<mediadc-video-embed data-state="{"cms.site.owner":{"_ref":"00000161-3486-d333-a9e9-76c6fbf30000","_type":"00000161-3461-dd66-ab67-fd6b93390000"},"cms.content.publishDate":1655402863127,"cms.content.publishUser":{"_ref":"00000165-15c6-d22c-a1ef-97efc26a0001","_type":"00000161-3461-dd66-ab67-fd6b933a0007"},"cms.content.updateDate":1655402863127,"cms.content.updateUser":{"_ref":"00000165-15c6-d22c-a1ef-97efc26a0001","_type":"00000161-3461-dd66-ab67-fd6b933a0007"},"rawHtml":"
var _bp = _bp||[]; _bp.push({ "div": "Brid_55398323", "obj": {"id":"27789","width":"16","height":"9","video":"887938"} }); ","_id":"00000181-6db3-db25-adf7-7dbb0e8e0000","_type":"2f5a8339-a89a-3738-9cd2-3ddf0c8da574"}”>Video EmbedPresident Joe Biden’s protective statements about Taiwan represent a salutary “tension” with standard U.S. policy formulations, according to a top White House official.
Biden has declared repeatedly that the United States would defend Taiwan from an attack by China, which regards the island democracy as an unruly province that must be brought under mainland Chinese Communist authority. Such rhetoric would seem to revise the historic U.S. policy of “strategic ambiguity” as to how the U.S. would respond to a Chinese Communist invasion, which White House officials have taken pains to reiterate in the wake of Biden’s remarks. However, White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan implied that there is an inner logic to the varying statements.
“You’ve just highlighted a kind of tension within the policy,” Sullivan acknowledged during a Center for a New American Security event on Thursday after an interlocutor observed that Biden’s “‘I will defend’ seems different than ‘we may defend.’”
“I would just offer to you that going back to the early 1970s … there has been a tension inherent in Taiwan policy,” Sullivan continued. “I don’t regard that as a bug in our Taiwan policy, but rather as a feature. And it is a feature that has actually served us relatively well in terms of managing a difficult relationship and maintaining peace and stability across the strait.”
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Sullivan emphasized that “the entire thrust and purpose of our approach … to Taiwan is about ensuring that the day never comes where the question is called as to whether or not we have to defend Taiwan because we will have effectively deterred it.”
The efficacy of that deterrence has appeared more uncertain of late due to the improvement of Chinese forces and the truculent posture adopted by Beijing on the world stage. In 2021, U.S. Navy Adm. Phil Davidson, then-commander of U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, warned a Senate panel that China could try to seize Taiwan “in the next six years.” His testimony stoked a debate about whether an overt U.S. commitment to defend Taiwan would discourage China from launching that attack or make it more likely to do so — a prudent question that has been answered by Biden repeatedly.
“Yes,” Biden replied when asked if he would “get involved militarily to defend Taiwan” during a recent trip to Tokyo in May. “That’s a commitment we made.”
The U.S. government has not made such a promise, according to experts fluent in the U.S. law governing relations with Taiwan. A White House official walked back his comments shortly after the press conference.
“As the President said, our policy has not changed,” the official said. “He reiterated our One China Policy and our commitment to peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait. He also reiterated our commitment under the Taiwan Relations Act to provide Taiwan with the military means to defend itself.”
Secretary of State Antony Blinken then emphasized that the U.S. would continue to provide weapons to Taiwan and “maintain our capacity to resist any resort to force or other forms of coercion that would jeopardize either the security or the social or economic system of Taiwan” in a speech just days after Biden’s press conference in Tokyo.
The question of whether the U.S. has the capacity at the moment to restrain a Chinese assault is an anxious one for American policymakers and observers.
“At the end of the day, what we do if China attacks Taiwan, nobody knows. And you’re not going to know until it happens,” House Armed Services Committee Chairman Adam Smith (D-WA) told CNAS on Wednesday. “I think the strategic ambiguity [policy works] just fine. We’ve got to build the capabilities.”
A senior Chinese military officer characterized “the Taiwan question” as the final outstanding dispute of the Chinese Civil War in a brash warning to the Shangri-La Dialogue.
“The United States fought a civil war for its unity. Though China never wants such a civil war, we will resolutely crush any attempt to pursue Taiwan independence,” Chinese Defense Minister Wei Fenghe said Sunday. “Let me make this clear. If anyone dares to secede Taiwan from China, we will not hesitate to fight. We will fight at all costs and we will fight to the very end. This is the only choice for China.”
Biden’s team has emphasized that they do not support any formal recognition of Taiwan as an independent country.
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“The challenge I think we face today is that Beijing is increasingly engaged in activities that are threatening peace and stability across the strait,” said Sullivan. “And we believe that it is very important to stand firmly on principle and against those kinds of destabilizing activities, and that’s what we’re trying to do.”
