Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada — More than a few analysts would say that the Taiwan Strait is where the fate of Beijing’s program for hegemony over the Indo-Pacific, and likely beyond, will be proved or torn to tatters. There’s a challenge of epochal proportions taking shape, and Western democracies are trying to make up for lost time with a bevy of new policies to stave off the worst-case scenario.
One bellwether of Western resolve to confront this threat came last week at the Halifax International Security Forum, where defense-policy elites convened — and where, naturally, the Chinese Communist Party’s designs on Taiwan were at front of mind. But public discussion about the cross-strait invasion threat was more muted than one might expect, showing how talk about Taiwan still elicits extreme caution from U.S. military officials — and that, even on the turf of an allied democracy, hosting a delegation from the country could conceivably have consequences.
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