US President Donald Trump returned from Beijing signalling he may withhold a $14 billion weapons package for Taiwan, after wide-ranging talks with Chinese President Xi Jinping in which the two leaders confronted one of the most dangerous fault lines in global geopolitics.
The summit, held in Beijing this week, produced no dramatic rupture but left Taiwan’s government, and American allies across Asia, unsettled by Trump’s willingness to discuss arms sales to Taipei directly with Beijing, and by his apparent reluctance to risk conflict over an island he described as a distant priority.
Trump Signals He May Block the $14 Billion Taiwan Weapons Package
Speaking to reporters aboard Air Force One on the journey back to Washington, US President Donald Trump said he was uncertain whether he would approve the long-delayed arms package, which includes missiles and air defence interceptors and has been held up by his administration for months.
“The last thing we need right now is a war that’s 9,500 miles away,” Trump told reporters on the plane back to Washington.
The Taiwan Arms Deal package, valued at $14 billion, forms part of a broader $25 billion appropriation that Taiwan’s parliament only finalised earlier this month, after months of procedural delays.
A separate $11 billion tranche had already been approved by Trump late last year. That earlier deal reportedly prompted Xi to warn Trump against further arms deliveries to Taiwan in a telephone call in February.
Trump Dismisses 1982 Six Assurances as Outdated
The decision to discuss arms sales with Beijing at all drew immediate scrutiny, given that the US has formally committed, under the 1982 “six assurances” policy, not to consult China on weapons transfers to Taiwan. Trump acknowledged the existence of that commitment, but appeared to set it aside.
“What am I going to do, say I don’t want to talk to you about it because I have an agreement wrote in 1982? No, we discussed arms sales,” Trump said.
“I’ll be making decisions,” he added, before noting that his priority was to avoid a war.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio, seeking to limit the diplomatic fallout, affirmed that official US policy on Taiwan remained unchanged.
Why Xi Opened His Beijing Summit Speech With a 2,500-Year-Old Greek War
Before the two leaders reached Taiwan, Xi set a philosophical tone for the summit with a reference that caught many observers off guard. In his opening remarks on Thursday, the Chinese president invoked the Peloponnesian War, the decades-long conflict between Athens and Sparta that began in 431BC, asking whether the world’s two dominant powers could avoid repeating that ancient catastrophe.
“Can China and the United States transcend the so-called ‘Thucydides Trap’ and forge a new paradigm for major-power relations?” Xi JJinping said.
What Is the Thucydides Trap and Why Does It Matter for the US-China Rivalry?
The Thucydides Trap is a concept drawn from the writing of the ancient Greek historian Thucydides, who documented the ruinous war between Athens and Sparta in the fifth century BC. His central observation was stark: it was not ambition or aggression alone that made the conflict inevitable, but fear. Sparta, the established power, grew so threatened by the rapid rise of Athens that war became, in his telling, unavoidable.
In modern foreign policy, the term has been applied directly to the US-China relationship. As China’s economic and military power has grown to rival that of the United States, scholars and strategists have asked whether the same dynamic, a rising power unsettling an entrenched one, is once again making conflict structurally likely rather than merely possible.
The concept has featured in the commentary of figures including Trump’s former chief strategist Steve Bannon.
Xi Jinping has invoked the reference before in diplomatic settings, but deploying it at the opening of a summit with Trump, with Taiwan already the most volatile item on the agenda, carried particular weight. It was, observers noted, less an academic aside than a pointed signal about how Beijing frames the entire trajectory of the bilateral relationship.
Xi’s Direct Warning: Taiwan Missteps Could Push Both Nations Toward Conflict
The philosophical overture gave way to a direct warning. Xi told Trump that Taiwan remained the single most consequential issue between the two countries, and that a mishandled moment could prove catastrophic.
“The Taiwan question is the most important issue in China-US relations,” Xi said.
“If mishandled, the two nations could collide or even come into conflict, pushing the entire China-US relationship into a highly perilous situation,” he added.
The tone shifted at a state banquet held the same evening, where Xi adopted a more conciliatory register, suggesting that Chinese national renewal and American resurgence were not incompatible.
“Achieving the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation and making America great again can totally go hand in hand and advance the wellbeing of the whole world,” Xi said.
Tokyo and Taipei Alarmed as Trump Reframes the Taiwan Calculus
The Beijing summit’s implications were felt well beyond the negotiating table. Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi, who has maintained a hawkish posture on Taiwan, found her position increasingly at odds with the direction of US policy. Trump called Takaichi from Air Force One to provide what she described as a “detailed” briefing on his talks with Xi.
Taiwan’s government in Taipei had entered the summit fearing Trump might agree to alter official US policy on the island, potentially to express explicit opposition to Taiwanese independence. That did not happen. But Trump reinforced a perception that Taiwan occupies a far higher position in Xi’s hierarchy of concerns than it does in his own.
Donald Trump also indicated he would need to speak with the Taiwanese leadership about the arms question, noting he would have to talk to “the person who is running Taiwan,” a remark that risked provoking Beijing given that any direct contact with President Lai Ching-te would represent a significant diplomatic provocation for China.
Did Trump Just Navigate the Thucydides Trap, or Step Deeper Into It?
Trump, for his part, addressed XiJinping’s suggestion that the US might be a nation in decline, rejecting the characterisation with characteristic force on social media.
“Two years ago, we were, in fact, a Nation in decline,” Trump posted. “Now, the United States is the hottest Nation anywhere in the world, and hopefully our relationship with China will be stronger and better than ever before.”
Whether Donald Trump’s reluctance to arm Taiwan represents a pragmatic effort to avoid superpower collision, or a concession that emboldens Beijing to press harder on the island’s future, is a question that will define the next phase of the most consequential bilateral relationship of the 21st century.
