"Currently, the way that the United States and Taiwan have approached
messaging about risk is wrong. ...
The practice of talking down to the Taiwanese public must end. Despite extensive discourse about invasion threats, polling has consistently
shown that Taiwanese citizens maintain different threat perceptions from
those assessed by Washington. Instead of dismissing these views, U.S. policymakers need to understand why this disconnect exists. The true
risk is that if the United States and Taiwan continue on this course and
the time for true panic arises, Taipei, and more importantly, the people
of Taiwan, aren’t likely to answer the phone.
Essential to Washington’s complicated relationship with Taiwan is the messaging that occurs within the United States. There is no shortage of articles explaining why Taiwan matters, or even why it really, really
matters. There are countless definitive remedies prescribing what Taiwan
needs and how the United States should go about making it happen.
However, much of this discussion is predicated on the ability to predict China’s movements, a flawed assumption that risks disastrous policy
failure.
The problem of communicating risk comes from both ends: like Washington,
Taipei shares some of the blame. Continuous posting about Air Defense Identification Zone violations by China’s military as a metric to assess Beijing’s movements and predict action is full of confounders. We saw
this after the hype over balloon overflights into Taiwanese airspace in
late 2023 and early 2024 was shown to be little more than hot air. This
pattern does nothing but reinforce the cycle of creating urgency over a potential threat and not following through with any action. ...
Like the little boy who cried wolf, ringing the alarm bell every time
China commits a technical but ultimately quotidian violation sets Taiwan
up to miss legitimate threats and erodes U.S. credibility in the
region."
https://thediplomat.com/2024/12/left-on-read-americas-taiwan-warning-crisis/
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