U.S. Military Support for Taiwan in Five Charts

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The United States has been arming Taiwan since the mid-twentieth century, a trend which has increasingly irritated China since Washington broke official ties with Taipei and normalized relations with Beijing in 1979.

China considers the self-ruled island of twenty-four million people a breakaway territory that must be brought under its control, by force if necessary. The United States views Taiwan’s status as undetermined and opposes any unilateral changes to the status quo. It regards Taiwan as a vital economic and security partner that, if conquered by China, could precipitate an unraveling of U.S. power in the Pacific and a broader destabilization of the international order. Foreign policy experts worry a crisis over Taiwan could trigger a war between China and the United States.

How extensive is the U.S.-Taiwan security partnership?

U.S. military support comes primarily through the sale of weapons systems but Washington has in recent years begun to use other tools to bolster Taipei’s defensive capabilities. 

Sales. Since 1950, the United States has sold Taiwan nearly $50 billion in defense equipment and services, with a number of large sales during recent U.S. administrations. 

Only Israel, Japan, and Saudi Arabia purchased more from the United States during that period. However, as of August 2024, Taiwan was reportedly waiting on more than $20 billion worth of U.S. weapons deliveries, including dozens of F-16 fighter jets approved for sale in 2019. (Arms trade experts say that on average it takes from two to five years between purchase and delivery for U.S. weapons.)

Aid. Taiwan was also a significant recipient of U.S. economic and military aid during the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s, up until the United States normalized relations with China in 1979 and abrogated its mutual defense treaty with Taiwan. However, in late 2022, Congress passed historic legislation enabling Taiwan to receive U.S. military aid once again—up to several billion dollars a year in loans and grants. Notably, it also allowed Taiwan for the first time to obtain weapons directly from U.S. defense stocks (via Presidential Drawdown Authority), although some of the early transfers have gone poorly. Ukraine is the only other partner receiving this type of aid.

What is the U.S-Taiwan security relationship today?

The United States does not have formal diplomatic ties with Taiwan. It handles  relations with the island not through an embassy but via the American Institute in Taiwan (AIT), a nonprofit corporation. 

The United States describes Taiwan as a “key partner in the Indo-Pacific.” It does not have a treaty obligation to defend Taiwan and has not clarified as a matter of policy whether it would come to Taiwan’s direct defense if the island were attacked by China, although President Joe Biden has said on four occasions that he would. Washington maintains an intentionally vague policy in this regard—known as “strategic ambiguity”—in contrast to its explicit defense commitments to U.S. treaty allies in the region, namely Australia, Japan, the Philippines, South Korea, and Thailand. Without direct U.S. military intervention, most security analysts say China would be able to conquer Taiwan by force, albeit at a potentially considerable cost.

It is also unknown the extent to which regional U.S. allies would help defend Taiwan in such a scenario, though Chinese aggression against Taiwan would raise acute security concerns for them as well. The United States maintains major military bases in both Japan and South Korea, which collectively host more than seventy-five thousand U.S. service members. “Japan is both the most essential and potentially willing ally because a Chinese attack on Taiwan poses the starkest threat to its security,” reported a 2023 CFR independent task force.

Why does the United States support Taiwan?

Supporting Taiwan’s self-defense capabilities and preserving peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait is important to the United States for a number of reasons:

Security. The fall of Taiwan to Chinese forces could lead to a serious erosion of U.S. power in the region, including a weakening of its alliances, many analysts say. Some argue that if the United States does not defend Taiwan, U.S. allies could come to question their reliance on Washington and either pursue strategic autonomy, potentially including nuclear weapons, or bandwagon with China. “It is not only Taiwan’s future at stake but also the future of the first island chain and the ability to preserve U.S. access and influence throughout the Western Pacific,” writes CFR’s Taiwan Task Force. 

Economic. Taiwan is a critical hub in the global manufacturing industry, producing more than half of the world’s semiconductors, including nine out of ten of the most advanced chips. Analysts estimate that a Chinese blockade or war over Taiwan could do as much as $10 trillion in damage to the global economy (or 10 percent of global gross domestic product [GDP]).

Political. Taiwan began its transition away from military rule in the 1980s and has since become one of the region’s most robust democracies, according to watchdog groups. A takeover by China would almost certainly deprive the people of Taiwan of many of their rights as well as extinguish a thriving democracy, Western analysts say.

International Order. If China used force to try to annex Taiwan, coming on the heels of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, it would be another example of an authoritarian power attempting to unilaterally redraw borders. If China were to succeed, it could significantly undermine a pillar of international order.  

What weapons has the United States provided?

Taiwan has acquired many weapons systems from the United States, its primary military benefactor. (It has also purchased weapons from other countries, such as France and the Netherlands, and produces its own.) 

Notable U.S. platforms include:

Surface ships. Taiwan has four guided-missile destroyers, which it acquired in the mid-2000s, after the ships were decommissioned by the U.S. Navy. It also operates more than a dozen ex-U.S. frigates.

Fighter aircraft. Taiwan has more than 140 of the U.S.-made, single-engine F-16 fighter jets, which it bought in the 1990s. It is waiting on delivery of sixty-six of a more advanced version of the F-16, which it expects to receive by 2026 after various delays. 

Tanks. Taiwan has hundreds of older U.S-made main battle tanks and light tanks. It is also waiting on delivery of more than 100 modern Abrams tanks, the first batch of which is expected late this year. 

Air defense. Taiwan has various U.S.-made missile defense systems, including several Patriot missile batteries, designed to protect against incoming aircraft, cruise, and ballistic missiles.

Artillery, missiles, and drones. Taiwan has also ordered more than three dozen howitzers, 11 HIMARS rocket systems, 100 Harpoon missile systems, 250 Stinger missile systems, several hundred Javelin anti-tank missiles, and four Reaper drones.      

China has been preparing for a conflict in the Taiwan Strait for decades, vastly expanding and modernizing its navy—now the world’s largest by ship numbers—air power, and nuclear forces. Whereas Taiwan’s military once had a technological advantage over China’s, today China’s outmatches Taiwan’s both in size and quality, experts say.

But despite China’s advances, U.S. defense officials say it does not yet have the ability to carry out a successful amphibious assault on the island amid a U.S. military intervention on Taiwan’s behalf.

In recent years, some defense strategists have advocated that Taiwan adopt a “porcupine strategy” to bolster its defenses against a much larger aggressor. This strategy calls for greater investments in smaller, more mobile, affordable, and resilient weapons systems that could survive an initial Chinese air assault and then inflict costly casualties on invading forces.

What’s the history of the U.S.-Taiwan security relationship?

The present U.S.-Taiwan relationship is rooted in the formation of the modern Chinese state in the immediate aftermath of World War II. During the second phase of China’s civil war (1945–1949), the United States supported the nationalist army of Chiang Kai-shek in its battle against Mao Zedong’s communist forces. The communists won that conflict, seizing control of mainland China in 1949 and forcing the nationalists to retreat to Taiwan.

The United States kept a naval fleet in the Taiwan Strait for the duration of the Korean War (1950–1953), which in effect protected Taiwan from an expected “liberation” attack by Mao’s forces. The U.S. Navy’s departure in early 1953 triggered the First Taiwan Strait Crisis (1954–55), which saw a significant exchange of military strikes between mainland Chinese forces and nationalists stationed on small fortified islands in the strait. A similar crisis again occurred in 1958. While both crises were limited, the United States and Soviet Union both at points warned of their willingness to use nuclear weapons to defend their putative allies in an expanded conflict.  

The United States kept a mutual defense treaty with Taiwan for more than twenty years (1954–1979), a period in which it also stationed thousands of troops there and considered the Republic of China (ROC) the rightful Chinese government. The official U.S.-Taiwan relationship came to an end in 1979 when Washington cut formal diplomatic relations with island authorities, withdrew its forces, and recognized the People’s Republic of China as “the sole legal government of China.” 

What shapes the defense relationship today?

In response to the historic reversal in policy, initiated by the Richard Nixon administration and executed by the Jimmy Carter administration, the U.S. Congress passed the 1979 Taiwan Relations Act (TRA) to establish and codify the informal relationship. The TRA legally commits the United States to providing Taiwan with military support to maintain its self-defense capabilities. It also says the U.S. government will “consider any effort to determine the future of Taiwan by other than peaceful means…of grave concern to the United States.” However, it does not commit the United States to come to Taiwan’s defense if the island is attacked. 

U.S. arms sales remained a point of contention in U.S.-China relations in the ensuing years, and in 1982 the two governments attempted to address it by issuing the so-called Third Communiqué during the Ronald Reagan administration. In the document, the United States said “it intends to reduce gradually its sales of arms to Taiwan,” but it gave no clarity on how quickly that would happen or any deadline when sales would finally cease. China, for its part, affirmed its “fundamental policy of striving for a peaceful reunification to the Taiwan question.” (A classified internal memo written by President Reagan on his interpretation of the communiqué said “the U.S. willingness to reduce its arms sales to Taiwan is conditioned absolutely upon the continued commitment of China to the peaceful solution of the Taiwan-[China] differences.”)

Meanwhile, the Reagan administration issued what is known as Six Assurances to Taiwan [PDF] in an effort to assuage Taipei’s concerns about the new communiqué with Beijing. Among other things, the United States said that the TRA would remain as is, that it would not consult with China about U.S. arms sales to Taiwan, and that there is no set date for U.S. arms sales to end.

“This balance between American and Chinese imperatives illustrates why ambiguity is sometimes the lifeblood of diplomacy,” wrote former U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger in On China. “Much of [U.S.-China] normalization has been sustained for forty years by a series of ambiguities. But it cannot do so indefinitely.”