Just in case someone might have missed it the first three times, President Biden again stated for the record Sunday that the United States would respond militarily to a Chinese invasion of Taiwan. In fact, his response to a hypothetical question from CBS News’s Scott Pelley was more unequivocal than the previous assurances he gave in May of this year, October of 2021 and August of 2021. When Mr. Pelley asked him point-blank, “So unlike Ukraine, to be clear, sir, U.S. forces — U.S. men and women — would defend Taiwan in the event of a Chinese invasion?” Mr. Biden replied, “Yes.” And with that, one more strand of the 50-year-old U.S. approach known as “strategic ambiguity” toward the Taiwan Strait unraveled. The White House’s subsequent official statement that the president’s remark constituted no change in official policy was no more convincing than the walk-backs that followed Mr. Biden’s previous assertions that the United States has a security obligation toward Taiwan that is similar to the one it has to defend NATO allies.
Biden’s statements on Taiwan are useful, actually
Whether speaking off the cuff, as he so often does, or with the deliberate intent to keep Chinese President Xi Jinping guessing, there might be value in Mr. Biden’s declarations of intent. They usefully ratchet up U.S. words in response to Chinese deeds, such as the years-long expansion of naval activity in waters surrounding Taiwan and the crushing of democracy in Hong Kong. All of that, and more, show that the poor, militarily weak China with which the United States decades ago reached its deliberately, and mutually, noncommittal understandings regarding Taiwan — including Chinese disavowal of “hegemony in the Western Pacific” — no longer exists. Mr. Biden said what a lot of people, including many on both sides of the partisan aisle in Congress, are thinking: Dictatorships need to be deterred, as Russia’s attempt to conquer Ukraine vividly demonstrates.
Mr. Biden’s improvisations, albeit repeated, are no substitute for a formal update to U.S. policy. That is what the Taiwan Policy Act, newly passed by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on a vote of 17-5, proposes. The most necessary provision is $6.5 billion in new security assistance over the next five years, along with language making it U.S. policy “to deter the use of force” by China. Some more provocative items that would have symbolically raised the status of Taiwan’s representatives in Washington were diluted in deference to White House concerns that they might unduly provoke Beijing — ironic, given Mr. Biden’s own comments a few days later.
The bill’s precise details are debatable, and its prospects for passage cloudy. Yet legislation reaffirming and modernizing the U.S. commitment to Taiwan should pass; Congress should provide Mr. Biden and his successors with a stronger set of legislative instructions that would enhance not only the clarity of what they say but also the authority with which they say it.
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