U.S. President Joe Biden speaks at a joint press conference with Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida after his bilateral meeting at Akasaka Palace in Tokyo, Japan, on May 23, 2022.
Jonathan Ernst | Reuters
President Joe Biden insisted on Tuesday that the United States has not changed its strategic policy on Taiwan, a day after it angered Beijing when it said its administration would be willing to use military force to defend the island.
Biden met with leaders from Japan, India and Australia at his second so-called Quad Leaders’ Summit, which ended Tuesday in Tokyo.
The U.S. president surprised many of the delegates when he suggested Monday that the U.S. could deploy U.S. troops to the island if China invades. When asked by a journalist if he was “willing to get involved militarily to defend Taiwan,” Biden said “yes.”
The statements were a surprise departure from decades of US policy that has warned China of the use of force in Taiwan, but has remained vague about the extent to which it would defend the island.
The president clarified his statement after closing talks with world leaders in Tokyo on Tuesday.
“Politics hasn’t changed at all,” he said when asked if his previous comments indicated the end of the U.S. approach to strategic ambiguity that U.S. diplomats have been pursuing for decades. “I said that when I made my statement yesterday.”
Biden’s initial statement during his first trip to Asia as president ignited tensions between the United States and the Chinese Communist government, which believes that Taiwan is part of its territory and cannot exist as a sovereign nation.
Despite Biden’s clarification, it’s still unclear whether the president’s comments were blasphemous or intentional. However, the White House quickly offered a message of moderation in an email to CNBC.
“As the president said, our policy has not changed. He reiterated our policy of a China and our commitment to peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait,” a White House official said. to CNBC in an email.
China’s policy holds that the People’s Republic of China is the only legal government in China and recognizes unofficial relations with the people of Taiwan.
“He also reiterated our commitment under the Taiwan Relations Act to provide Taiwan with the military means to defend itself,” the White House official added.
Chinese communist leaders, however, were not convinced.
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin warned on Monday that “no one should underestimate the strong resolve, determination and ability of the Chinese people to safeguard national sovereignty and territorial integrity.”
“No one should oppose the 1.4 billion Chinese,” he added.
This is not the first time White House aides have tried to moderate the president’s comments.
Biden sparked a political storm in March when he told Poland that Russian President Vladimir Putin “cannot remain in power.” Later that day, a White House official tried to clarify that Biden “was not discussing Putin’s power in Russia or regime change.”
Dewardric McNeal, an Obama-era nominee in the Department of Defense, insisted that the president’s comments about Taiwan were not a mistake.
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“This was NOT a blunder or a bad expression on the part of President Biden; his opinion may not be that of his advisers,” McNeal, a CNBC contributor, wrote in an email Tuesday morning. “It simply came to our notice then. [the capital of Taiwan]. “
The promise of US military intervention would also replace the provisions of the US-China Relations Act in Taiwan, which has guided geopolitical policy in Asia since 1979.
The act obliges the United States “to maintain the ability of the United States to resist any recourse to force or other forms of coercion that may endanger the security, or social or economic system, of the people of Taiwan.”
While the law does not require Washington to use the U.S. military to protect Taiwan from a Chinese invasion, it has long been seen as an inaccurate promise to maintain current order on the autonomous island.
“Biden wants to make it clear to the world that US commitments mean something,” McNeal added.
McNeal, now a longview Global policy analyst, said Biden probably believes many of the assumptions underpinning the US’s “strategic ambiguity” policy are questionable.
Some of these assumptions, he explained, included the idea that China’s military capabilities would not exceed those of Taiwan and that talks between Beijing and Taipei would lead to a peaceful resolution.
While the US president may still believe in China’s policy to the extent of the Communist Party’s control over China, Biden’s statements may reflect the desire to modernize the policy of “strategic ambiguity” to have considering these obsolete assumptions, he added.