# About Taiwan... There’s only a few who are willing to say it—and Simon Shuster just did in _[The Atlantic](https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/2026/10/trump-taiwan-sovereignty-china/688356/)_. Shuster put down some pretty biting lines that China won’t need to invade Taiwan. Doubt about America, the impossibility of victory, and Beijing’s combination of intimidation and inducements will persuade Taiwanese voters that accommodation is better than fighting an unwinnable war. It sounds like defeatism, giving up, or even surrender. But there’s another way of looking at it: realism. Not the “truly remarkable” John Mearsheimer structural realism of “a distant great power ally, is better than a proximate great power partner,” but a much colder, less European, more day-to-day, “why fight a war if you’re going to lose anyway, just let me eat my noodles” realism. And it’s a type of realism much of the region is coming to terms with. Stretching from South Korea and Japan, through Taiwan and onto Southeast Asia, the lessons of both Ukraine and Iran are being taken in. - First, the U.S. pursues its own aims, and these have nothing to do with partner interests, democracy, justice or any other values. - Second, U.S. aims do not fit the cruddy theory we were all taught about in international relations schools inspired by U.S. academics and academia. U.S. aims are simply the enrichment of a global elite. - Third, the U.S. is currently, and will be for some time, unable to protect any of its partners. It’s certainly able to get them involved in some pretty filthy proxy wars and profit death and destruction--but then, that’s not protection. The situation had led to some serious reckoning. What would East Asia be like under a dominant China? Would much change? There’ll be no freedom! Then, that’s no different from what’s going on in the U.S., Europe, Australia, or Canada. Post the wrong information on Facebook or X, expect a knock on the door by the police. Criticize the building of a data center, expect to be taken away. Talk to the wrong people, and you’ll disappear for a week and can’t tell anyone where you’ve been. The West really has to get its act together if it wants to present itself as any kind of alternative. Capitalism would still be king. Companies would compete, people would get rich, and states would chase investment, exports, technology, and growth. The difference would be that the state, or the Party, retains greater power to discipline capital when it threatens national priorities and social stability. This is hardly foreign to East Asia. Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, and China itself all prospered through different forms of state-guided capitalism: markets combined with industrial policy, national champions, investment in infrastructure and education, and governments willing to intervene. A Chinese-led order would not be unfamiliar—indeed, its economic logic would be remarkably familiar. Imagine the alternative: an East Asia that bands together ever closer to the U.S; establishes middle power coalitions stretching from north to south; and like Australia, doubles down on building and supporting U.S. and joint access bases. This in some form, is what Obama, Trump, Biden and Trump has been pursuing (unsuccessfully) for some time now in some sort of perverted Brzezinski strategic wet dream. Imagine if it worked. Every country would be armed to the teeth. They’d all be putting together their raw materials and industrial capacity to build iron linkages of democracies sharing the burden to defend the free and the brave. It would be the proudest moment as for-profit prisons expand to lock away misdemeanors and illegal immigrants, insulin and other medicines start to be rationed and shared, hedge funds expand into housing, and education becomes a life-sentence of debt with hopes for a job never appearing. Does any country aspire to this? America’s “shining city upon a hill” is now dark, its streets full of homelessness and meth, and its suburbs and transport between them conflict zones. America is a shithole, and war f@cks you up. These are the two lessons of the Trump Administration. The lessons were there under Biden and Obama too, but just kinda harder to see. In war, global elites profit—nobody else. The Taiwanese don’t believe the United States will come to their defense, and they know they cannot defeat China. Catastrophic war is one helluva lot less rational than finding accommodation with Beijing. The calculation changed the moment Trump signed the paper in Versailles. We’ll see that in the international relations textbooks sooner or later.  The region is at a historical inflection point. Taiwan will soon enough make it clear that it’s not interested in being at the center of the war. Soon after, if not before, the Philippines, South Korea, and Japan will follow. The best we can all hope for is that U.S. dominance in East Asia ends with a whimper rather than a bang. Countries like Australia, well they’ll be left to line up on the frontline. There’s a pretty apt [Stevie Wonder song](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h3oV135kA2k) that tells you about what happens when they have you standing on the frontline—it applies to countries too. Australia’s future will more than likely be the same. Hopefully, there will soon be a wider acceptance of what only a few thinkers, like Jennifer Kavanagh in [Defense Priorities](https://www.defensepriorities.org/explainers/a-second-island-chain-strategy-for-asia/), are willing to say: the U.S. will have to accept a withdrawal from vulnerable first island chain—Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, and the Philippines—and retrench toward the second island chain, centered on Guam, Palau, Micronesia, the Marshall Islands, and Australia. East Asia will still be important, but as Dirty Harry says, “you’ve got to know your limitations.” U.S. interests are access to Asian markets, freedom of navigation, and prevention of a hegemon that excludes others from the region. This can be done with a smaller, cheaper, and more defensible American position for a region in which China is the dominant power. It’s kind of ironic, Taiwan—the East Asia “flashpoint” where the next war was meant to start, turns out to be the place that convinces every other state in the region to open their eyes and accept the reality around them. *** Please… support a starving writer - [Buy Me a Coffee](https://buymeacoffee.com/junotane)! ## Related articles - [[2024-11-11 Trump won’t stop China taking Taiwan... or Korea|Trump won’t stop China taking Taiwan... or Korea]] - [[2025-06-16 Strategic flexibility and Korea’s return to the frontlines of conflict|Strategic flexibility and Korea’s return to the frontlines of conflict]] - [[2025-10-30 A tale of two trilaterals with Seoul sitting in the center|A tale of two trilaterals with Seoul sitting in the center]]