SPECIAL REPORT - The American Case for Taiwan - Michael Cunningham

It shows that democracy can indeed thrive in a Chinese society, disproving the CCP’s condescending narrative that the Chinese people are unsuited to the exercise of the rights and responsibilities bestowed on citizens of democratic states and that the absence of authoritarian rule would only lead to chaos.2 As robust as this interest is, however, it alone would likely be insufficient to justify ri. [...] A Pres- ident’s foremost duty is to provide for the security and prosperity of the American people, and the stronger China becomes, the harder it will be to justify confronting Beijing to protect the freedoms of residents of a small island on the other side of the globe. [...] The geographic location of [Taiwan] is such that in the hands of a power unfriendly to the United States it constitutes an enemy salient in the very center of that portion of our position…. [...] These include the roughly 100-mile-wide Taiwan Strait between Taiwan’s main island and China, through which most of the world’s container ships pass, as well as the 160-mile-wide Luzon Strait that divides Taiwan from the Philippines.9 The Luzon Strait connects the South China Sea to the Western Pacific, making it a particularly strategic waterway in the context of U. [...] The Taiwan Strait is a key shipping route for Asian exports to “Europe, the US and all points in between.”42 According to data compiled by Bloomberg, nearly half of the world’s container ships and 88 percent of the largest such ships transited the Strait in 2022.43 However, these figures do not even begin to tell the complete story of Taiwan’s economic importance.