If we learned anything from the long, exhausting year of 2023, it was that public interest in international affairs is finite.

All eyes were on Ukraine in the first half of the year as the Ukrainian Armed Forces prepared for the major counteroffensive that began early in June. At the Shangri-La Dialogue security conference in Singapore, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin gave a speech that tried to remind Americans of U.S. commitments in the Indo-Pacific. Everything changed on Oct. 7, when Hamas terrorists launched a major attack on southern Israel. The ensuing conflict in Gaza, as the Israeli Defense Forces responded, has devoured all the oxygen of publicity since.

An enduring challenge for policymakers is that events do not patiently wait their turn or line up in an orderly fashion. Taiwan’s presidential election on Jan. 13 is a timely reminder that this is a ticking timebomb in the South China Sea.

The Chinese leader, Xi Jinping, is determined to make progress on his country’s claim to Taiwan: in 2019, he refused to rule out the use of force to achieve what the Chinese regime regards as “reunification,” and in 2022 the government published its first white paper on Taiwan in more than 20 years. The paper encouraged Taiwan to become a special administrative region of the People’s Republic of China (PRC), and, unlike previous statements in 1993 and 2000, omitted a pledge that it “will not send troops or administrative personnel to be based in Taiwan.”

An attempted seizure of Taiwan by........

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