President Joe Biden, for at least the fourth time, recently indicated that U.S. forces would defend Taiwan should China attack the island democracy. It’s another clear departure from the long-standing U.S. strategy of avoiding a direct answer to that question. It would have been a change of policy for the better had White House officials not, for at least the fourth time, walked back the commander in chief’s statement. The backpedaling spurred the policy community once again to debate the merit of “strategic ambiguity.”
The truth is that strategic ambiguity is a red herring. If the United States abandons said ambiguity and sides unequivocally with Taiwan, it has a better chance to sustain peace in the region.
Two competing objectives were behind the ambiguity put in place when Washington switched diplomatic recognition from the nationalists in Taiwan to communist China in the late 1970s. If its commitment to defend Taiwan was too weak, it might embolden China to overtake the island. But if it promised too much, Taipei might not take its own defense seriously or might even proclaim independence, which could trigger a Chinese invasion. The two considerations seemed similarly strong at the time, and Washington thus chose silence.
In today’s Taiwan Strait, however, the delicate strategic balance has been broken as circumstances changed.
First, China is increasingly focused on absorbing Taiwan. The Chinese Communist Party often justifies its authoritarian rule by arguing that democracy is not for the Chinese people and economy due to values that differ from those of the West. But the Taiwanese are ethnically Chinese and enjoy political freedom and a vibrant capitalist economy, presenting a thorn in the CCP’s side. Second, the cross-strait military imbalance has significantly widened since the late 1970s. Beijing’s defense expenditure has grown at double-digit rates for decades as Taipei’s shrank. Yes, Taipei should recommit to greater defense investment, perhaps even as a prerequisite for stronger U.S. support, but can it alone still stand a chance against the People’s Liberation Army?
That changes the calculus for Washington. In Biden’s defense, his administration may have intended to use mixed messaging to send Beijing a signal that is stronger yet still convoluted. At least it showed that the U.S. was open to a clear commitment to defend Taiwan — even just for a passing moment. But complicated gambits are difficult to manage. How can Washington make sure Beijing is reading the signal as intended? This question is particularly thorny now that leaders of the two countries are not communicating nearly as much as they used to.
This is not to say that strategic clarity comes without costs. Implying the use of U.S. service members should never be taken lightly. But if strategic ambiguity is becoming less of a deterrent to the CCP’s potential takeover of a democratic country, which appears to be the case today, is it any less risky in the long term? These are tough questions, but China did not stop at crushing freedom in Hong Kong. One would be hard-pressed to believe it would stop at absorbing Taiwan.
Weifeng Zhong is a senior research fellow with the Mercatus Center at George Mason University and a core developer of the open-sourced Policy Change Index project, which uses machine-learning algorithms to predict authoritarian regimes’ major policy moves by “reading” their propaganda.
