Taiwan says 'impossible' for US to abandon Indo-Pacific – DW – 03/04/2025
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Taiwan says it will increase its defense spending and help its semiconductor industry expand to the US — both issues that Trump had complained about.

Summary

Taiwan’s Defense Minister Wellington Koo said the US will not abandon the Indo-Pacific, calling it a “core national interest.”

Heightened fears arose after a Trump-Zelenskyy exchange raised questions about Washington’s reliability.

Taiwan plans to boost defense spending and assist TSMC’s US expansion, partly addressing Trump’s earlier complaints.

Trump also urged Taiwan to raise its defense budget to 10% of GDP, far above its current 2.45%.

With China’s ongoing threats, Taipei sees its partnership with the US as essential for maintaining regional stability.

  • andrew0@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
    31·
    8 hours ago

    It’s a bit short-sighted to say that Trump is the one calling in shots here, specifically to weaken the US. It is pretty clear that he is following the plan put forward by the Heritage Foundation word by word. If I understood correctly, the idea is to make the American economy more resilient at the expense of all of its (poor) citizens. Once that is done, they can then leverage their safe zone to further influence policies in these countries. For example, get the EU to lower regulations, so American companies can extract more wealth.

    Here is a quote from the actual “Project 2025 Mandate for Leadership” PDF:

    Needed reforms

    […]

    Increase allied conventional defense burden-sharing. U.S. allies must take far greater responsibility for their conventional defense. U.S. allies must play their part not only in dealing with China, but also in dealing with threats from Russia, Iran, and North Korea.

    1. Make burden-sharing a central part of U.S. defense strategy with the United States not just helping allies to step up, but strongly encouraging them to do so.
    2. Support greater spending and collaboration by Taiwan and allies in the Asia–Pacific like Japan and Australia to create a collective defense model.
    3. Transform NATO so that U.S. allies are capable of fielding the great majority of the conventional forces required to deter Russia while relying on the United States primarily for our nuclear deterrent, and select other capabilities while reducing the U.S. force posture in Europe.
    4. Sustain support for Israel even as America empowers Gulf partners to take responsibility for their own coastal, air, and missile defenses both individually and working collectively.
    5. Enable South Korea to take the lead in its conventional defense against North Korea.

    […]

    They are engineering most of these situations that we’ve seen in the media specifically to make the ideas more digestible to the average population. See the Zelenskyy case: “This is going to be great television” - the guy is not even hiding it.

    On one hand, Taiwan is right to say that the US won’t abandon them. However, this sort of “theatrics” is not over, and they will come up with a reason to scare Taiwan into investing a lot more in defense, specifically to prepare them in a fight to destabilize China.

    It’s truly sad that this administration is now in power to push these ideas. The average American is going to become much poorer and hateful due to all protections previously put in place being dismantled. Hopefully people wake up and kick them out of office, but the damage done to foreign relationships is already done.