Donald Trump has recently told Bloomberg News that Taiwan should “pay us for defense” if it expects military protection in the event of any Chinese attack against what Beijing sees as a renegade province.

Trump also stated that the “immensely wealthy” Taiwan has “done nothing” for the United States — ignoring Taiwan’s crucial role as a manufacturer of high-end semiconductor chips and implying that the United States has no strategic reason to care about the fate of the island polity of 23 million souls.

These comments may sound like the usual Trump bluster. In the course of American politics, since they were uttered a few weeks ago, they may also have already been largely forgotten.

But they will not be soon forgotten in Asia.

Former President Trump regularly berates European NATO nations for not paying their fair share for their defense and also has similarly criticized South Korea (in that latter case, quite unfairly). But the comments about Taiwan are much worse.

Deterring a Chinese attack on Taiwan is almost certainly harder than deterring a Russian attack on NATO territory or a North Korean attack on South Korea. Within NATO, the front-line states closest to Russia are almost all spending what they have promised (at least 2 percent of gross domestic product) on their militaries, so the countries most exposed to hypothetical Russian attacks are not guilty of free-riding.

Moreover, Russia’s military is currently bogged down in Ukraine. In the........

© The Hill