As President Donald Trump prepares for the upcoming summit in Beijing with Chinese Premier Xi Jinping, Taiwan has entered the forefront of American discourse again. Some Americans fear that the two leaders will emerge with a grand bargain that undercuts the island democracy’s freedom of action. Others might wish the Taiwanese well, but they see little reason for Americans to risk their lives or treasure to defend this faraway island.

　　The desire for peace in the Pacific is admirable and widely shared by Americans. Reducing the sources of friction with the Chinese Communist Party over issues such as Taiwan seems to many like the surest way to lessen the chance of war. But the defense of Taiwan is vital for the continuation of American liberty. The possibility of a future nuclear standoff over that island’s fate is sobering, but deterrence is the best way to maintain the peace and protect the American way of life.

　　Ever since it conquered mainland China, the CCP has desired to extend its control across the Taiwan Strait. Many Chinese, even non-communist ones, see the island of Formosa as an integral part of Chinese territory. As Xi Jinping put it during his speech commemorating the CCP’s centennial, “resolving the Taiwan question and realizing China’s complete reunification is a historic mission and an unshakable commitment of the Communist Party of China.”

　　The United States has been the de facto guarantor of Taiwan’s freedom of maneuver since the Seventh Fleet sailed into the Taiwan Strait at the start of the Korean War, and it remains the biggest obstacle to Xi’s ambitions. Even as the relationship between Washington and Beijing improved drastically over the 1970s, Washington prevented China from strong-arming Taiwan into submission. Despite the official policy of “strategic ambiguity,” the implications of American actions about Taiwan—including the Taiwan Relations Act, the six assurances, and other developments, including Joe Biden’s repeated affirmations that the American military would defend Taiwan—are clear.

　　There are many reasons offered for why Americans should risk a nuclear standoff with China over this little island that they do not even officially recognize as sovereign. Many are important but are ultimately insufficient for the demands placed on the American people by this obligation.

　　The most prevalent one is the “silicon shield.” Over the past quarter-century, Taiwanese computer chip manufacturers have become integral to the global economy. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent reminded Davos recently that “the single biggest threat to the world economy, the single biggest point of single failure, is that 97 percent of the high-end chips are made in Taiwan.” A blockade or attack on Taiwan “would be an economic apocalypse.”

　　But there is an obvious way out of this dilemma, which is to make the chips here, or anywhere else outside of China’s missile range. That is harder than it sounds. Even with the $50 billion CHIPS Act and a flood of private investment, the US share of global semiconductor production in 2030 is on track to be the same as it was in 2020. But even the staunchest, green eyeshade-wearing penny pincher might concede that a generational investment in chip production could be cheaper than a nuclear war.

　　Others point out that Taiwan is an outpost of Chinese democracy, and that the island’s de facto independence undermines the CCP’s claim that only it is suitable for governing the Chinese. In other words, Taiwan shows that the CCP’s claims for legitimacy are unfounded and that the Chinese people are better off free.

　　And once again, America can either remain free and prosperous, or become an impoverished garrison state.

　　But even a well-meaning person who wants to see the Chinese as free and prosperous as any American might still object to shielding Taiwan. One could reason, for example, that an ideological challenge to the CCP could threaten the regime’s stability, and this might increase the likelihood of war. Other recent attempts to promote democracy have not been glittering successes either.

　　The economic and democratic arguments are important, and many Americans weigh them very seriously. Bloomberg’s calculation that the economic fallout of the first year of a conflict over Taiwan could dwarf the Covid pandemic shows just how important Taiwan is to American prosperity. And many Americans sympathize deeply with the aspirations of the Taiwanese people to rule themselves in tranquility.

　　But the ultimate reason for deterring Chinese action against Taiwan has little to do with American bottom lines or with Taiwanese freedom. It has much more to do with American freedom.

　　One important fact about Taiwan will persist even if the factories depart the island and democracy goes with it: the geography. Taiwan lies between two of America’s most important Asian allies, Japan and South Korea, and nearly everything they need to sustain industrialized economies. If Taiwan falls into Chinese hands, it will become a formidable outpost from which Chinese ships and submarines can menace merchant vessels destined for either ally. The health and the well-being of the Japanese and South Korean people, to say nothing of their prosperity, will depend on Beijing’s good graces.

　　In the optimistic scenario, Americans will need to endure a split-second nuclear standoff with no end in sight. Tokyo and Seoul could seek leverage against a Chinese blockade or invasion by developing their own nuclear weapons, which they would need to keep on a hair trigger in the relatively close quarters of northeast Asia. The United States and the Soviet Union had many close calls during the Cold War, and that was with each side in a different hemisphere, not on the same continent. This time, Americans would face the prospect of being dragged into a nuclear conflict at a moment’s notice.

　　There’s another, darker possibility. Americans can tell themselves that Taiwan is none of their concern, but China’s absorption of the island would, after 80 years of American policy, significantly undermine American assurances to all allies in the region. Taiwan is not a treaty ally, it’s true. But only a fool would get sidetracked by legalese or hair-splitting distinctions about alliances and treaty obligations. Either the Americans will have proven too fickle and incompetent to secure the peace, or, if China defeats the US military while conquering the island, too weak. It is possible that Japanese and Korean antipathy to China will keep them independent, but the much more prudent option for both would be to cut a deal with Beijing that will necessarily undermine American interests.

　　The implications for Americans of a China-dominated East Asia would be immense and disturbing. Beijing would effectively control the economies of two of the most dynamic industrialized countries on the planet, and there would be little to prevent it from extending its domination southward across Asia. Collectively, the ASEAN member states have a large population and a significant economy, but they are too divided and individually weak to resist China. The next possible line of defense would run from India to Australia and then up to Hawaii or perhaps Guam.

　　The old Chinese-centered tributary system would emerge, but this time, Beijing would know and police the internal conduct of its subordinates. The CCP already routinely uses economic leverage to interfere in other countries’ politics. For example, in 2010, China blocked Japan from receiving rare earth minerals because of a dispute over the Senkaku Islands and restricted imports from Norway after Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo was awarded the Nobel Prize. A decade later, it imposed trade penalties on Australia for, among other things, allowing its citizens to criticize Chinese policies.

　　China has used similar tactics against American private companies. China pressured Marriott to fire an employee for liking a post about free Tibet. NBA commissioner Adam Silver said that the Chinese government tried to strong-arm him into firing Houston Rockets general manager Daryl Morey for supporting Hong Kong’s pro-democracy movement.

　　American liberties would necessarily be squeezed further by a more powerful CCP. American companies that want to conduct business with China or any of its subordinate states would need to police their employees’ conduct, and quite likely their customers’ too. China’s social credit system might not formally cover the globe, but it effectively would.

　　This is the future Franklin D. Roosevelt foresaw if the great adversary of his day, Nazi Germany, had conquered the center of global economic activity. As he warned his fellow citizens,

　　Wages and hours would be fixed by Hitler. The dignity and power and standard of living of the American worker and farmer would be gone. … What happens to all farm surpluses without any foreign trade? The American farmer would get for his products exactly what Hitler wanted to give. … The whole fabric of working life as we know it—business and manufacturing, mining and agriculture—all would be mangled and crippled under such a system. Yet to maintain even that crippled independence would require permanent conscription of our manpower. … Yes, even our right of worship would be threatened. The Nazi world does not recognize any God except Hitler; for the Nazis are as ruthless as the Communists in the denial of God. What place has religion which preaches the dignity of the human being, the majesty of the human soul, in a world where moral standards are measured by treachery and bribery and fifth columnists?

　　Roosevelt’s time was darker than the present one. As he spoke, the most destructive war in human history had already commenced, and the United States had initiated the first peacetime draft in its history. He was desperately rallying American public opinion not to join the fray, but to keep Great Britain free from Nazi domination. He did not have strong allies like today’s Japan near the center of the action. And he did not have a nuclear deterrent to stay Hitler’s hand either.

　　The fiendish genie of war is still in his bottle. And once again, America can either remain free and prosperous, or become an impoverished garrison state, if it helps one lonely island fend off a voracious, continent-devouring behemoth.