In recent remarks, Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi articulated a position on Taiwan that diverges sharply and importantly from the prevailing global narrative surrounding cross-strait tensions.
While much of the world remains stuck in the rhetorical frame Beijing has worked tirelessly to propagate — that Taiwan is an internal Chinese matter, a “reunification” issue, and therefore beyond the scope of international concern — Ms. Takaichi rejects this premise outright.
Instead, she grounds Japan’s position not in abstract questions of sovereignty or historical claims but rather in the hard, geographic, strategic realities of Japan’s security environment. In doing so, she provides a model for how democratic nations, especially the United States, should reconceptualize their stake in Taiwan’s future.
Beijing’s preferred narrative — that Taiwan “belongs to China” and that other states should keep out — has long influenced global discourse, even in democracies that are skeptical of Chinese intentions.
This framing subtly pressures the international community into viewing Taiwan’s security through the lens of Chinese nationalism rather than through the lens of the Indo-Pacific’s geopolitical balance. The result has been a timid diplomatic vocabulary. Countries say they “oppose unilateral changes to the status quo,” “support peaceful resolution” or “maintain strategic ambiguity,” but they rarely articulate what Taiwan’s fate means for their own national security.
Ms. Takaichi cuts through all this. She does not waste time arguing about China’s historical claims or Taiwan’s political status. Instead, she focuses with remarkable clarity on the implications for Japan. Taiwan, she points out, lies less than 70 miles from Japan’s Yonaguni Island. Key Japanese sea lanes, energy shipments and defense perimeters intersect directly with Taiwan’s air and maritime space.
A Chinese-controlled Taiwan would not simply shift the balance of power in East Asia; it also would place the People’s Liberation Army directly astride Japan’s southern flank, threatening the Ryukyu Islands, constraining Japan’s maritime access and extending Beijing’s anti-access/area-denial envelope deep into the Western Pacific.
In other words, if Taiwan falls, Japan’s security collapses with it.
This is a fundamentally different argument from the moral or ideological justifications often invoked to support Taiwan. It is not rooted in sympathy for a vibrant democracy under threat, though that sympathy certainly exists in Japan. Nor is it framed as a matter of upholding “international norms,” though those norms matter to Tokyo. Instead, Ms. Takaichi asserts that defending Taiwan is essential to defending Japan. The stakes are direct, material and unmistakably national.
This reframing is significant for two reasons. First, it avoids getting trapped in Beijing’s preferred language of “China’s sovereignty,” or “reunification,” which functions as a rhetorical snare. Once foreign governments accept that the Taiwan issue is fundamentally about Chinese ownership, every argument afterward becomes defensive, hedged or constrained.
Second, it offers a template for other democracies to articulate their own interests clearly and unapologetically. Washington, in particular, should pay attention.
The long-standing U.S. approach to Taiwan has emphasized deterrence, democracy, and the preservation of peace and stability. These are worthy principles, but they do not fully express the concrete U.S. national interests at stake.
Like Japan, the United States faces a dramatically altered strategic landscape if Taiwan falls under Beijing’s control.
Besides the obvious loss of Taiwan’s global chipmaking preeminence to communist China, which would certainly cripple the U.S. economy, a People’s Liberation Army-controlled Taiwan would rupture the first island chain, allowing China to project military power unhindered into the Central Pacific.
It would give China the last strategic chokepoint in the region and connect China’s East China Sea claims to its South China Sea ambitions, essentially rendering the entire West Pacific under Beijing’s control.
It would also undermine American alliances with Japan and the Philippines, threaten Guam and destroy U.S. credibility as a security guarantor in Asia.
It would accelerate the regional collapse of democratic self-confidence and embolden authoritarian expansion elsewhere. Most important, it would allow Beijing to challenge U.S. naval and air dominance in ways that would directly affect American economic and security interests for decades.
Yet Washington still frames the Taiwan question largely in terms of supporting a fellow democracy or resisting coercion. These are worthy goals but are insufficient for mobilizing sustained national commitment.
The United States needs the same kind of strategic clarity that Ms. Takaichi has articulated: Taiwan’s defense is not merely Taiwan’s problem, nor even primarily China’s problem. It is an American problem, with immediate consequences for America’s own security. By viewing Taiwan through the lens of self-interest rather than altruism, Washington can more effectively explain, both to itself and to its allies, why the island matters.
It is not simply about protecting a democracy or avoiding conflict. It is about preventing a sweeping shift in the global balance of power that would leave the United States less secure, less influential and less able to shape the international order.
Ms. Takaichi’s argument is therefore not just a reminder of Japan’s geographic vulnerability. It is also a strategic invitation to the United States to see Taiwan in a more realistic light.
Taiwan’s defense is in Japan’s national interest and in America’s as well. Beijing hopes the world will continue debating Taiwan’s “status.”
Ms. Takaichi suggests that democratic nations should instead focus on their own interests, their own geography and their own security. Washington should heed that advice. The defense of Taiwan is, in the most practical and profound sense, a defense of America’s future.