U.S. President Donald Trump insists “nothing’s changed” in Washington’s policy toward Taiwan. But as Jesse Johnson reported in this newspaper, America’s commander in chief recently questioned whether U.S. forces should “travel 9,500 miles to fight a war” and described a $14 billion arms package for Taipei as “a very good negotiating chip” in dealings with Chinese leader Xi Jinping — remarks that underscore a widening gap between official policy and strategic reality.
As geopolitical currents shift, that gap has become a defining concern for policymakers in Tokyo. For years, Japanese defense planners focused on high-intensity contingencies, especially the possibility of a sudden amphibious invasion of Taiwan. But as the global order hardens into a U.S.-China bipolar system, Japan faces a different, more insidious challenge.
Its most pressing vulnerability is not outright war. It is a gradual squeeze — a scenario in which Chinese sub-threshold coercion intersects with the transactional foreign policy of the second Trump administration, leaving Japan economically constrained and strategically exposed.
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