Remarks like this feed China’s anxiety that US commitment to its One China policy is slipping
Joe Biden made a potentially dangerous statement on Monday. In Tokyo, he gave a flat “yes” to a reporter’s question of whether he was willing to “get involved militarily to defend Taiwan”. “That’s the commitment we made,” the president claimed. In fact, the United States scrapped its formal commitment to defend Taiwan in 1979, replacing a treaty of alliance with the Taiwan Relations Act, which obligates the United States to help equip Taiwan to defend itself.
This is the third time in less than a year that Biden has publicly declared that the United States would use force to keep Beijing from seizing the island. Once again, the White House scrambled to clarify that the US position has not actually changed: the United States continues to adhere to a One China policy and maintain “strategic ambiguity” rather than clarity as to whether it would defend Taiwan. This approach is a wise one that, as many administration officials recognize, has served the United States well. But repeated gaffes risk being interpreted as changes in policy. They increase the chance of damaging peace and stability between the world’s two leading powers.
Stephen Wertheim is a senior fellow in the American Statecraft Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace