TAIPEI (Taiwan News) — A Foreign Affairs survey of 52 experts found that the vast majority were against the U.S. making a military pledge to defend Taiwan, but none of these analysts are actually based in Taiwan.

On Tuesday (Nov. 15), Foreign Affairs released the results of a survey given to experts from various think tanks and academic institutions, primarily based in the U.S. The question posed to the specialists was whether the U.S. should adopt an official policy in which it would pledge to use military force to defend Taiwan in the event of a Chinese invasion.

On a scale of one to 10, with one being strongly agree and 10 being strongly disagree, the majority of the respondents, 39, disagreed with the proposition. There were 15 who strongly disagreed and they had a high confidence level of 8 or higher.

The most popular response was "disagree" with 24 selecting this option. All but four had a confidence level of 7 or higher.

There were 7 who took a neutral stance with all but one having a confidence level of 6 or higher. Only three opted to agree with the debate statement with their confidence levels ranging between 7 and 8.

Lastly, only three strongly agreed that the U.S. should pledge to use force to defend Taiwan. Abanti Bhattacharya from the Department of East Asian Studies at the University of Delhi backed the U.S. use of military means to defend Taiwan with a level of confidence of 10, while two other experts had a confidence level of 8.

Bhattacharya wrote that defending Taiwan militarily is a "matter of U.S. credibility and its responsibility as a global power to defend its allies." At the other end of the spectrum, Alice Lyman Millier, Research Fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution, argued that such a commitment would "narrow Beijing's options in dealing with the Taiwan question," and she asserted that more attention should be paid on how U.S. and Taiwan actions "provoke" China.

None of the experts surveyed are based in Taiwan and very few are Taiwanese.