What we do know about that conversation between President-elect Donald Trump and the president of Taiwan that is causing such a brouhaha is that it wasn’t done out of naïvete on the part of the newly elected leader of the free world, but far more likely designed to send a message that soon there will indeed be a new sheriff in town.

President Tsai Ing-wen didn’t just happen to place a call to Trump Tower without knowing her overture would be accepted — even if it did break with U.S. protocol in place since 1979.

The U.S. has spent decades giving lip service to Beijing’s One China policy, which maintains the diplomatic fiction that the thriving democracy that exists on the island of Taiwan doesn’t really exist as a separate nation. However — and this is a very big however — the U.S. since 1979 has also been committed to the security of Taiwan, including the sale of planes and weapons with which it can defend itself.

And while President Tsai’s Democratic Progressive Party (she was elected last January) has traditionally leaned toward independence from the mainland, Taiwan’s economy, particularly its manufacturing, is inextricably tied to the mainland. So even Taipei has an interest in not provoking Beijing unnecessarily.

But there is surely value in looking at a policy that was part of the rightfully disparaged legacy of President Jimmy Carter, whose answer to dealing with despots was simply to give in.

Sadly the Obama administration has been going down that same path, even as Beijing has been pushing the envelope in the region — attempting to claim all those atolls in the South China Sea as sovereign territory.

Yes, the U.S. needs China as part of its effort to prevent North Korea’s youthful dictator from firing off one missile too many and in the wrong direction. And there’s no question the U.S. wants China’s enormous marketplace.

But a little tough talk and a reset with Beijng may well be in order.