Washington, Beijing and the Taiwan question: how Washington lost control of the Indo-Pacific theater

Torn between its Russian, Chinese, Iranian and North Korean issues, American foreign policy has nonetheless revealed, over the decades, a constant hierarchy: the Sino-American rivalry remains the major geopolitical issue that structures Washington’s Asian policy.

With one month to go before the midterm elections, the American election campaign, despite being structured by deep partisan divides, is nonetheless revealing a historical constant: the perception of China as an existential threat stands out as a common denominator among running mates, regardless of their political affiliation. This cross-party consensus – the only one of its kind between Democrats and Republicans – reveals how the Sino-American rivalry has become the structuring matrix of political discourse, where almost everything else is divisive.
No administration, neither Biden’s nor Trump’s, has offered Taipei a clear guarantee. This lack of clarity, presented as a strategic strength, is perceived in Taipei, Tokyo, and Manila as a delayed sign of surrender

A power that is retreating by retreating

Seven long decades; that’s how long Washington has spent patrolling the Taiwan Strait without ever resolving the issue. Seven decades of aircraft carriers, communiqués, and summits. And yet, in 2026, the Taiwan question remains unresolved and is leaning, not toward the promised containment, but toward the exhaustion of the very force that claimed to be containing it. Strategically, such a long military presence without a resolution is not a demonstration of strength. It is an admission of a prolonged failure.

The argument here is so simple, and it’s unsettling precisely because it’s verifiable. The United States is no longer steering the Indo-Pacific chessboard. On the contrary, it’s being manipulated. Every aircraft carrier deployed off Kaohsiung, every joint exercise with Tokyo or Manila, every sanction against Beijing, seems less like a strategy than a reflex. An empire that gesticulates is an empire that doubts itself.

Long presence, short effectiveness

Since the sham mutual defense treaty of 1954, unilaterally denounced in 1979 and subsequently replaced by the calculated ambiguity of the Taiwan Relations Act, Washington has occupied the Indo-Pacific region without ever fully acknowledging its presence. This ambiguity, presented as strategic prudence, is in reality a structural admission: America has never had the means to implement its doctrine. It has maintained bases in Okinawa, Guam, and South Korea, while China patiently built its navy, its DF-21D and DF-26 hypersonic missiles, and its artificial islands in the South China Sea.

Yet, in 2000, the US Navy held undisputed dominance in the Western Pacific. But by 2026, the Chinese Navy will field more warships than the United States Navy, according to the Pentagon’s own estimates published in recent years. This quantitative shift is not merely a technical detail. It is the very foundation upon which the entire American deterrent rested. That foundation has crumbled beneath the feet of those who believed it to be eternal.

Paradoxically, this prolonged presence has not only failed to contain Beijing. It has fractured the very region it claimed to protect. For decades, American bases in Okinawa have fueled popular resentment, repeated incidents, and recurring protests against the foreign military presence. In South Korea and the Philippines, the issue of the American umbrella divides more than it unites. Seventy years of forward operating bases have not produced Indo-Pacific cohesion. They have produced a region held hostage by a containment that is never explicitly stated, torn between fear of China and weariness with America.

Beijing builds, Washington comments

China didn’t need old-fashioned aircraft carriers to change the game. It built an economy that now flows through Southeast Asia, Africa, and Latin America via the Silk Road. It made Taiwan an economic hub so deeply intertwined with its own production system that a sudden break there becomes more costly every year for everyone, including Washington. Meanwhile, the Trump administration rolls out tariffs, threats, and U-turns. Every bombastic announcement is followed by a discreet retreat. This is no longer power diplomacy. It’s mere posturing.

Because a true power doesn’t endlessly negotiate its own credibility. It establishes it once, permanently. Yet, the recent history of the Sino-American relationship is a litany of unfulfilled ultimatums, crossed red lines, and summits that produce empty communiqués. Each episode adds another layer to the cumulative humiliation of a superpower that speaks loudly because it acts weakly.

2027, the horizon that Beijing doesn’t need to rush

US intelligence services have been citing 2027 as the deadline by which the People’s Liberation Army would be capable of launching a large-scale operation on Taiwan. But the crucial point is not this date. The crucial point is that China no longer even needs to reach it to win. In fact, it is already winning through attrition: each aerial incursion into Taiwan’s Defense Identification Zone, each naval exercise around the island, each week that passes without a decisive response, further normalizes the Chinese presence and further trivializes American impotence.

Washington, for its part, is relying on deterrence through uncertainty, which increasingly resembles deterrence by default. No administration, neither Biden’s nor Trump’s, has offered Taipei a clear guarantee. This lack of clarity, presented as a strategic strength, is perceived in Taipei, Tokyo, and Manila as a delayed sign of surrender.

A prediction that is already being written

What is happening in the Taiwan Strait goes beyond Taiwan. It is the barometer of a world order in flux, where the Sino-American rivalry structures all other tensions, with Russia on the European flank, Iran in the Middle East, and North Korea poised for nuclear war. In this global architecture of contestation, Beijing appears as a pole building for the long term. Washington, on the other hand, appears as the one managing the immediate crisis, election after election, without ever laying a lasting foundation.

The prediction is not audacious; it is almost a foregone conclusion. A power that retreats strategically in Asia while simultaneously multiplying its aggressive posturing does not restore its credibility; it accelerates its erosion. Each new gesture from the Trump administration, each punitive tariff, each bellicose speech without credible military backing, writes a new chapter in this predicted decline. History may well remember that it was not a Chinese power grab that sealed America’s fate in the Pacific. It was the methodical exhaustion of a power that mistook presence for control, and noise for strength.

In conclusion, it should be noted that, like the Russo-American, Iranian-American and American-North Korean rivalries, the Sino-American rivalry remains a crucial geopolitical matrix, directly influencing the recompositions of the international order.