Ryan Fedasiuk, and Kareem Rifai
President Donald Trump must take decisive steps toward bolstering US alliances in the Indo-Pacific before talks with Xi Jinping in April.
China is testing the Trump administration’s resolve in the Indo-Pacific, probing for cracks in America’s alliance architecture while calibrating how far it can push before Trump’s state visit next April. The administration’s efforts to build a more stable relationship with China have created tactical space for diplomacy on core American interests—but recent weeks have seen Beijing interpret American restraint as permission to escalate grey-zone coercion against Tokyo and Taipei.
The coming months present a narrow window to shore up alliance credibility, signal clear limits to Chinese adventurism, and proceed with US-China diplomacy from a position of alliance cohesion and American strength.
Tokyo’s increasingly explicit warnings that a Taiwan contingency threatens Japanese survival are an accurate accounting of its security environment. Prime Minister Takaichi’s November 7 statement—that PLA use of force against Taiwan could qualify as a “situation threatening Japan’s survival” under the 2015 Peace and Security Legislation—constitutes the most direct Japanese commitment to Taiwan’s defense in modern history.
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