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Fumio Ota

【#1329】Trump’s Appeasement Remarks Could Lead to U.S.-China Conflict

Fumio Ota ／ 2026.01.08 (Thu)


January 5, 2026

　
“Nothing worries me,” U.S. President Donald Trump said in commenting on China’s military exercises around Taiwan late last year. He also said, “I have a great relationship with (Chinese) President Xi (Jinping).” On China’s potential invasion of Taiwan, Trump said “I don’t believe he’s going to be doing it.”

At a time when China is testing how the United States would respond to China’s invasion of Taiwan, such appeasement remarks by Trump may encourage Beijing to see the U.S. as an easy picking and decide to invade Taiwan. It inevitably brings to mind the 1938 Munich Conference, where British and French leaders accepted Adolf Hitler’s demand for the cession of the Sudetenland from Czechoslovakia on condition that he would make no further territorial claims—an act that later became one of the factors leading to the outbreak of World War II.

U.S. has a lax perception on China

The second Trump administration’s National Security Strategy released in December clearly toned down the severity of the attitude toward China from the strategy of the first Trump administration. The U.S. Defense Department’s subsequent annual report on China’s military and security developments, though being appropriate in its substance, made me feel uncomfortable by stating in the preface that “under President Trump’s leadership, relations between the United States and China are stronger than they have been in many years.”

The latest report further said that the Pentagon would build on this progress in part by opening a wider range of military-to-military communications with the Chinese People’s Liberation Army with a focus on strategic stability as well as deconfliction and de-escalation. However, U.S.-China military-to-military communications are not new, but have been underway since the Biden presidency. It is clear that no great hopes can be placed on military-to-military communications with the PLA, in which I was involved as a senior Self-Defense Forces officer. This is because the PLA tries to take advantage of such communications for its information warfare while we intend to build bilateral confidence building measures. Any authoritarian country abuses external military-to-military communications for its own military purposes.

We should coolly watch China’s capabilities and intentions. In fact, China has been enhancing military capabilities unlimitedly, while President Xi has not given up his intention to reunify Taiwan.

Important April U.S.-China summit

The main reason why North Korea decided to invade South Korea in the Korean War in 1950 was that then U.S. Secretary of State Dean Acheson excluded South Korea from the U.S. defense line, leading North Korea to misunderstand that the U.S. had no intention of defending South Korea. The U.S. should not repeat such mistake.

Asked about U.S. responses to China’s possible invasion of Taiwan, former U.S. President Joe Biden explicitly stated or indicated the U.S.’ use of military force on five occasions. In responding to a similar question, President Trump has vowed to raise tariffs on China to 200% without mentioning the use of force. China is closely watching U.S. leaders’ statements. A clear statement that does not lead China to misunderstand U.S. intentions will be required at a U.S.-China summit meeting scheduled for April.

Fumio Ota is a senior fellow and a Planning Committee member at the Japan Institute for National Fundamentals. He is a retired Vice Admiral of the Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force.