The Donald Trump administration’s National Security Strategy (NSS), issued in December 2025, affirmed “our longstanding declaratory policy on Taiwan, meaning that the United States does not support any unilateral change to the status quo in the Taiwan Strait.” What is conspicuously absent from this formulation are the words “one China.” In both the first Trump administration’s NSS (2017) and the Joe Biden administration’s NSS (2022), Washington’s longstanding declaratory policy was characterized as “our one China policy.” Presumably, this omission in the 2025 document was intentional. But why? And what does it mean?

This remains unclear, especially since Trump officials are likely prepared to reaffirm US adherence to a “one China policy” rhetorically. But its absence from the recent NSS nonetheless reinforces the erosion over many years of Washington’s substantial commitment to “one China,” which could have profound implications for the future of US-China relations.

By way of quick review: the US “one China policy” is based primarily on the “Three Communiques,” which normalized US relations with the People’s Republic of China (PRC) in the 1970s and early 1980s. 

President Richard Nixon’s historic trip to China in 1972 produced the “Shanghai Communique,” in which the United States “acknowledged” the Chinese position that “there is but one China and that Taiwan is part of China.” It added that “The United States Government does not challenge that position.”

When the Jimmy Carter administration established formal diplomatic ties with the PRC in 1979, it recognized the PRC as “the sole legal Government of China” and again “acknowledge[d] the Chinese position” that there is one China and Taiwan is part of it.

Finally, in the Third Communique of 1982, the Ronald Reagan administration reaffirmed that the United States “has no intention of infringing on Chinese sovereignty and territorial integrity, or interfering in China’s internal affairs, or pursuing a policy of ‘two Chinas’ or ‘one China, one Taiwan.’”

But the “one China policy” also encompasses other documentary sources that emphasize the Taiwan side of the equation. These include the 1979 Taiwan Relations Act—congressional legislation that outlined how and why Washington would maintain “unofficial” relations with Taiwan—and the 1982 “Six Assurances,” which reaffirmed US support for Taiwan and promised that Washington would not negotiate with Beijing at Taipei’s expense.

Over time, the “one China policy” has become increasingly amorphous, incorporating additional rhetorical elements, particularly statements of principle regarding how Washington believes the sovereignty dispute between Beijing and Taipei should be resolved. After Taiwan’s democratization in the 1990s, the Bill Clinton administration added the notion that the dispute must be resolved “with the assent of the people of Taiwan.” The George W. Bush administration introduced the stipulation that Washington does not support “unilateral moves that would change the status quo” in the Taiwan Strait, “as we define it” (without defining the status quo).

One of the most important but complicated elements of Washington’s “one China policy” is its position on a potential Chinese use of force against Taiwan. In the 1982 Communique—which addressed US arms sales to Taiwan—Beijing affirmed its policy to “strive for a peaceful solution to the Taiwan question,” and Washington stated that it “understands and appreciates” that policy. 

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© The National Interest