Decoding the Rhetoric: US Strategic Ambiguity toward Taiwan

Whether to adopt a policy of “strategic ambiguity” or “strategic clarity” to defend Taiwan has been a long-standing topic in U.S. strategy and policy circles. Over the past few years, this topic has returned to prominence in U.S. policy discourse, following Chinese-U.S. relations escalating competition, Taiwan’s Democratic Progressive Party adopting a policy of readiness for armed struggle for independence and the repeated flaring up of cross-strait confrontation.

The policy of strategic ambiguity toward Taiwan can be traced back to the vague U.S. policy in the 1950s regarding the defense of the outlying islands Kinmen and Matsu, under the control of Taiwan authorities. The U.S. neither made an open security commitment nor renounced willingness to defend. At the time, the U.S. was trying to restrain Chiang Kai-shek’s clique from attempting to militarily reclaim the mainland, while also trying to establish deterrence to prevent the Chinese mainland from launching attacks on the outlying islands. After the establishment of diplomatic relations between China and the U.S in 1979, the U.S. agreed to follow the mainland’s One China policy, yet it also enacted the Taiwan Relations Act, which requires the U.S. to provide Taiwan with arms of a defensive nature but does not guarantee the United States will intervene militarily to assist Taiwan if attacked. Although the U.S. government has consistently claimed to oppose a military solution to the Taiwan issue, legal ambiguity has left policy leeway for U.S. intervention.

With the outbreak of the Third Taiwan Strait Crisis in 1995-96, calls for strategic clarity within the U.S. increased. In 1999, some members of Congress promoted the Taiwan Security Enhancement Act to reduce the vagueness of the commitment to Taiwan’s defense, but the bill ultimately failed to pass into law. After George W. Bush took office in 2001, he claimed that were Taiwan attacked by the Chinese mainland, the U.S. would do “whatever it took to help Taiwan defend herself,” but this bold declaration was not followed up by an enactment of supporting policy. Rather, to the contrary, the U.S. recoiled and became guarded in response to the former Taiwanese President Chen Shui-bian’s extremist calls for independence.

U.S. scholar Nancy Tucker believes that strategic ambiguity has developed into “dual deterrence,” that is, both deterring mainland China from coercing reunification though military force while simultaneously deterring Taiwan from provoking a war by declaring independence. Taiwan fears obliteration in a military conflict where the U.S. would not provide vital support. In other words, the U.S. left both sides of the Taiwan Strait guessing at the circumstances under which the U.S. would intervene with force.

During the Obama years, cross-strait relations were at a stage of peaceful development and so debates about strategic clarity on the Taiwan Strait issue faded from discourse in U.S. strategy circles. However, when Donald Trump took office in 2017, the issue returned to the forefront of China-U.S. rivalry, sparking anew the debate between strategic ambiguity and strategic clarity.

The U.S. research community is broadly divided into two schools of thought. One advocates a shift to strategic clarity, and this group’s voice is growing stronger. The cardinal reason is that they believe that there has been a change in the Chinese mainland’s ability to achieve national reunification, so the strategic ambiguity of the past is no longer an effective deterrent for the mainland, nor is it sufficient to retain Taiwan’s confidence that it can continue to take shelter under this vague U.S. policy.

Of course, many in the strategic clarity camp believe that clarifying policy strengthens deterrence against China, but this should be coupled with reassuring China in ways such as reaffirming support of the One China policy, not supporting Taiwan independence and not signing U.S.-Taiwan agreements of a defensive nature. The strategic clarity camp generally believes that the dynamics between China and the U.S. in the Taiwan Strait have changed to the point where the U.S. has no choice but to move away from strategic ambiguity if it wishes to preserve the long-term stability of the status quo.

The other policy camp argues that the U.S. should continue to adhere to strategic ambiguity, which has for decades been the tried-and-true practice of maintaining stability of the Taiwan Strait and preventing the U.S. from being drawn into a conflict or even a war with China. This camp generally holds that, although the power balance of the two sides of the Taiwan Strait has become uneven, China employing force to fulfill reunification with Taiwan is not imminent. If the United States announces strategic clarity, it will have the following negative effects:

First, if the U.S. declares military defense of Taiwan, it will mean swinging back to the long-abolished Chinese-American Mutual Defense Treaty between the U.S. and Taiwan, which is equivalent to a substantive altering of the U.S. promise to adhere to the One China policy. That will seriously impact the political foundation of China-U.S. relations and might even fundamentally reverse China’s outlook on the prospects of reunification through peace.

Second, the U.S. will be at the whim of Taiwan. The goal of strategic ambiguity is not only to deter the mainland from using force to achieve cross-strait reunification, but also to restrain Taiwanese officials from adopting rash policies that will trigger a conflict with the mainland. This is a risk when Taiwanese political parties favoring independence come to power. Turning to strategic clarity would undoubtedly give a blank check to the island’s voters who want independence. After all, the U.S. was acutely aware risks in the Taiwan Strait had risen sharply when Chen bandied his concept “One Country on Each Side” and held the Taiwanese United Nations membership referendum. Some scholars in Taiwan also believe that the U.S. will not easily relinquish a policy of flexibility in controlling the Taiwan situation; it will not permit Taiwan to become the tail that wags the dog.

Third, the U.S. believes that Taiwan has long been freeloading on military defense, so the U.S. is now demanding Taiwan increase its annual defense budget to 3% of gross domestic product. The administration of current Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen has annually increased the military budget but has not yet reached the standard set by the U.S. Some Americans believe that a shift to strategic clarity will encourage Taiwan’s freeloading, and DPP officials will then be unable to raise sufficient funds to implement its Overall Defense Concept, Taiwan’s current asymmetric defense strategy for dealing with a potential Chinese invasion in a resource-constrained environment. Some Japanese scholars such as Yasuhiro Matsuda believe that strategic ambiguity also convinces Taiwan that there is a possibility the U.S. may not intervene if Taiwan is attacked, so it needs to enhance its own defense capabilities. Of course, there are those Americans who sympathize with Taiwan and worry that Taiwan will be the first to face the dire repercussions of what will be unleashed once strategic clarity shakes loose the status quo.

The results of this ambiguity or clarity debate in strategy circles are naturally making their way into the political arena. Some pro-Taiwan members of Congress support adjusting or terminating strategic ambiguity. The current Congress has introduced many bills to strengthen Taiwan’s military security, such as the Taiwan Invasion Prevention Act, Taiwan Defense Act, Arm Taiwan Act and Taiwan Deterrence Act. The White House claims that its policy has not changed, but the shifting toward strategic clarity is apparent in such acts as increasing military presence at the Indo-Pacific “frontier,” forming regional cliques to expand dominance, establishing the role of Taiwan within the greater Indo-Pacific strategy and, from time to time, making public the details of the U.S.-Taiwan military cooperation.

It can be said that strategic ambiguity and strategic clarity toward Taiwan is a game theory strategy in the toolkit of Washington, and it is also a rhetorical tool for power balancing and intervention in the Taiwan Strait. As the dynamics change between China, the U.S. and Taiwan, the U.S. will constantly reach for this rhetorical tool. However, it is not ambiguity or clarity that ultimately determines the fate of the Taiwan Strait, but will and power.

The author is the director of the Taiwan-U.S. Relations Office of the Institute of Taiwan Studies at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.