Iran and Taiwan: A tale of two straits 

The comprehensive strategy of the the new axis of evil is succeeding — at least, to a limited extent.

The swarming, Lilliputian approach of Russia, China, North Korea and Iran against the American Gulliver (the Great Satan, by the Islamic Republic’s telling) has already stoked fears in the U.S. government and among academic elites of a multi-front conflict that is fragmenting and dissipating U.S. and Western responses. NATO allies have rejected the Trump administration’s call for help in opening the Strait of Hormuz after Iran closed it to Western shipping. They argue that “this is not our war,” even though they rely far more heavily on the flow of Mideast oil than does the energy-self-sufficient U.S.

Regrettably, President Trump has used outrageous insults rather than appeals to reason and broader self-interest to address Europe’s reluctance to join a military conflict its sees as having been initiated by Washington without any consultation. Its discomfort with Trump’s assertiveness is reinforced by his claims to Greenland and Canada, which mimic — and can be argued to justify — Vladimir Putin’s ambitions on Ukraine and Xi Jinping’s on Taiwan.  

For their part, the Europeans shortsightedly ignore the Trump administration’s portrayal of the conflict as America’s long-delayed response to Iran’s five-decades-long assault on American and Western security interests. But Trump gratuitously widens the trans-Atlantic breach by denigrating as “cowards” the very allies who, after 9/11, fought and died alongside Americans in Iraq and Afghanistan — the first and only time NATO has invoked its Article Five mandate that “an attack on one is considered … an attack on all” and requires a collective response.

The West should not tolerate Iran’s threatened attacks on Western shipping while container vessels to and from China and Russia are allowed free movement through the Strait, which should be open to all or closed to all. Trump, who has made a fetish of disparaging NATO, should instead invoke Article Five and rejuvenate NATO.

That move would help undo the damage done by U.S. officials who delighted and encouraged America’s adversaries when they argued that America cannot cope with more than one military challenge at a time.  

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has applied the “Europe vs. Iran” tension to the competition for U.S. weapons support, contending that the preexisting arms flow to Ukraine to counter Russia’s aggression diverts America from the current assault on Iran. Earlier, his policy undersecretary, Elbridge Colby, complained that U.S. support for Ukraine has deflected attention and resources from the critical need to support the defense of Taiwan. After joining the Trump administration, however, Colby diluted his advocacy of Taiwan’s security, calling it “important, but not existential” for the United States.  

Such grousing from the Trump administration plays into our adversaries’ hands by validating their diversionary strategy and encouraging further multi-directional moves.  

North Korea has kept its head down since sending troops to fight Ukrainians in Russia. Having gained valuable combat experience in the process, Pyongyang may now be looking for new ways to harass and undermine the strategic posture of the U.S. and its allies — such as by stoking tensions with South Korea. Or, with much of the U.S. Seventh Fleet presently deployed to the Middle East, China’s Xi could find this an opportune time to expand his aggression against Taiwan, even though he personally promised that he would not do it during Trump’s presidency. 

The U.S. policy of “strategic ambiguity” on whether it would intervene to defend Taiwan was reexamined in a recent Brookings Institution paper that used some of the same language that Trump administration officials have employed. Like Colby’s recent testimony to Congress, it states, “Taiwan is not a vital U.S. interest … defending Taiwan is not necessary to protect core U.S. interests.” As such, the paper might be seen as providing the intellectual rationale for a new U.S. policy more conducive to securing favorable U.S.-China relations, especially on the trade issues that Trump avidly seeks. 

The analysis concluded that the longstanding U.S. policy of official vagueness has outlived its usefulness, and “The United States should therefore replace strategic ambiguity with an explicit policy of nonintervention.” That new policy would be a flashing green light for Beijing to make its move on Taiwan without fear of consequences from an intervening U.S., akin to Secretary of State Dean Acheson’s tragically misguided speech in 1950 that excluded South Korea and Taiwan from America’s “strategic perimeter” in Asia and virtually invited Kim Il-sung and Mao Tse-tung to invade South Korea.   

The recommended policy is the complete opposite of what some of us in the China policy community have long advocated: that the U.S. remove any doubt in the minds of Chinese leaders that the U.S. will defend Taiwan so that a miscalculation like that which precipitated the Korean War will not be repeated.  

Joseph Bosco served as China country director for the secretary of Defense from 2005 to 2006 and as Asia-Pacific director of humanitarian assistance and disaster relief from 2009 to 2010. He is a nonresident fellow at the Institute for Corean-American Studies, a member of the advisory board of the Global Taiwan Institute and member of the advisory board of the Vandenberg Coalition. 

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