The comments show the urgency confronting security officials in Taipei and other places that rely on US military backing to counter Beijing, including Japan, South Korea and the Philippines. They’ll have to work out new strategies for dealing with the US leader after witnessing the stunning Oval Office blowup with President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
Highlighting the seriousness of their concerns, on Tuesday, Bloomberg reported that the US is pausing all current military aid to Ukraine until Trump determines the country’s leaders demonstrate a good-faith commitment to peace. Following Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Taiwan appealed to democracies around the world to help it stand up to China, which wants to bring the democracy of 23 million people just off its shores under its control someday, by force if necessary.While Taiwan may continue that campaign, Koo’s comments suggest it will also search for more concrete ways to ensure it has America’s backing. Taiwan has already announced it will step up military spending as a share of its economic output after Trump’s prodding, and has said it could buy more American energy and agricultural products and weapons to cut into its trade surplus with the US, which hit a record last year.
And on Monday, Taiwan’s biggest company, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., announced plans that support Trump’s goal of increasing domestic manufacturing, saying it would invest an additional $100 billion in US plants that will boost its chip output on American soil.
China has been ramping up its campaign of intimidation against Taiwan since President Lai Ching-te took office in May last year, most notably by holding several rounds of major military drills in nearby waters. Last week it used tougher new language that signaled more intimidation tactics were on the way, while also launching a smaller set of exercises. Koo said the latest maneuvers showed the Chinese military was “the major destabilizing factor and the trouble maker in the Indo-Pacific region.”
