When it comes to foreign policy, possibly the most important duty of the President, there’s not much to stop a bull in the China shop, according to Julian Ku on Lawfare:
Neither U.S. nor international law prevents President Trump from abandoning the One China policy, recognizing Taiwan as a separate country, and even stationing U.S. troops and military assets there.
Put another way, China should probably take President-elect Trump’s threats on “One China” seriously because he has all of the legal authority he needs to carry out this seismic policy shift.
Under U.S. law, President Trump has complete constitutional discretion over whether to recognize a foreign government, and even whether to recognize a foreign government’s territorial and sovereign claims. The U.S. Supreme Court confirmed that Congress cannot restrict this power in the 2015 decision Zivotofsky v. Kerry. In that decision, the Court held that the President has the “exclusive” power to withhold recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, and that this power even extends to refusing to print passports with the designation of “Jerusalem, Israel.” The holding of Zivotofsky was not particularly controversial and would plainly govern any attempt to challenge a decision by President Trump to extend US recognition to the Republic of China (Taiwan’s formal legal name).
And as his set of advisors is not particularly impressive (some might say ‘disheartening’), there’s not much to hold him back from trying to put his stamp on the world, even militarily.
I’m sure that during the Constitutional Assembly where the areas of responsibility were hammered out, it made a lot of sense to give the President a free hand in the fluid world of international relations. However, given the amount of raw military power now available, that decision now gives me some pause. Watching China move, however so slowly, closer and closer to the economic model of Taiwan, it would seem that a slow, slow victory is much better than a bloody, even catastrophic victory – or defeat, for that matter. Trying to hurry that matter along seems foolhardy.
