On March 4, 2025, Elbridge Colby, the incoming undersecretary of defense for policy, made some comments on Taiwan that raised eyebrows. During his Senate confirmation hearing, Colby asserted that “Taiwan’s fall will be a disaster for American interests,” and that “Taiwan is very important,” but added that “it is not an existential interest” for the United States.
It was not the first time Colby had expressed such a point of view, and he clearly ruffled the feathers of those in Washington who are at pains to “explain to the American people why Taiwan matters and why they should care about its fate.”
Colby was labelled an isolationist due to his position on U.S. support for Ukraine, and he could easily be tarred with the same brush when it comes to Taiwan. However, his position on Taiwan aligns in general with many conservatives who self-identify as “restrainers,” believing that U.S. resources are limited and not everything is a vital U.S. interest. In that context, Colby’s position – and Trump’s changing policy toward Taiwan in general – needs to be situated in a recent debate on whether defending Taiwan is a vital U.S. interest.
For those who lobby the U.S. to play a more proactive role in Taiwan’s defense against China, an unambiguous promise to come to Taiwan’s rescue is necessary. According to this line of thinking, Washington needs a policy of “strategic clarity” rather than the anachronistic “strategic ambiguity.” Proponents argue that Taiwan is worth defending because of its strategically important location, because it serves as a model democracy, and because it is an economic powerhouse capable of producing the world’s most advanced semiconductors.
However, none of these arguments strikes restrainers in Washington as reasonable enough to justify a clear-cut military commitment to the defense of Taiwan. They recognize its importance but warn that Taiwan is also dangerous as a “tinderbox” and a “flashpoint” in East Asia. Therefore, they prefer to enhance Taiwan’s self-defense capabilities, to turn it into a “porcupine” able to deter China on its own.
For the restrainers, the costs caused by the U.S. direct military involvement in the cross-strait conflict outweigh the benefits, and the avoidance of an Armageddon between two great nuclear powers must take precedence over other goals. As Jennifer Kavanagh and Stephen Wertheim argued in an article for Foreign Affairs, the U.S. “should speak frankly about the cost of a war with China and push back against the misguided idea that the United States’ survival and prosperity turn on Taiwan’s political status.”
Trump’s policy toward Taiwan – although he did not refrain from expressing territorial ambitions in other parts of the world – seems to be leaning toward the “restrainers'” camp. The traces of a policy roadmap can be seen Elbridge Colby’s 2021 book, “The Strategy of Denial.” Colby argued that Washington “should therefore want to retain Taiwan, the Philippines, and South Korea in its defense perimeter if at all possible. The question is whether it can develop a military strategy for defending them that does not demand too much from Americans.”
Such a strategy in the making about Taiwan seems to have two anchors: restraint on the direct defense of Taiwan and a burden-sharing alliance system.
The Trump administration has recently begun prioritizing the self-defense of Taiwan over an overt U.S. military intervention in the event of a Taiwan contingency. As Colby wrote in September 2024, “To make Taiwan defensible, America must focus on preparing for Taiwan’s defense and Taiwan must do more.” But this begs another question: which piece of this equation does Trump prefer? Should the U.S. strengthen the self-defense of Taiwan by selling it more weapons, or should Taiwan itself take more responsibility for its own defense? Trump seems to be in favor of the latter, since he believes that Taiwan should increase its defense spending to 10 percent of its gross domestic product.
This certainly comes as no surprise, given Trump’s thinly veiled skepticism regarding the importance of Taiwan to U.S. interests. He has questioned Taiwan’s military dependence on the U.S. on many occasions, casting Taiwan as a “freeloader” and complaining that the U.S. is “no different than an insurance company.” This stoked anxiety in Taiwan, prompting its officials to clarify that the Taiwanese are not “freeloaders” and do not expect “to be saved.” Recently, Trump even reportedly paused a new round of U.S. military aid to Taiwan in order to pursue a trade deal with China.
It is within this context that the United States has kept a close eye on Taipei’s defense spending, viewing it as an indicator of Taiwan’s willingness for self-defense. This “defense monitoring” even led U.S. Senator Dan Sullivan to accuse the Kuomintang, the opposition party in Taiwan, of “playing a dangerous game” in March of this year, for not supporting an increase in Taiwan’s defense budget.
Moreover, an updated alliance system is in gestation through which the United States can delegate the responsibility of defending Taiwan to its allies in the Indo-Pacific in the event of a Taiwan contingency. During the Cold War, many countries in Asia and Europe depended on the security guarantee provided by their alliances with the U.S. This strikes Donald Trump as totally unfair. He has repeatedly said that NATO allies should pay their fair share. He lamented that the United States has to protect Japan, but Japan does not have to protect the U.S. He raised doubts about the U.S. involvement in the Russia-Ukraine war, urging European countries to do more to protect themselves and arguing that “this war is far more important to Europe” than it is to the U.S.
A similar burden-sharing logic is also pronounced in Asia, where U.S. allies in the Indo-Pacific are expected to do more for Taiwan’s defense. This is exemplified by the news in July of this year that the U.S. was “urging Japan and Australia to clarify what role they would play if the U.S. and China went to war over Taiwan.” The U.S. official overseeing this initiative is none other than Elbridge Colby.
This is not surprising. In fact, in his 2021 book, Colby asked: if a war against China spilled onto U.S. soil because Washington chose to “defend or liberate a distant ally,” would the Americans “see this as worth doing?” During his Senate hearing in March, he reiterated that the U.S. needs to “be able to conduct a local defense of Taiwan at a cost and level of risk that the American people are prepared to tolerate.” But how to achieve that?
The answer for the Trump administration probably lies with de-risking and delegating the defense of Taiwan, that is, asking U.S. allies in the Indo-Pacific to take more responsibilities to help Taiwan. The United States would resort to a strategy of “offshore balancing,” which “allows the U.S. to assist from a distance, and keeps the U.S. position in Asia intact regardless of how a cross-strait conflict concludes.” To that end, some have already advocated a burden-sharing reorientation of the U.S. alliance system, which will require Japan and South Korea to play a more proactive role during a Taiwan contingency.
The U.S. policy toward Taiwan has been a point of contention and is sometimes fragmented. But Taiwan has picked up on the signals. Taipei is looking to strengthen its relations with other countries in Europe, such as the United Kingdom, and to ramp up its security cooperation with Japan. However, although some European countries sent their warships to sail through the Taiwan Strait as a symbolic gesture of support, it remains unlikely that they are any more willing than Washington to bear the heavy costs of a Taiwan contingency.