Taiwan’s security posture under President Lai Ching-te has become unmistakably more forward-leaning, but as of October 14, 2025 there is no public record of a formal agreement to host U.S. bases or a bilateral base-access pact akin to arrangements Washington holds with longtime treaty allies. Any reporting that frames an immediate, binding transfer of basing rights to the United States as settled would be premature.

That reality does not mean Taipei and Washington are standing still. Taipei’s 2025 Quadrennial Defence Review and subsequent policy moves have emphasized deeper military exchanges, elevated intelligence sharing and more frequent tabletop and training cooperation with the United States aimed at raising interoperability and deterrence. President Lai has concurrently signalled a marked increase in defense spending and reform aimed at strengthening Taiwan’s own asymmetric capabilities. Those trends create the conditions under which Taipei might contemplate allowing greater U.S. access to facilities, but they are not the same as a formalized status of forces or permanent basing agreement.

If Lai were to take what many in Taipei and Washington might call a bold step toward accommodating U.S. rotational access or shore facilities, the move would be strategic rather than merely operational. There are three strategic objectives such a policy could serve. First, calibrated access could improve crisis signaling and logistics for U.S. forces operating inside the first island chain. Second, it could allow more rapid equipment prepositioning and sustainment for allied responses short of full escalation. Third, it would be an element of burden sharing that reinforces Taiwan’s deterrent posture without asking Taiwan to rely exclusively on external guarantees. The Philippines and other partners show how rotational access arrangements can be used to expand deterrent geometry in the region while stopping short of permanent basing.

Those potential advantages come with deep political, legal and escalation risks. Domestically, Taiwan must manage constitutional, legislative and public-opinion hurdles to hosting foreign military personnel on a routine basis. Internationally, any formalized U.S. footprint on Taiwanese soil would transpose a peacetime ambiguity into a clearer operational linkage between Taipei and Washington, thereby raising the political and military costs of any cross-strait contingency. Washington’s long-standing practice of strategic ambiguity and its reliance on the Taiwan Relations Act create an awkward fit with formal basing. The TRA commits the United States to maintain the capacity to resist coercion directed at Taiwan, but it stops short of an explicit, reciprocal defense guarantee and does not by itself create a status of forces framework. Any effort to change that posture would require very careful legal and policy design on both sides.

Beijing’s likely responses must be central to Taipei’s calculations. The People’s Republic of China has normalized pressure tactics that include sustained air and naval intrusions and increasingly brazen exercises intended to signal capability and resolve. Past PLA coercion has already raised the baseline cost of closer U.S. engagement with Taiwan; a nascent basing arrangement would almost certainly trigger political, economic and military countermeasures from Beijing. Those countermeasures could range from stepped-up gray zone operations to larger scale exercises that further militarize the strait. Taipei would need contingency plans for supply chains, civilian protection and economic countermeasures if it chooses to alter the island’s peacetime posture.

Operational design matters. A credible, lower-risk pathway toward useful U.S. access would mimic rotational, limited-use models used elsewhere in the region. That design would rely on tight legal instruments that limit the scope and duration of U.S. footprints, clear rules for use in peacetime versus crisis, transparent parliamentary oversight, and public communications to manage domestic consent. Equally important would be robust civil-military safeguards, well negotiated logistics and environmental agreements, and a compact for phased escalation management that reduces the risk of inadvertent conflict. The Philippines’ EDCA-style model and increased rotational access in Australia and Japan provide templates and cautionary lessons about local politics, burdens, and friction.

Policy makers in Taipei and Washington should also weigh non-basing ways to secure many of the same strategic benefits. Enhanced prepositioning of dual-use stockpiles on Taiwanese-managed sites, bilateral logistics agreements, larger-scale multinational exercises, an expanded personnel exchange and intelligence architecture, and investment in Taiwan’s mobile, distributed defences will all raise the cost of coercion without the symbolic and political consequences of permanent foreign garrisons. For Taipei, preserving maximum strategic autonomy while getting operational advantages from partners will be the central trade-off.

If Lai Ching-te truly intends to make a bold shift toward authorized U.S. access, the ambition must be matched by a meticulous political strategy. That strategy would need cross-party consultation, legal scaffolding, public outreach, contingency planning for economic countermeasures, and coordinated messaging with Washington and regional partners. Without those elements, a premature or poorly defined basing step would risk delivering strategic headaches rather than durable deterrence. For now, the most consequential fact is procedural: Taipei’s trajectory points toward deeper integration with U.S. defence efforts, yet the island has not, publicly and formally, converted that trajectory into a permanent basing arrangement. The choice ahead is one of design, timing and governance, not merely posture.