The Extremely Narrow China Debate in the GOP

Ramaswamy’s fight with other China hawks is a strange one because he has been the most aggressive candidate in promising to make an explicit promise to defend Taiwan.

The Wall Street Journal rehearses a very tired argument about Taiwan:

Mr. Ramaswamy says “the U.S. currently doesn’t even recognize Taiwan as a nation,” but treaty allies like Japan and the Philippines would think U.S. promises are worthless if America cashiers an old friend and free people in the region.

Like most other hawkish appeals to credibility, this one doesn’t make any sense. Treaty allies don’t judge U.S. commitments to them by how the U.S. treats non-allies. If the U.S. chose not to intervene in the event of an attack on Taiwan, one thing we can be reasonably confident about is that it would not significantly harm U.S. alliances in the region. It is much more likely that treaty allies would draw closer to the U.S. if something like that happened. Far from judging U.S. promises to be worthless, they would invest them with even more importance than they already do.