on a Philippines Island which is very close to Taiwan, this batanes Island.

Those are very dangerous moves to send all the wrong signals. We shouldn't make our defense relationships with Philippines and Japan just about Taiwan, but that's unfortunately been the tendency really for the last five or 10 years. But generally, I'd like to see much more caution in Washington. And that includes among defense and foreign policy experts who speak rather casually about Taiwan.

I was on PBS NewsHour recently. I won't name names, but the other specialist who was a former senior DOD official, but he casually dropped that he considered Taiwan a country. And I said, well, that's not our national policy.

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And he seemed shocked that I would call him out on that. But we have a One-China policy. Don't consider Taiwan as a country or a state. It doesn't have a seat at the United Nations. And if we act like it is a country or a state, then we will find ourselves at war with China pretty quickly.

DAN RICHARDS: Well, Lyle, as I'm sure that interlocutor on PBS NewsHour understood, you speak clearly and candidly about incredibly complex topics with a great deal of nuance including this one. And we really appreciate that here. So thank you once again for coming on to Trending Globally.

LYLE GOLDESTEIN: Thanks, Dan. I enjoyed our discussion. And I look forward to the next one.

DAN RICHARDS: This episode was produced by me, Dan Richards, with production assistance from Errol Danehy. Our theme music is by Henry Bloomfield. Additional music from the Blue Dot Sessions. If you want to read more about the past, present, and future of US-China relations over Taiwan, we'll put a link in the show notes to Lyle's excellent multi-part series with defense priorities on the topic.

If you liked this episode, leave us a rating and review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts. And if you haven't subscribed to the show, please do that too. If you have any questions or comments or ideas for guests or topics for the show, send us an email at trendingglobally@brown.edu. Again, that's all one word-- trendingglobally@brown.edu. We'll be back soon with another episode of Trending Globally. Thanks.

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