To deepen international cooperation on capacity building and deterrence, Washington will need a compelling narrative for why Taiwan matters that instills urgency across a wide range of capitals—and avoids limiting engagement through overly militaristic framings of the challenge. This will require developing a finer grained understanding of how Taiwan and cross-Strait issues fit within other countries’ national interests and what types of strategic narratives on Taiwan resonate in various capitals. Toward this end, the CSIS Freeman Chair convened a geographically diverse international task force of experts for four sessions across May to November 2023. This paper is not a consensus document but distills key insights co-conveners drew from this set of discussions. Further reflections from individual members of the task force, and a list of participants, are included in the Appendix.
Introduction
If the United States is to meet Beijing’s growing threats to peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait, it must build a strong coalition capable of meaningfully supporting Taiwan and willing to send credible deterrent signals to China. Toward this end, Washington needs a granular understanding of why Taiwan matters to key international stakeholders, what tolerance for risk these partners are willing to bear, and what strategic narratives on Taiwan resonate with their leaders and polities. Importantly, U.S. leaders must also appreciate that their actions and statements can either strengthen or undercut efforts to forge international unity behind preserving peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait.
Building such a coalition is key to deterring conflict and preserving Taiwan’s space to grow as a prosperous and resilient democracy. The broader and deeper the coalition of stakeholders, the more unmistakable the signal to Beijing that it would pay a significant price for escalating pressure on Taiwan. U.S. efforts to build greater cohesion among partners also reflect the reality that Taiwan has become an issue of global consequence. The economic, financial, and supply chain impacts of any instability in the Taiwan Strait would be felt in every country and community that is connected to the global economy. Given the centrality of Taiwan’s exports of semiconductors and intermediate goods, any type of crisis in the waters surrounding Taiwan would bring global value chains to a grinding halt and cause a seizing up of international trade.[1] One recent estimate from Bloomberg finds that a conflict in the Taiwan Strait might cost the global economy nearly $10 trillion.[2]
In addition, any conflict in the Taiwan Strait would also quickly spread across the globe and into cyberspace and space. There would also be real risk of a nuclear exchange. If China uses force to assert control over Taiwan and its 24 million residents, it would mark the definitive end of the post-World War II international system and usher in a “might-makes-right” world in its place.
Despite these sobering risks, progress in building unity of effort to prevent such outcomes has been uneven. There has been notable progress in raising awareness of the global stakes in peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait, with a growing number of world leaders, including from the G7, speaking out about the importance of Taiwan.[3] A small but growing number of countries have also conducted military presence operations near Taiwan, and more have sent parliamentary delegations and made public statements in support of preserving the status quo. These moves are to be welcomed, but they are insufficient, given the stakes. As it stands, leaders in democratic countries have largely remained cautious in elaborating how events in the Taiwan Strait impact their own vital interests.
To help spur efforts toward greater international cohesion in support of preserving peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait, the CSIS Freeman Chair convened a group of leading strategic thinkers representing Australia, Canada, France, Germany, India, Japan, Nigeria, South Korea, the United Kingdom, and the United States to participate in an iterative set of dialogues over the past eight months. The list of participants follows this paper. These discussions yielded insight into how Taiwan and cross-Strait issues more broadly are viewed in different regions, and how strategic narratives can be constructed in order to spur collective action to limit risks and, if necessary, respond to a crisis.
The key findings of this task force include:
- Specific interests, rather than democratic solidarity, are more likely to drive engagement with Taiwan in most parts of the world and will likely need to serve as the foundation for expanding stakeholder buy-in.
- Washington should expand its efforts to highlight how threats to Taiwan’s peace and prosperity directly impact wide swaths of the global community. The more Taiwan comes to be viewed as critical to regional stability and, by extension, global prosperity, the more invested other stakeholders will be in its security.
- Relatedly, arguments about stability, rather than debates over Taiwan’s sovereignty per se, are likelier to galvanize global attention to its security and well-being. Washington should make the case that Beijing’s efforts to isolate Taiwan will directly lead to instability in the region and the broader global economy.
- Greater clarity on the ultimate and proximate causes of rising tensions in the Taiwan Strait is needed to combat Beijing’s narrative that the United States is solely responsible for “stirring the pot.” Task force participants recommended coordinated efforts to track and publicize the main elements of China’s pressure campaign against Taiwan in the military, economic, and cyber domains, ideally spearheaded by an organization outside of the United States in order to maximize credibility.
- The United States and key coalition partners must address the lack of basic understanding about Taiwan’s history, the key legal and geopolitical elements of cross-Strait relations, and the debate over sovereignty among publics and political elites in many countries. As long as there is a deficit of knowledge regarding Taiwan in global discourse, Beijing will have ample space to actively shape and manipulate public narratives.
- Uncertainty over the direction of U.S. foreign policy amid an upcoming presidential election increases hesitancy among current and prospective partners to support Taiwan. In the long term, U.S. consistency and steadiness regarding Taiwan will be an important foundation for generating greater global buy-in. Conversely, prevarication, inconsistency, and the abandonment of the long-standing “One China” policy will cast a chill on allied coordination on Taiwan.
- Relatedly, overly militaristic framings about cross-Strait issues and Taiwan’s future have the unanticipated consequence of constraining the space for actual and potential coalition partners to engage on the issue.
Finally, it is important to note that this paper reflects key takeaways that the authors have drawn from the task force discussions. This is not a consensus document of the international task force. To read further reflections from individual task force members, please see the Appendix section.
Takeaway 1: Much of the world does not see U.S. involvement on Taiwan the same way Washington does.
A common theme among task force members was the view that within their countries and respective regions, the United States is seen as a key contributor to escalating tensions in the Taiwan Strait. This is partly driven by organic impressions based on interpretations of U.S. actions, but it is also stoked by an aggressive Chinese information campaign that seeks to frame the United States as the primary belligerent. Beijing has taken advantage of events such as then-U.S. speaker of the house Nancy Pelosi’s August 2022 visit to Taiwan to paint the United States as undermining the status quo and as seeking to “use Taiwan” as a cudgel to harm China and preserve U.S. hegemony.[4]
Beijing also has sought to warn countries about U.S. efforts to construct an “Asian NATO” and to link such efforts to U.S. support for Taiwan. Beijing suggests that Washington pushed for the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s (NATO) eastward expansion after the collapse of the Soviet Union and that such efforts precipitated war in Ukraine.[5] Following this logic, Asian countries, therefore, must be alert to the risk of the United States repeating such a cycle of alliance expansion in Asia and triggering conflict in the Taiwan Strait. Chinese propaganda and diplomatic channels have used the launch of the AUKUS security agreement (between Australia, the United Kingdom, and the United States), the institutionalization of the Quad (between Australia, India, Japan, and the United States), and the deepening of a Japan-South Korea-United States trilateral grouping as evidence of the United States’ ambition to forge an “Asian NATO” that would be arrayed against China and fuel rising regional tensions, thereby raising risk of military conflict in the Taiwan Strait.
However tenuous such arguments may seem, Washington and its partners must recognize that such narratives hold more sway in many parts of the world than is appreciated. The more accepted Beijing’s narrative becomes, particularly in Southeast Asia, the less political space there will be for countries to contribute to coalitional efforts to preserve peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait.
To counter this narrative, the United States should become bolder in explaining the logic of its actions to preserve peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait. U.S. officials should publicly rebut suggestions that the United States views Taiwan as a tool for use in competition with China, or that the United States has designs on Taiwan’s ultimate status in relation to the People’s Republic of China (PRC). It should frame its goals around preserving peace and keeping open space for leaders in Beijing and Taipei to ultimately arrive at a peaceful resolution of their differences. This should reflect the will of the people of Taiwan, who have democratic agency to express their preferences. Such an eventual goal may seem remote or even impossible, given the political trajectory in China under Xi Jinping, but in keeping open the prospect for some form of peaceful reconciliation, U.S. officials can puncture Chinese efforts to paint the United States as the destabilizing actor in the Taiwan Strait. Washington needs to present itself as not seeking a fight with China over Taiwan, but rather as being credible, principled, and firm in its defense of Taiwan’s security, prosperity, and democratic way of life.
