Opinion: Taiwan stability must be carefully maintained

“Strategic ambiguity” is what U.S. diplomats call America’s policy on Taiwan and China. The strategy is to keep the peace by maintaining ambiguity over the degree the U.S. would go to defend Taiwan from a Chinese invasion.

To date, that intentional vagueness has met its objective of keeping Taiwan from declaring formal independence, which would incense China, and from China invading what it considers a renegade province.

Last week, however, President Joe Biden was unambiguous about U.S. policy. During a stop in Japan, Biden was asked by a reporter, “Are you willing to get involved militarily to defend Taiwan if it comes to that?”

“Yes,” Biden answered simply, later adding: “That’s the commitment we made.”

He was likely referring to the Taiwan Relations Act of 1979, which actually does not commit the U.S. to militarily defend Taiwan, but to provide self-defense capabilities. Biden apparently believes otherwise in a view that’s also shared by several respected foreign policy experts.

But Biden’s approach, if that indeed reflects U.S. policy, may not be as effective a strategy, according to Ryan Hass, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. Hass, an expert in East Asia, told an editorial writer in an e-mail interview that “there are few issues in the world where words matter more than on the question of war in the Taiwan Strait” and that “in this respect, the inconsistencies in the Biden administration’s responses to questions about whether the United States would intervene in a cross-Strait conflict is troubling.

“America’s abiding interest is in preserving peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait,” Hass continued.

“Preserving this objective requires standing in the way of the two paths that could lead to conflict, either a Chinese military invasion or efforts by Taiwan to declare de jure independence. The more that President Biden locks the U.S. into a specific response to a future hypothetical conflict, the less room for maneuver he leaves for himself or his successors.”

China, Hass said, already assumes U.S. intervention if it attacks Taiwan. Accordingly, he believes that “there is not deterrent value for any U.S. president to say out loud that the U.S. would intervene in any future conflict. There is risk, however, that such a statement could prompt Beijing to take visible responses to register displeasure.”

Indeed Chinese officials did, rhetorically and by announcing new military drills near Taiwan.

There’s also a risk that Taipei could misinterpret the statement and not as aggressively build its defensive capabilities, or that it may choose to roil the fragile status quo.

Biden is right to not let the long-delayed “pivot” to Asia become derailed due to the Ukraine crisis. But “strategic ambiguity” has maintained peace in the region — peace that can be undone if not carefully maintained.

— Minneapolis Star Tribune