If the PRC should actually decide to invade, it is going to be extremely difficult to hold that off on their own for an extended period of time. Which means they need allies who can rapidly deploy a sufficiently large force to stabilise the situation.
But the only way to get there is with a naval force, and air supremacy would likely be critical to the outcome of that fight, which means you need someone with a large carrier fleet, and that is pretty much a pool of one.
Without US help, there is very little hope that Taiwan would not be overrun sooner or later. Their only real hope would be a nuclear weapons programme that would allow them to credibly threaten to nuke Beijing if invaded. But the PRC would never let it get that far and would make sure to strike before that could be completed.
Certainly ultra-secret nuclear program makes sense. Perhaps working with another country with development abroad so there is nowhere directly related for China to strike in Taiwan (the calculus for “we attacked a weapons development facility in Taiwan” is different from “we attacked Taiwan because they are participating in weapons development in the Philippines)
Probably also increased military and economic ties to South Korea and Australia, and an effort to build a NATO of the area, absent the US, perhaps under ASEAN. Or something new.
It’s a tough problem but it’s a real problem and I don’t see how Taiwan could ever go back to trusting the US to defend democracies facing invasion.
There is a trivial alternative that military strategists have been suggesting for decades. For a nation of 20+ M, having a reservist army of 1M would be feasible and make the island impossible to invade even if the rest of Earth would join forces to do that.
If the PRC should actually decide to invade, it is going to be extremely difficult to hold that off on their own for an extended period of time. Which means they need allies who can rapidly deploy a sufficiently large force to stabilise the situation.
But the only way to get there is with a naval force, and air supremacy would likely be critical to the outcome of that fight, which means you need someone with a large carrier fleet, and that is pretty much a pool of one.
Without US help, there is very little hope that Taiwan would not be overrun sooner or later. Their only real hope would be a nuclear weapons programme that would allow them to credibly threaten to nuke Beijing if invaded. But the PRC would never let it get that far and would make sure to strike before that could be completed.