A war over Taiwan with China would be neither strategically nor financially feasible for the United States.

President Donald Trump’s recent refusal to allow Taiwan’s president Lai Ching-te to visit the United States (as well as the cancellation of a separate meeting of their respective defense officials) is a welcome signal that Washington realizes that crafting a modus vivendi with respect to China-US trade is far more important than how Beijing and Taipei ultimately resolve the nature of their relationship. The specter of a US-China war over Taiwan as early as 2027 is a typhoon in a teapot.

The US-China relationship is based on a fundamental understanding, namely that Taiwan is a part of China. The 1972 Shanghai Communiqué, which was issued jointly on the last day of President Richard M. Nixon’s historic visit to China, crystallized this crucial agreement: “The United States acknowledges that all Chinese on either side of the Taiwan Strait maintain there is but one China and that Taiwan is part of China. The United States does not challenge that position. It reaffirms its interest in the peaceful settlement of the Taiwan question by the Chinese themselves.” China’s claim of sovereignty over Taiwan is settled.

The 1978 US-China Communiqué eliminated any doubt as to who was the legitimate sovereign authority of China: “The United States of America recognizes the Government of the People’s Republic of China as the sole legal Government of China.”

Recognizing that the timing of Taiwan reunification was uncertain, the 1982 US-China Communiqué articulated the parameters for limited US arms sales to Taiwan: “the United States Government states that it does not seek to carry out a long-term policy of arms sales to Taiwan, that its arms sales to Taiwan will not exceed, either in qualitative or in quantitative terms, the level of those supplied in recent years…and that it intends gradually to reduce its sale of arms to Taiwan.”

The basis for an American intervention in response to a coercive Chinese takeover of Taiwan is rooted in the Taiwan Relations Act of 1979. The law declares that the use of coercion to achieve Taiwan’s reunification with the mainland would be considered “a threat to the peace and security of the Western Pacific area and a grave concern to the United States.” While the nature of an American response is deliberately vague, the threat of military force in 2025 would not be credible.

First, no US president has articulated any rationale for why the defense of Taiwan, a non-state entity, is a vital national interest. A vital national interest must be existential in nature —something for which the country is willing to go to war, marshalling all its resources, up to and including nuclear weapons.

In none of the three foundational joint US-China communiqués did Washington indicate that (1) how the Chinese exercised their sovereignty to realize Taiwan reunification was a vital national interest, or (2) continuation of the de facto administrative control of Taiwan by any entity chosen by the people of Taiwan was a US vital national interest. In fact, contemporaneously with the establishment of diplomatic relations with the People’s Republic of China as the legitimate government of China in 1979, the US withdrew diplomatic recognition of the Republic of China (Taiwan) and terminated the US-ROC defense pact.

Second, the United States has once again demonstrated in its use of military force against Iran and open-ended support of Israel that the Middle East and not the Pacific has priority in the hierarchy of its vital national interests. Will Beijing be deterred from a hostile takeover of Taiwan if a significant portion of US military resources is committed to the Middle East and Europe?

Third, Australia and Japan, America’s key allies in Asia, have rebuffed Washington’s request to clarify their willingness to provide material support in the event of a US-China conflict over Taiwan. The United States would likely be on its own.

Fourth, the United States does not have the financial capacity to fund multiple overlapping wars. In Fiscal Year 2024, the US government had total debt outstanding of $37 trillion, far larger than the size of its economy. Given that interest payments now exceed defense spending, a US commitment to defend Taiwan would be an unsustainable burden that could lead to fiscal meltdown and a weakening of the US dollar—a prospect Washington is unlikely to embrace.

A US-China war over Taiwan is an American bluff—an imagined conflict that will likely not happen—as well as an impediment to defusing the potential of a real US-China trade war. So, it would be far better for Washington to couple the US-China trade agreement currently under negotiations with a fourth joint communiqué acknowledging the logical extension of what it has already conceded that Taiwan reunification is a core national interest of the People’s Republic of China and clarifying that the resolution of Taiwan’s relationship with China is not a vital national interest of the United States.