Clarifying Strategic Ambiguity

In 1950, one year after the People’s Republic of China was born, then the US Secretary of State Dean Acheson for the first time outlined America’s “defensive perimeter” in the post-WWII Asia. It was a line running through the Aleutians, Japan, the Ryukyus, and the Philippines. Taiwan was not part of it.

Contrary to the crusading mission of defending a “democratic partner” preached in Nancy Pelosi’s recent self-complacent monologue, the US’ later decision to put the island under its military projection sphere was to hedge against what it deemed as a rising threat from the communist revolutions sweeping Asia. To the rescue of Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek’s authoritarian and corrupted rule in Taiwan, a US navy fleet intervened in Beijing’s plan to bring the island to its fold immediately after the outbreak of the Korean War later in 1950. And it was what Taiwan has always been for the US, a disposable geopolitical pawn.

A pawn is designed to realize its strategic value without adding to its player’s liability. That was why the US unofficially adopted a tactic called “strategic ambiguity.” As the US severed all formal ties with Taiwan authorities and established diplomatic relations with Beijing in 1979, the Taiwan Relations Act went into effect simultaneously to keep loopholes for future US manoeuvres. The document asserted “that any effort to determine the future of Taiwan by other than peaceful means would constitute a threat to the peace and security of the Western Pacific area and be of grave concern to the US.” This law-binding statement was vague about the US’ responsibility in the event of Beijing’s military unification move, and it was intended that way.

A long line of the US leaders since Jimmy Carter formulated their Taiwan policies based on this tenet of premeditated equivocality. It was meant as a dual deterrence: keeping at bay Beijing’s ambition to liberate Taiwan with the possibility of the US involvement, and discouraging Taiwan’s provocative “independence drive” in order not to drag Washington into a direct military confrontation with China. This sneakily effective tactic has served to maintain a status quo in favor of America, which aims to keep Taiwan as a breakaway province and stay at peace with Beijing at the same time.

Enters Nancy Pelosi.

The incumbent US House Speaker embarked on a grandstanding visit to Taiwan, making herself the highest-ranking US official to land on the island in 25 years. And unlike her defiant predecessor Newt Gingrich, who initiated a similar stunt in 1997, Pelosi was a Democrat cohort to the sitting president. It had been predicted that her Taiwan trip would be considered by Beijing as a gravest breach of the US promise not to make official connections with Taipei. Is it as bad as recognizing Tsai Ing-wen’s regime as an independent Taiwan government? No. But taking into account other unprecedented incidents in the past few years like Trump’s ill-conceived phone call with Tsai and Biden’s fluttered claim to militarily defend Taiwan, Pelosi’s rogue visit was a culmination of the US openly drifting away from its longstanding “strategic ambiguity.” And compared to Trump’s and Biden’s transgressions, Pelosi’s “moment of clarity” has inflicted much more damage on the Taiwan Strait status quo and immensely squeezed future US policy-making manoeuvrability.