If the weapons are not placed in Taiwan, there's no guarantee that the US would use them to defend Taiwan.
If the US formally makes such a guarantee, that in itself might trigger a nuclear war.
This is a game of chicken, and games of chicken are rather dangerous. Do you want your city nuked to save Taiwan? Does Xi want to risk having Shanghai and Beijing obliterated to maybe take Taiwan?
If there is an actual war over Taiwan, it's hopefully going to be a conventional one. But that would also mean China may risk it. Which would make TSMC production out of service for months or years (or forever).
Just because the weapons are in Taiwan doesn't mean that the US would use them to defend Taiwan - unlike Cuba I doubt if the military leaders would be given delegated authority to use nukes defensively and I doubt any US political leader would use nukes first when faced with a conventional attack on Taiwan.
To be a proper deterrent, Taiwan would need to be able to control their use. I agree that the US would not be likely to use nukes first over Taiwan. Even losing Taiwan would be far preferable to a nuclear exchange for the US.
We don't know if China would, but I don't think they would start a conflict over Taiwan if they expected to only be able to "win" if they use nukes.
Rather, the only way I can see this become a nuclear war is if Xi starts an invasion due to overconfidence (like Putin with Ukraine), but is then humiliated by a combined Taiwanese/US defense, proceeds to see nukes as the only way to avoid losing face, and then caring more about this than the future of the world.
But let's imagine for instance that Russia ends up conquering Ukraine completely, with NATO letting it happen. In such a case, Japan, Korea and many others may suddenly realize that they're not safe until they have a large nuclear arsenal. Once they have build up such an arsenal, it's not that unlikely (I would say) that Taiwan follows, and creates their own secret arsenal of nukes. Maybe even purchasing the tech from Korea or Japan.
If the US formally makes such a guarantee, that in itself might trigger a nuclear war.
This is a game of chicken, and games of chicken are rather dangerous. Do you want your city nuked to save Taiwan? Does Xi want to risk having Shanghai and Beijing obliterated to maybe take Taiwan?
If there is an actual war over Taiwan, it's hopefully going to be a conventional one. But that would also mean China may risk it. Which would make TSMC production out of service for months or years (or forever).
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