In an article, "Taiwan's Defense Budget: How Taipei's Free Riding Risks War," released in Policy Analysis, September 13, 2007, Justin Logan and Ted Galen Carpenter suggest that "America should promptly terminate any implied defense commitment to Taiwan."
Said the authors, Taiwan spends far too little on its own defense, in large part because the Taiwanese believe the United States is their ultimate protector. The People's Republic of China has already deployed nearly 1,000 ballistic missiles across the strait from Taiwan, and Beijing's military modernization program appears to be oriented toward credibly threatening military action if Taipei's moves toward independence continue.
It would be dubious enough for the United States to risk war with an emerging great power like China to defend a small client state, even if that state were making a serious effort to provide for its own defense. It would be even worse to incur that risk on behalf of a client state that is not willing to make a robust defense effort. To minimize the risk of a disastrous conflict, America should promptly terminate any implied defense commitment to Taiwan
Justin Logan is a foreign policy analyst and Ted Galen Carpenter is vice president for defense and foreign policy studies at the Cato Institute and author of America's Coming War with China: A Collision Course over Taiwan (2005).