00:00In the national security strategy, there's a language on Taiwan which has garnered a lot of attention.
00:07It says in regard to the Taiwan Strait, the U.S., quote, does not support any unilateral change.
00:14What do you read that to mean?
00:15So that's, you know, that's been the U.S. policy on China and Taiwan more or less for the past 50 years.
00:23Preserve the status quo.
00:24China says that Taiwan is part of its territory.
00:28Taiwan doesn't see it the same way, obviously.
00:30So no unilateral changes.
00:32That means we would not support Taiwan declaring independence.
00:37And we certainly would take a dim view of China trying to change the status quo by mounting an invasion across the straits.
00:44So I think, you know, the U.S. policy on Taiwan has traditionally been trying to straddle a chasm between the People's Republic of China on the one hand
00:56and the Republic of China on the other, not perfectly satisfying either side.
01:02It seems like we're trying to maintain that balance right now and neither give Taiwan encouragement to do something rash and break off from mainland China
01:14and certainly not giving ammunition to the Chinese Communist Party to do something even more rash and irresponsible and threaten Taiwan by force.
01:24So you do see it as somewhat of a warning to the Chinese government, Chinese Communist Party, don't change the status quo, don't go there.
01:33Absolutely. Yeah. And that's been a longstanding U.S. policy across many different administrations, including ones that don't agree with each other on much.
01:42It would be catastrophic for the world, for the United States, for our leadership in the Indo-Pacific, for Xi Jinping to authorize an invasion of Taiwan.
01:52And he said, the People's Liberation Army needs to be ready to go by 2027.
01:56You know, that's that's just about a year away, a little more than a year away right now.
02:01The way to stop that is deterrence.
02:03We need to be credibly signaling to the Chinese Communist Party that the cost they would have to pay for launching an invasion of Taiwan would be catastrophic.
02:13A military cost, an economic cost, the cost to their economy, the cost to their ability to trade with countries around the world.
02:22We want them to figure that, we want them to conclude that the game is simply not worth a candle, leave well enough alone.
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