A People’s Liberation Army (PLA) attack on Taiwan is “unlikely in the near future” but “not impossible”, given the risks of misperception and miscommunication with the US under President Donald Trump, a British think tank has warned.
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The US–China relationship is “more strained than it has ever been at any other point in the 21st century”, according to the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS), which published its latest Asia-Pacific Regional Security Assessment on Wednesday.
The release of the report’s 2025 edition comes ahead of this week’s Shangri-La Dialogue, Asia’s premier annual defence summit held in Singapore and co-organised by the IISS.
Tensions between Washington and Beijing over issues such as trade, technology and Taiwan were setting the tone of a relationship characterised by “deep mutual distrust and a lack of dialogue mechanisms”, the report said.
It noted some tactical improvements during the previous Biden administration, such as the resumption of military-to-military dialogue and an agreement not to include artificial intelligence in nuclear decision-making, but cautioned that these were unlikely to “significantly alter the strategic direction of the two great powers” during Trump’s second term in office.
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“Trump’s first term [2017-2021] saw the US launch its first Indo-Pacific strategy in 2017, which made clear that the region had become a priority for Washington. Central to this strategy was an acknowledgement that Chinese coercion and influence undermined the interests of the US and countries in the Asia-Pacific,” the report said.