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The great tragedy is that this is all America's fault. They shut down Taiwan's nuclear weapons program back in the 1980s! They shut it down twice, to be precise, there was another secret attempt at becoming a turnkey nuclear power. The US reasoned that Taiwan wasn't being threatened with nuclear weapons, that it would provoke China, that it wasn't helpful...
People speak now about Taiwan developing asymmetric weapons, area-denial missiles and so on. There is one asymmetric area-denial weapon that is overwhelmingly powerful as a deterrent and in action. The US prevented Taiwan from developing it. A nuclear Taiwan is surely safe from Chinese attack.
And now if they try anything like nuclearising now, the Chinese will smell a rat and pre-empt a nuclear Taiwan with war. The US oh-so-helpfully gave them a precedent for invading countries developing weapons of mass destruction (real or imagined).
More on topic, the Taiwanese should sabotage the US semiconductor industry in retaliation. Why is TSMC building a factory in the US and diminishing the island's 'Silicon Shield'? If Taiwan did some backroom deal with the US and actually trust them, they're uniquely gullible considering the trend towards betrayal. The people who suppress your nuclear weapons acquisition do not have your best interests at heart. Maybe they'll build a factory in the pretend way that is fashionable these days: all announcements, no actual construction. Take their time filling in the forms... However, that is contradicted by the evidence: TSMC is apparently increasing their investment in the US.
https://www.reuters.com/technology/biden-visit-taiwans-tsmc-chip-plant-arizona-hail-supply-chain-fixes-2022-12-06/
Worst comes to worst many Taiwanese people would get to be highly paid American technicians, engineers and managers rather than subjects of the CCP. It is an exit plan.
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And if Taiwan had started developing nukes in the 1980s, China also would have launched a preemptive war, though probably with nukes.
Nuclear nonproliferation is sound policy, for the world in general and particularly for a country that already has them. It would have been stupid for the US to make an exception for Taiwan, esp at the time, when it was economically irrelevant.
In the 1980s the US could've snapped China in two like a twig in a conventional or nuclear war. Even in 2000, there was only a minimal chance that the Chinese would be able to fire even a single nuclear missile at the US. A US first strike would destroy their nuclear weapons in their siloes. They didn't have a credible second-strike capability and their relations with Moscow were not good. The Chinese navy was a joke compared to America's. The Taiwanese used to have a qualitative advantage in conventional weapons, even without US help.
Deng was fairly sensible too, he wouldn't have risked a disastrous war with the US.
Now it's a very different story. The US can't credibly bluff that it will sacrifice LA and NY to save Taipei. There's a reason Israel and Britain and France have nuclear weapons - they correctly reason that there are important scenarios where the US wouldn't back them up with their full power. Israel has used its nuclear weapons to encourage America to assist it lest they break the nuclear taboo. The US tries to render its allies dependent on American goodwill - this is a logical but obnoxious strategy that has various perverse outcomes, including this looming war.
The US that, out of the blue, murders its plausible competitor is the US that cannot be «the leader of the free world». I think you're overly cynical with regards to the ideological homogeneity of the West in the 80s-90s. Other nations still possessed some living culture and autonomy. It'd have been a massive shock, and would have reinvigorated the project of the independent EU with nuclear, Russophilic Franco-German core.
That would've been a very hard situation to reverse. The actual course proves to be risk-minimizing: the Chinese are happy enough to beclown themselves and implode.
What about the thousands (Tens of Thousands!) of murdered students, bitterly yearning for liberty, cut down by the Red Tyrants? They could've played that card or at least not intensively exported capital and technology to the Red Peril.
The US was practically handed the perfect excuse to look like a righteous leader of the free world and they swept it under the carpet. They could've just not suppressed Taiwan's nuclear program, let them maintain nuclear ambiguity like Israel perhaps.
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Yes, they could have, but why would they have, for Taiwan? And, as the old bumper sticker said, "one nuclear bomb can ruin your whole day." There might have been a 99% chance that a first strike would eliminate all Chinese nukes, but what,exactly, would have been worth it to the US to take that risk? Not to mention the global ramifications of a first strike.
Well for one thing it would make a lot of sense to devour infant threats in the cradle, Kronos-style. That tactic worked out fine for Kronos, it was only that through the intervention of others Zeus arrived and overthrew him. Failing to destroy/subjugate/weaken one's future rivals is a huge mistake.
It is wise to bully the weak and negotiate with the strong. The US seems to have adopted the reverse tactic, providing assistance and consideration when China was weak and suppression/condemnation now that it is strong. Just think how hysterical the media would be if China pulled a Tienanmen or a 3rd Taiwan straits crisis today! And yet back in '89 and '94 the US did effectively nothing to suppress China - they actually thought strengthening the country with trade and investment would make them more compliant to US authority. This is extremely stupid and wrong in a way that should've been visible then but that's not my main point.
My main point is that Deng would not start a war he'd surely lose. He had nuclear inferiority, conventional inferiority, general inferiority. Since China was weak, he'd have to grin and bear it if Taiwan nuclearized. He wouldn't even have the excuse that there's a precedent to invading countries one suspects of developing weapons of mass destruction!
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China could not have afforded to fight the US in a conventional war in the 1980s.
Who said anything about fighting the US? The US has never committed to defending Taiwan in the event of an attack, and if there is nothing the USSR would have liked better in the 80s than a war between the US and China. And, since the US knew that, and since Taiwan was essentially irrelevant to US interests, the US was not going to go to war with China over Taiwan. Especially if China had already used nukes.
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That raises my suspicion that the deal is for the US to evacuate the Taiwanese tech and managerial class to run operations in the US, while leaving the ruins of the island to the Chinese. Cooperating in moving their national industry to the US is how they (unlike the Vietnamese) end up running more than a laundromat when they immigrate.
I expect that's "Plan B".
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