Editor's note: Zhou Wenxing is a research fellow at Huazhi Institute for Global Governance, Nanjing University, and a former Asia Fellow at John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University. The article reflects the author's opinions, and not necessarily the views of CGTN.

President Joe Biden's recent decision to withdraw U.S. troops from Afghanistan has had some important repercussions. American political circles are hotly debating the huge geopolitical impact which some people compare with the 1975 U.S. withdrawal from Saigon, the capital city of South Vietnam. As the criticism of the U.S. abandonment of Afghanistan continues to mount, people began to sum up a lesson from this event.

For Taiwan authorities, the lesson should be profound for the leader Tsai Ing-wen, who sought the alleged support from the U.S. and Japan to confront the Chinese mainland. However, given the U.S. retreat from the battlefield where it had fought against the Taliban for over 20 years, will it abandon Taiwan one day? The answer is obvious.

In fact, the U.S. government has so far abandoned Taiwan twice – the first time was on the eve of the Korean War in 1950. Facing the fact that the Chinese People's Liberation Army was about to sail across the Taiwan Strait to take over the island, then U.S. President Harry S. Truman announced that the U.S. would no longer interfere in China's civil war and prepared to withdraw from the Strait. However, the sudden outbreak of the Korean War provided an opportunity for the Truman administration to intervene again in China's domestic affairs. Truman sent the Seventh Fleet to the Strait, followed by the U.S. "remilitarization" of Taiwan.

The second time was in 1979 when the U.S., led by the Nixon Administration, established diplomatic relations with China in order to confront the aggressive Soviet Union. At the end of 1979, President Jimmy Carter signed the Joint Communiqué on the Establishment of Diplomatic Relations with the Chinese government, switching U.S. diplomacy from Taiwan under the rule of Chiang Kai-shek to the Chinese mainland.

It is worth noting that some in the U.S. policy circles have long been advocating the "abandonment of Taiwan." These people, composed of former American government officials and policy researchers, believe that the U.S. abandonment of Taiwan can better serve its national interests, reducing the U.S. strategic overdraft on the Taiwan issue and also achieving reconciliation with the Chinese government.

In the context of the competition between China and the U.S., the latter is doubling down on its efforts to improve connections with the Taiwan region so as to seek a so-called strategic advantage that could be utilized by American political elites when dealing with the Chinese mainland. In this context, the "abandonment of Taiwan" argument seems a little out of place, but it is not out of reach, either.

From history, we can learn that it was for the sake of its own interests that the U.S. abandoned Taiwan twice. It is then safe to conclude that this will happen again when Washington finds that its "security commitment" to Taiwan risks more than it benefits, thereby harming its national interests.

The U.S. retreat from Afghanistan this time, along with its decision to abandon Kurdish fighters in Syria in 2019 and to withdraw from South Vietnam in 1975, as well as what Taiwan experienced in 1979, all highlight the lack of strategic credibility in American foreign affairs. The U.S. would choose to intervene in any issue it finds favorable to its national interests, but would retreat whenever it finds its interests are in danger. This should be a warning to Taiwan and its authorities.

To avoid being abandoned and hence falling into an uncertain and embarrassing situation, the Taiwan authorities would do better to formulate their policies based on a rational and pragmatic attitude, and plan their way on their own.

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