Thirty-seven years is a long time to wait for a phone call. That’s how it must have felt to the Taiwanese people when their president, Tsai Ing-wen, had a 10-minute talk with Donald Trump on December 2—the first direct conversation between a Taiwanese leader and a U.S. president or president-elect since 1979.

The phone call, which was reportedly midwifed by Bob Dole, who lobbies for Taiwan, was a laudable display of solidarity with a beleaguered ally and a beacon of democratic values. Taiwan is one of the world’s great success stories and all the more impressive for what it has achieved under stifling pressure. When Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalist forces fled to the small island in 1949 after being routed by Mao’s Communist army, Taiwan was an impoverished, largely agricultural economy. And the Republic of China government that Chiang established in Taipei was repressive—a one-party state with severe restrictions on civil liberties and political rights.