TAIPEI: The United States cannot abandon the Indo-Pacific because the region is part of its \u201ccore national interests,\u201d Taiwan\u2019s Defense Minister Wellington Koo said amid concerns about US security commitments to Taiwan.
\nThe White House clash between Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and US President Donald Trump, which plunged ties between Kyiv and its top military backer to a new low, has renewed concerns in Taiwan about Washington\u2019s security commitment at a time when China is ramping up its military pressure to assert its sovereignty claims over the democratic island.
\n\u201cWe indeed noticed the fast-changing and tricky international situation and deeply understand that we can\u2019t just talk about values but not national interests,\u201d Koo told reporters at a briefing on Monday when asked whether the US is still a reliable security partner for Taiwan.
\n\u201cSo we must ask: keeping the peace and stability in the Indo-Pacific region including the status quo in the Taiwan Strait and the South China Sea, is that a core US national interest?\u201d Koo asked.
\n\u201cI think it is impossible for the United States to retreat from the Indo-Pacific because it is its core national interest.\u201d
\nKoo said \u201cusing deterrence and strength to achieve peace\u201d has been the long-standing consensus between Taipei and Washington, and that stability in the region is important for the United States, both economically and geopolitically.
\nThe United States is Taiwan\u2019s most important international backer and arms supplier despite the lack of formal diplomatic ties between Washington and Taipei.
\nTaiwan, which strongly rejects China\u2019s sovereignty claim, enjoyed support from the first Trump administration. But Trump unnerved Taiwan on the campaign trail by calling for it to pay more for US security guarantees.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
TAIPEI: The United States cannot abandon the Indo-Pacific because the region is part of its \u201ccore national interests,\u201d Taiwan\u2019s Defense Minister Wellington Koo said amid concerns about US security commitments to Taiwan. The White House clash between Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and US President Donald Trump, which plunged ties between Kyiv and its top military …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":77912,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-77891","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77891","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=77891"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77891\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":77914,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77891\/revisions\/77914"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/77912"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=77891"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=77891"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=77891"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}