The problem is that Taiwan is 20 miles from China and 5,500 to the U.S. (6,500 to the lower 48). It's easy to say that we will defend Taiwan now when the war would be a quick victory. Less so as China continues to close the military gap making it a difficult war. Even less so when victory becomes questionable or impossible.

The US made their commitments when their opponents were at their nadir neglecting that they'd be challenged when the opponents were at their strongest. Walking back those commitments to what the US is willing and able to defend will continue to be the challenge of the 21st century. There needs to be a strategic re-evaluation of what the US should defend and what they can defend.

IMHO, ultimately the either should not or can not defend Eastern Europe bordering Russia, The Caucasus, Saudi Arabia, and Taiwan. How to wiggle out of those commitments without giving Russia, China, & Iran ideas is the tough part.

A bigger concern to me is that Taiwan is probably more disposable to China than it is to the rest of the world. China would significantly benefit its internal semiconductor industry by destroying fabs in Taiwan while the rest of the world would be starved of critical semiconductors, and given the active US sanctions towards Huawei in China... The balance of invade vs don't invade for China regarding Taiwan is slowly shifting.

The possible what-if scenarios arising from unchecked expansion of superpowers is disturbing.

[0] clarified to be within TW relations act, i.e. help TW defend itself, aka, basically no boots on ground in Ukraine tier of promise. US has even less capability of defending TW within first island chain then it does Ukraine. The idea of course is there will be some sort of naval contest, but that will likely change once PRC expands nuclear arsenal to the point of "That’s a world war when Americans and China start shooting at one another".

> USA has gone on record saying it will fall on the sword for Taiwan.

I'll believe that when I see it, under Biden, maybe. But that may also just be posturing and probably won't last longer than the moment that the USA can become independent of Taiwanese manufacturing capabilities at which point it would actually be in the US' interest if Taiwan would no longer be able to produce.