I agree that the situation doesn't make sense at first glance. The contradictions are glaring. The US has both supported the one-China policy and supported Taiw

I agree that the situation doesn't make sense at first glance. The contradictions are glaring. The US has both supported the one-China policy and supported Taiwanese independence. Even with these simple statements, someone here will probably find fault and offer a correction. This isn't something that can be understood outside of the "ends-justify-the-means", "but my pragmatism" and other sausage making slogans of the foreign policy establishment. We'd have to go through all of the historical machinations before we'd even begin to have a context. You're not wrong for looking for some semblance of logical consistency. If you prefer analysis from first principles, that's fine, I'd even agree with that perspective in many ways, but you'll have difficulty evaluating the status quo of geopolitics. Maybe a long way of saying that it doesn't make sense, it isn't supposed to make sense under scrutiny, it probably never will make sense and the expectation is for knights-errant.