Bound to Lead: US-Taiwan Relations, Security Networks, and The Future of AUKUS

Abstract

In 2021 the US, UK, and Australia established a trilateral security partnership known as AUKUS. This new security arrangement carries strategic implications for Taiwan's national security and prospects for regional order in Asia. It also leads to empirical puzzles: how will members of multiple alliances respond to rising threats? Under what conditions can a patron state avoid unwanted entrapment and imperial overstretch? This article contributes to existing scholarship in US foreign policy and alliance management in Asia. It offers concrete thoughts on how a US policy of strategic clarity toward Taiwan and its contingency would enhance AUKUS's resilience, while US allies in Asia and Europe could maintain a collective stance of strategic ambiguity that would lessen internal tensions among the member states. Such an arrangement could not only help stabilize Asia's regional order, but also secure Taiwan's autonomy against Beijing's forced reunification.