True in theory, but changes practically nothing in reality.
Taiwan’s true top value to America are, or rather were, threefold, one of which no longer applies.
Firstly, it serves as a primary strategic magnet for China in that Taiwan dominates Chinese military and diplomatic focus. Unless and until Taiwan is reunited with China, it will always be China’s top priority. That buys America valuable time and breathing space in the rest of the world. If America feels pressed by China in Africa, the ME and even Europe now, it would be a hundred times worse if China didn’t need to worry about Taiwan and can instead focus completely on dominating the next century and beyond.
Secondly, it acts as the ultimate failsafe for China to check Chinese growth and power in the most direct way possible - direct war; with the added bonus of being able to easily and convincingly frame China as the indisputable aggressor.
The third benefit was that Taiwan could be played as a card to get valuable concessions out China by America without needing to give up anything of value themselves. All they need to do is get Taiwan to stir shit up and come in offering to calm things down for a price. This third strategy is no longer viable thanks to historic low relations between China and America, and Chinese raw power.
You can see American trying to pull this shit by making extremely provocative moves like landing military aircraft on Taiwan and planning visits by senior officials.
In years past, China would have come to the table to bargain for America to back off. But today, Chinese raw hard power is such that it no longer fears direct military conflict with America over Taiwan, and basically said as much with its blunt and specific rebuff of Blindard Blinken’s position of strength gaff.
That also links back to point 2, in that in the past, military conflict was seen as a viable option because of American conventional military superiority. But even then America’s carefully maintained strategic ambiguity over its commitment to Taiwan allows them to pick and choose whether to fight or not if China did invade.
Furthermore, any war triggered by American troop forward deployments to Taiwan will be hard for even the western MSM to spin as entirely China’s fault. That makes it much harder for American administrations to stomach the enormous US casualty numbers that will be all but assured from such a war, win or loss.
To deploy troops to Taiwan is to declare war on China. There can be no dispute or ambiguity about that. Furthermore, any meaningful scale troop deployments will be impossible to hide from China, so other than being able to determine the precise timing of the war, America really does not gain any meaningful advantage from such a move.
The PLA will not allow American troop ships to land on Taiwan. It will be a Cuban missile crisis like stand off with either the PLAN facing off against the USN in open waters, or China launching a full invasion as US forces are underway with warnings that anything military that comes within a thousand miles of the conflict will be engaged without warning or mercy.
The USN can gather is fleets in advanced in preparation, but that’s no different to today. If America wants a war with China tomorrow, all it needs to do is give Taiwan a call and tell them to declare independence and it will have said war exactly when they want it.
