MILITARY DEFENSE OF TAIWAN PLEDGED
Biden suggests he would go beyond his support for Ukraine
President Joe Biden signaled on Monday that he would use military force to defend Taiwan if it were ever attacked by China, dispensing with the “strategic ambiguity” traditionally favored by American presidents, and risking Beijing’s anger at a time of rising tensions in the region.
At a news conference during a visit to Japan, Biden suggested that he would be willing to go further on behalf of Taiwan than he has in helping Ukraine, where he has provided tens of billions of dollars in weapons as well as intelligence assistance to help defeat Russian invaders but has refused to send U.S. troops.
“You didn’t want to get involved in the Ukraine conflict militarily for obvious reasons,” a reporter said to Biden. “Are you willing to get involved militarily to defend Taiwan if it comes to that?”
“Yes,” Biden answered flatly.
“You are?” the reporter followed up.
“That’s the commitment we made,” he said.
The president’s declaration, offered without caveat or clarification, set the stage for fresh tensions between the United States and China, which insists that Taiwan is a part of its territory and cannot exist as a sovereign nation.
It also surprised some members of Biden’s own administration watching in the
room, who did not expect him to promise such unvarnished resolve. The U.S. has historically warned China against using force against Taiwan while generally remaining vague about how far it would go to aid the island in such a circumstance.
The White House quickly tried to deny that the president meant what he seemed to be saying. “As the president said, our policy has not changed,” the White House said in a statement hurriedly sent to reporters. “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.”
Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin sounded the same themes when asked by reporters back in Washington. “I think the president was clear on the fact that the policy has not changed,” he said.
But Biden’s comments
went beyond simply reiterating that the U.S. would provide Taiwan with arms, because the question was posed as a contrast to what he had done with Ukraine.
In fact, he repeated the notion that he was committed to doing more than what he had done for Ukraine. “The idea that it can be taken by force, just taken by force, is just not appropriate,” he said of Taiwan. “It would dislocate the entire region and be another action similar to what happened in Ukraine. And so
it’s a burden that is even stronger.”
Neither Biden nor anyone in his administration elaborated on what specifically would be entailed by getting “militarily involved,” and the president did not respond to questions at a later event asking for more detail.
“President Biden seems to have staked out a new position somewhere between ‘strategic clarity’ and ‘strategic ambiguity,’ ” said Danny Russel, vice president of the Asia Society Policy
Institute and a former adviser to President Barack Obama. “He’s clear about his belief that the U.S. should respond in the event of Chinese military aggression against Taiwan. But he’s ambiguous about what exactly that means and what it is based on.”
As president, Biden has ignored before the practiced imprecision of his predecessors with regard to China and Taiwan. Last August, in reassuring allies after his decision to abandon the government of Afghanistan, he promised that “we would respond” if there was an attack against a fellow member of NATO and then added, “same with Japan, same with South Korea, same with Taiwan.”
Taiwan, however, has never been granted the same U.S. security guarantees as Japan, South Korea or America’s NATO allies, and so the comment was seen as significant. Two months later, Biden was asked during a televised town hall if the United States would protect Taiwan from attack. “Yes, we have a commitment to do that,” he said. That also set off a scramble by the White House to walk back his remark by insisting that he was not changing policy.
War in Taiwan does not appear to be imminent, and Biden said “my expectation is it will not happen.” But China’s leader, Xi Jinping, has taken a more aggressive stance than his predecessors, who long vowed to bring the island under their control, viewing the issue as the unfinished business of a bloody civil war waged more than 70 years ago.