ABSTRACT
The undetermined status of Formosa (Taiwan) provided a legal justification for President Harry Truman’s dispatch of the 7th fleet to neutralize the Taiwan Strait after the outbreak of the Korean War (Truman 1956: 339). While the US ceased to argue that Taiwan retained undetermined status in the 1972 Shanghai Communiqué, the US began considering shifting its recognition of the sole legal government of China from Taipei to Beijing. Since the US and the People’s Republic of China (PRC) established diplomatic relations in 1979, Washington has maintained unofficial relations with Taiwan while still providing the island with sufficient self-defense capabilities as the Taiwan Relations Act requires.
