The Perils of Entanglement

For decades, United States foreign policy in East Asia has been anchored to an increasingly hazardous premise: that Washington must guarantee the security of Taiwan against the People’s Republic of China (PRC).  On the surface, the United States claims to support an East-Asian democracy against mainland China. The reality is not so benign.  For the past 75 years, the United States has needlessly interfered in the Chinese civil war.  As global dynamics shift and the risk of conflict escalates, Washington must reassess its commitment to Taiwan.  To avoid a potentially dangerous confrontation, the United States must cease its military and political backing of Taiwan.

To understand the volatile nature of the situation in Taiwan, one must look to the history of the Chinese Civil War. The conflict between Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalist (Kuomintang) government and Mao Zedong’s Chinese Communist Party was an internal struggle for the sovereignty of China. When Mao’s forces emerged victorious in 1949, establishing the PRC, the defeated Nationalist regime fled to the island of Taiwan.

The United States refused to accept the outcome of the war.  In 1950, the United States intervened to protect the Nationalist forces, encamped in Taiwan.  Washington deployed the Seventh Fleet to the Taiwan Strait, effectively freezing the civil war and blocking the consolidation of the Chinese nation.

For three-quarters of a century, American policy has artificially maintained this division, consistently treating a remnant of a domestic civil dispute as a permanent geopolitical proxy. This persistent interference violates the core principle of national sovereignty and remains a profound provocation to Beijing, which views Taiwan not as an independent nation, but as a runaway province.

Continuing this legacy of intervention is no longer viable.  China today is hundreds of times stronger than it was in 1950, when the United States first intervened in the Chinese civil war.  In 1950, China was largely an agrarian nation.  It was just emerging from a century of interference, perpetrated by the colonial regimes of Japan and Western Europe. 

Today, China has the world’s largest industrial base.  China also has a $1 trillion annual trade surplus.  The United States, in contrast, has squandered its industrial base, and how has a $1 trillion annual trade deficit. 

In 2026, the American establishment woke up to the fact that China controls 90% of the processing of rare earth minerals.  Such minerals are essential for producing high tech products, ranging from automobiles to microchips.  They are also essential for the production of America’s high-tech weapons.  In other words, the United States foolishly outsourced large portions of its defense-industrial base to China.  We can’t make weapons, without getting a green light from Beijing.

President Trump seems to understand this.  In his summit with Chinese leader, Xi Jinping, in September 2026, Trump rolled out the red carpet for the Chinese leader.  Trump was pretty much begging President Xi to send him more rare earth minerals, so that Trump could continue his war, for the benefit of Israel, against Iran. 

At the summit, President Xi reminded Trump that the United States needs to stop interfering in the Chinese civil war.  In early 2026, President Trump wisely held up a package of $14 billion of arms, intended to be destined to Taipei.  This package remains in limbo, as of September 2026, and needs to be canceled. 

America’s inability to produce rare earth elements highlights a deeper reality: the United States lacks the industrial capacity to sustain a prolonged proxy conflict in the Pacific without severely compromising America’s own security. Attempting to force-feed arms to Taiwan only heightens cross-strait tensions between China and Taiwan, while exposing America's inability to back up its strategic promises.

A conflict over Taiwan would trigger an economic catastrophe from which the United States might never fully recover.  Should the United States find itself locked in a conflict with Beijing over Taiwan, China could instantly weaponize its monopoly on rare earths, cutting off supply chains and effectively paralyzing both the American domestic economy and its defense manufacturing capability. China could also price its goods in a currency other than the U.S. dollar, triggering an immediate balance of payments crisis on the part of the United States.  Risking economic ruin over a war that China will win is a catastrophic imbalance of national priorities.

U.S. policymakers must accept that Taiwan is a core, non-negotiable interest for Beijing, but a peripheral one for Washington. For China, cross-strait unification is viewed as the final erasure of a century of foreign humiliation and the ultimate conclusion of their civil war. Beijing has repeatedly demonstrated that it is willing to absorb immense economic and military pain to prevent Taiwan's permanent separation. Conversely, no vital American security interest justifies risking a direct, potentially nuclear war with a peer competitor over Taiwan. The geographic reality dictating the Pacific means that China will always possess escalation dominance in its own backyard.

The United States must gracefully pivot away from its outdated, provocative commitments. By halting arms sales and ending the strategic ambiguity that binds American security to Taiwan's political destiny, Washington can clear a path toward a realistic, stable equilibrium with Beijing. Continuing to interfere in the final chapter of the Chinese Civil War does not preserve freedom; it invites an unsustainable global catastrophe. For its own economic survival and national security, America must leave the future of Taiwan to be resolved by the Chinese people on both sides of the strait.

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Elliott J. Schuchardt is the author of America’s Achilles Heel:  How to Protect Your Family When America Loses the Reserve Currency.  In the book, Schuchardt argues that the United States must devalue the U.S. dollar to avoid a possible uncontrolled collapse in the value of the currency in the future.  In 2026, Schuchardt was a candidate for the Tennessee General Assembly. 

For the past eight years, Schuchardt has litigated against a group of court-insiders in Tennessee.  In that litigation, Schuchardt argues that Tennessee permits court insiders to engage in self-dealing, and choose their own judge. Schuchardt has asked the U.S. Supreme Court to review the case, and impose ethics on the Tennessee system.