Taiwan Truth
How Biden can truly shift outdated US policy
FOR the third time in his presidency, Joe Biden has said the United States is committed to defending Taiwan with force. In each instance, administration officials walked back his remarks, insisting that longstanding US policy — which embraces no such commitment — has not changed. But regardless of stated policy, by this point it seems clear the president is personally committed to defending Taiwan against a Chinese attack.
Why? At a Monday press conference with Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, Biden said a Chinese invasion of Taiwan “would dislocate the entire region.” He perhaps meant a successful invasion would let China more easily threaten Japan and the Philippines, both US allies, and directly threaten the United States itself.
It would dangerously unsettle a region that has been largely at peace for 40 years. And, of course, it would see a free people conquered by a country for whom brutality is standard operating procedure. Given those stakes, it would be difficult for any American president to stand aside.
Yet the dissonance between the president’s very public views and his administration’s stated policy is irresponsible. It leaves not only observers in Beijing, Taipei and allied capitals confused; it leaves directionless those within his administration tasked with carrying out policy.
To address the inconsistency, Biden should launch a top-down, comprehensive review of America’s Taiwan policy, with the goal of aligning it with his own thinking and geopolitical realities in Asia.
Now is the right time for such a review. Conditions in Taiwan, China and even the United States have evolved considerably since Washington cobbled together a then-new Taiwan policy way back in the 1970s and 1980s.
Most significantly, Taiwan has transitioned from authoritarian, one-party rule to freewheeling, liberal democracy. Thanks in large part to that evolution, peaceful and uncoerced unification of Taiwan and China is all but impossible. Taiwan has never been part of the People’s Republic of China, and the two have grown ever-more distant in the decades since the Chinese
Civil War’s conclusion.
China, meanwhile, has or soon will have the military capacity to invade and occupy Taiwan — or at least make a serious go of it. That was a pipe dream for the People’s Liberation Army in 1980, when the United States abrogated its mutual defense treaty with the Republic of China on Taiwan.
More troubling, China’s military modernization efforts are bearing fruit while the country’s leader, Xi Jinping, has shown himself to be more eager than his predecessors to settle the Taiwan issue once and for all. China’s threat to Taiwan is not yet imminent, but it is growing more urgent.
That threat is maturing as America has adopted a “strategic competition” framework for approaching its relationship with China and as bipartisan congressional support for the US-Taiwan relationship continues to reach new heights. Rep. Elaine Luria (D-Va.) argued in October: “It is time to untie the hands of our president” so he can rapidly respond should China use force in the Taiwan Strait. Such views, while not yet widely held, have entered the mainstream on the right and left in a way that was unthinkable just a few short years ago.
Given changes in Taiwan,
China and the United States, and in the wider world, it is pertinent to question if the most significant laws, statements and documents undergirding Taiwan policy — the most recent of which date to 1982 — should continue to shape and to limit American policy in the way they have for four decades.
In launching a Taiwan policy review, Biden should describe what he sees as US interests and goals vis-à-vis Taiwan and direct his administration to provide options to pursue them. The review should consider both the potential benefits and the potential risks of striking down policy shibboleths — like restrictions on direct engagement between US and Taiwanese leaders, limitations on bilateral military training and, yes, the heretofore ambiguous nature of America’s commitment to defend Taiwan.
Should a policy patched together in the wake of US defeat in Vietnam continue to bind
Washington? President Biden does not seem to think so. For the sake of peace in Asia, it is time for the president and his administration to get on the same page. With dangers mounting, time is a-wasting.
Michael Mazza is a nonresident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, the Global Taiwan Institute and the German Marshall Fund of the United States.