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Notes -
Well, I suspect it may be literally true. America First says we won't intervene if it doesn't serve our interests. Taiwan is worth more to China than it is worth to the US due to Chinese domestic politics. In a nation-centric realism world, they should have it by wagering enough hot war to make it worth it to them but not to us. Maybe we blow up TSMC on our way out. But maintaining "strategic ambiguity" allows us to do better than this! The main point is that America First is a step backwards for Taiwan deterrence.
To address your point about persuading Americans, I don't think pragmatic and nonpragmatic arguments are mutually exclusive. You can put them all out there. There are enough people to parrot the arguments to those who are receptive. The benefit of realist norms is that its more difficult to convince your people to do dumb things for non-realist reasons, which is perhaps understandably attractive in the face of failed US interventionism. But people have an instinctive aversion to such flat realism! People prefer to operate on a fluffier moralist level where it's difficult to assess just how much they are drinking their own Kool-Aid, and I suspect this is because it gives them an advantage in the time prior to open conflict.
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