US should help Taiwan defend itself from Chinese aggression, says New York-based think tank

Taipei [Taiwan], February 13 (ANI): Scholars from a US think tank has suggested that President Joe Biden's administration should make clear that Washington will not try to change Taiwan's status and work with its allies to defend Taiwan against Chinese aggression.
"The US strategic objective regarding Taiwan should be to preserve its political and economic autonomy, its dynamism as a free society and US-allied deterrence, without triggering a Chinese attack on Taiwan," said Robert Blackwill and Philip Zelikow of the New York-headquartered Council on Foreign Relations in a report, reported Focus Taiwan.
Beijing claims full sovereignty over Taiwan, a democracy of almost 24 million people located off the southeastern coast of mainland China, despite the fact that the two sides have been governed separately for more than seven decades.
China has continued to regard Taipei as a "breakaway province" and has said that it wouldn't mind using force to claim it.
The report argued that US should focus on ways to prevent war over Taiwan, as the latter is becoming the "most dangerous flashpoint" in the world for a possible war involving the US, China and other major powers.
Focus Taiwan cited experts calling on Washington to plan beforehand for any disruption and mobilisation that could follow a wider conflict, but without assuming that such a war would or should escalate to China, Japan or the US itself.
It is not politically or militarily realistic to count on a US military defeat of Chinese assaults on Taiwan, without any sort of coordination with allies in the region, they said.
It is also unrealistic to presume that after such a clash, the US would or should simply escalate to some sort of wide-scale war against China with comprehensive blockades or strikes against targets on China, they continued.
The scholars finally proposed that Washington should come up with a realistic strategic objective for Taiwan to sustain the political balance that has kept a balance across the Taiwan Strait for the last 50 years, reported Focus Taiwan.
Taiwan returned to the forefront of US-China tensions last weekend when Beijing sent more than two dozen warplanes into the self-governing island's air defence identification zone in a 48-hour period.
While the frequency of such drills has increased in recent years, the timing and the composition of the latest formations -- mostly fighter jets and bombers -- appeared intended to send a message to the new administration in Washington, reported CNN. (ANI)