The capture of Venezuelan dictator Nicolas Maduro has unleashed a familiar ritual in Washington. Call it the Great Precedent Panic. Pundits are warning that President Donald Trump has handed Xi Jinping a template for the Chinese takeover of Taiwan. Democratic Senator Mark Warner, Vice Chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, asks: “If the United States asserts the right to use military force to invade and capture foreign leaders it accuses of criminal conduct, what prevents China from claiming the same authority over Taiwan’s leadership?”

The concern spans party lines. Rep. Don Bacon, a Nebraska Republican and Air Force veteran, warns that China could “justify an invasion of Taiwan” by pointing to the Maduro snatch.

But this is the wrong debate. It fundamentally misunderstands what has—and hasn’t—constrained China’s ambitions toward Taiwan. And it simultaneously ignores why prolonged American involvement in Venezuela should scare Taiwan. 

Beijing has not refrained from action against Taiwan out of deference to international law and norms. Its restraint has always been driven by harder variables: military readiness, economic consequences, uncertainty about American intervention, and the sheer operational complexity of conquering a well-armed island of 24 million people across 100 miles of open water. 

None of these factors changed when Delta Force helicopters descended on Caracas.

Moreover, Beijing has always regarded Taiwan as an “internal affair,” a renegade province, not a sovereign state. From China’s perspective, any action against Taipei would be a domestic matter. The analogy to Venezuela—an unambiguously foreign country—simply doesn’t apply. China doesn’t need international precedent to assert control over what it considers its own territory.

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So if the precedent argument is overblown, does Venezuela matter for Taiwan at all?

Yes, but not in the way most analysts are suggesting. The real question isn’t whether Trump has emboldened Xi. It’s whether Taiwan should rethink its own assumptions about great-power protection.

Consider what Venezuela reveals about the reliability of........

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