Yvonne Chiu
In September of 2022, for the fourth time in little over a year, U.S. President Biden said that Americans would defend Taiwan in the event of a Chinese invasion only to be followed by White House aides walking back his statement, because it contradicted an American strategy developed in the late 1970s of deliberate ambiguity about whether or not it would come to Taiwan’s aid if it were attacked. The most recent occasion prompted yet another round of questions about whether strategic ambiguity is dead and warnings that abandoning strategic ambiguity is unwise.[1]
Many policymakers and analysts are concerned that Biden’s declarations of military support will dampen Taiwan’s incentives to reform its defenses or encourage Taiwan to declare formal independence and precipitate a Chinese invasion. There are certainly risks to abandoning a posture of strategic ambiguity but also many good reasons to do so, including that both Taiwan and China have taken unexpected paths that now moot the normative and geopolitical functions of strategic ambiguity.
In the 1970s, China’s Chinese Communist Party (CCP) deferred resolving the Taiwan question—invading Taiwan to defeat the Kuomintang (KMT) and claim that territory—because it prioritized achieving economic development that required access to and integration with international trade and capital markets. Meanwhile, the posture of strategic ambiguity taken by the U.S. sought to stabilize the Taiwan Strait with dual deterrence of both Chinese attack and Taiwanese declaration of independence. This policy rested on two premises—that China would remain committed to peaceful and non-coercive merger, if any, and that Taiwan’s independence was not essential to American foreign policy interests—neither of which holds today.
In the intervening years, China has decidedly not liberalized, democratized, or renounced the use of force to take Taiwan, and surveys of Taiwan’s population consistently show overwhelming preference for retaining the status quo—i.e., its de facto sovereignty—in the face of China’s domestic oppression (including its failed “One Country, Two Systems” attempt in Hong Kong), continued militarization, and increasing regional and cross-strait aggression.[2]
THE CIRCUMSTANCES THAT SERVED AS THE PREMISE FOR STRATEGIC AMBIGUITY HAVE FUNDAMENTALLY CHANGED.
When strategic ambiguity vis-à-vis Taiwan was developed, both China and Taiwan were ruled by one-party dictatorships. China’s CCP was far more violently repressive than Taiwan’s KMT, but both were illegitimate governments so, at the time, the U.S. had no strong normative reasons to defend Taiwan’s independence, only strategic ones.[3]
The circumstances that served as the premise for strategic ambiguity have fundamentally changed. While the CCP has hewed to its political trajectory from the post-Mao 1970s, Taiwan has fundamentally transformed from a one-party state to a stable and vibrant liberal democracy with expansive civil and political liberties.
Over 85% of Taiwan’s population is from families predating the KMT’s 1949 invasion; they have long eschewed any claims to govern China’s territory, and their now democratically-elected leaders have since followed suit.[4] Taiwan’s constitution still contains vestigial references to “the free area of the Republic of China” and to a “Taiwan Province,” and the KMT has not formally renounced its claims to Taiwan’s territory, but these remain not because there is any desire to govern or become a part of China, but because China would consider their elimination to be a declaration of Taiwanese independence.[5]
However, there is now little real danger of Taiwan declaring independence. Unlike the early years of Taiwan’s democracy when its new leaders were more radical for having been forged under dictatorial oppression, Taiwan’s political leadership is now more moderate and careful with rhetoric and actions related to declarations of independence. For example, current governing Democratic Progressive Party (DDP) leaders commonly say, “Taiwan is already a sovereign and independent country, so there is no need to separately declare its independence.”[6]
TO HOLD ONTO STRATEGIC AMBIGUITY IN ORDER TO DETER TAIWANESE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE POSITS A MORAL EQUIVALENCE WHERE THERE IS NONE.
More importantly, Taiwan’s genuine rule of law, separation of powers, constitutionalism, independent judiciary, and essential rights protections make its system of governance far more legitimate than the CCP’s authoritarian-bordering-on-totalitarian governance over China’s territory. A liberal democracy operates with consent and participation of the governed, which gives it an objective degree of legitimacy that is widely expected by international norms and which the CCP’s so-called people’s republic lacks. To hold onto strategic ambiguity in order to deter Taiwanese declaration of independence posits a moral equivalence where there is none.
Proponents of American strategic ambiguity speak of both sides of dual deterrence in the same breath, but the two components are not morally or strategically equivalent.[7] Taiwan’s unequivocal resistance to becoming Chinese is precipitated by the CCP’s unequivocal pursuit of Taiwan annexation—preferably without fighting, but by force if necessary—and the latter already undercuts strategic ambiguity’s purpose of maintaining cross-strait stability.
China has reaped substantial diplomatic, economic, and geopolitical clout from its integration into and position in the international community and economy. In combination with its ongoing military expansion and reform, it need not defer a military answer to its Taiwan question much longer.
The importance of deterring across both sides of the strait is asymmetric. At this point, it is more likely that China would coerce an annexation of Taiwan than Taiwan would declare independence. Deterring Chinese seizure of Taiwan is also far more normatively and strategically important for maintaining a stable, liberal global order than deterring Taiwan independence. Recent events are reminding the world that the political evolution to liberal democracy is not inevitable and that the norms of sovereignty and territorial integrity remain easily challenged through invasion and warfare. Formal Taiwanese declaration of independence may be imprudent, but the U.S. and other stakeholders should understand that treating Taiwanese independence principally as an incitement of China is analogous to blaming Ukraine’s desire to join the EU and NATO for provoking Russia’s 2022 invasion.
NEITHER TAIWAN NOR CHINA ARE THE COUNTRIES TODAY THAT THOSE IN THE 1970S EXPECTED THEM TO BE.
Prudence may call for not encouraging a Taiwan declaration of independence for risk of Chinese invasion, and the Taiwanese people’s overwhelming preference for status quo of some kind instead of independence demonstrates their prudence. At the same time, there are few robust geopolitical reasons to discourage it. Formal independence would only make de jure the sovereignty that Taiwan already exercises, but strengthening Taiwan’s tenuous position would also bolster a liberal global order by reinforcing principles of nation-state sovereignty and legitimate governance. Given its own global security and economic interests and its own liberal democratic values, the most important international policy goal for the U.S. should be to preserve this liberal global order. Far more so than Russia at this point, China is the country with probably the greatest capacity to revise the global order, and so deterring its ambitions on Taiwan is especially urgent.
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Chiang Kai-Shek Memorial Hall. (Nhat Nguyen Hoang)
Neither Taiwan nor China are the countries today that those in the 1970s expected them to be. Taiwan’s legitimate claim to sovereignty and China’s continued threats of forcible takeover in violation of international norms and laws have stripped the U.S. strategic ambiguity doctrine of its normative and geopolitical utility.
PIECE-MEAL TAKEOVER OF TAIWAN?
Prevailing public policy discussions of a Taiwan invasion scenario focus mostly on a sudden full-scale cross-strait invasion of Taiwan’s main island. Given the PLA’s developing range and depth of capabilities, bringing overwhelming force to bear is a viable option. Furthermore, this particular approach comports with China’s interest in winning such a campaign quickly—within a few days, if possible—and establishing a new cross-strait status quo that would be difficult to reverse.
CHINA HAS LONG USED AT LEAST TWO DIFFERENT TYPES OF GREY ZONE ACTIVITY: AMBIGUOUS FORCES WHO CLAIM CIVILIAN STATUS AND INCREMENTAL ACTIVITY THAT DOES NOT JUSTIFY MILITARY RESPONSE BUT CUMULATIVELY ALTERS THE STATUS QUO.
U.S. policymakers should not neglect preparing for China’s range of available options, however, which include taking some of Taiwan’s outlying islands (e.g., Kinmen and Matsu, which lie along China’s coastline) by force first or blockading Taiwan to starve it into submission without firing a shot. The PLA may not mirror how other great military powers might themselves choose to invade. Perhaps China is considering more piece-meal possibilities, which would also be consistent with its preferences for grey zone strategies.
China has long used at least two different types of grey zone activity: ambiguous forces who claim civilian status (e.g., “little blue men” and maritime militia) and incremental activity that does not justify military response but cumulatively alters the status quo. The CCP mastered the art of the grey zone out of necessity, and now has extensive experience and success with it. At the outset, China under the CCP was considered formidable by virtue of its size and population, then later for the nuclear weapons it developed in the 1960s, but the country lacked diplomatic and cultural heft and the military might of a great power until more recently.
Even as China continues acquiring requisite great power characteristics, there is no reason to believe it will abandon the grey zone activities that have worked so well thus far, especially when doing so could avoid putting its newly reformed and modernized military to the test.
Taiwan’s geography will work both for and against it. Its position across a 130km strait from China makes it difficult to invade and its mountainous topography will favor insurgency and make its population hard to pacify. It will also be harder to defend Taiwan, supply it with materiel, evacuate refugees, or break a blockade around it.
This geography provides China ample grey zone opportunity. Taiwan’s composition is complex: it comprises 166 islands, including two archipelagoes (Kinmen and Matsu, comprising over 40 islands) just off China’s shore. This creates good opportunities to gamble on gradual encroachment (cf. Russia in Ukraine’s Crimea and Donestsk and Luhansk Oblasts), because the U.S. may not consider Taiwan’s outlying islands to be worth defending.
TO MORE EFFECTIVELY DETER BOTH MILITARY AND NON-MILITARY MEANS FOR SEIZING TAIWAN, THE U.S. MUST BETTER DEVELOP ITS OWN PIECE-MEAL STRATEGIES AND BETTER INTEGRATE ALL ITS INSTRUMENTS OF POWER INTO A COHESIVE DETERRENCE STRATEGY.
Calibrating robust deterrent responses to the CCP’s grey zone strategies without escalating too much is challenging, and the CCP may also wager that more incremental action such as a blockade—to starve rather than invade Taiwan into submission—would not draw an American military response, especially if the U.S. considers deterring the narrow issue of formal Taiwan independence on a strategic par with deterring a Chinese invasion.
To more effectively deter both military and non-military means for seizing Taiwan, the U.S. must better develop its own piece-meal strategies and better integrate all its instruments of power into a cohesive deterrence strategy.
WHY TAIWAN’S DIPLOMATIC ISOLATION MATTERS
The CCP has amply demonstrated the utility of incremental activity that initially appears insignificant, for example in the South China Sea where it has gradually built new islands and seized effective control of contested territory. Somewhat downplayed is its use of the same strategy in the diplomatic realm. To date, China has peeled away nearly all of Taiwan’s formal diplomatic relationships—only 13 states plus the Vatican have full diplomatic relations with Taiwan—and continues to obsessively monitor how Taiwan is referenced or depicted, by exerting formal and informal pressure on states, international organizations (the UN, WHO, IOC, etc.), multinational companies, and foreign educational institutions alike. For example, China demands that all entities, no matter how large or small, refer to Taiwan as “Chinese Taipei” or a “province of China” and that they depict Taiwan as located within China’s boundaries on all maps.[8] This supports a sustained pressure campaign to deny Taiwan membership in and access to international institutions.[9]
Kaohsiung Music Center during the 2022 Taiwan Lantern Festival. (Tiouraren Y.-C. Tsai)
By and large, the strategic response from the U.S. has treated Taiwan’s formal and informal isolation and erasure as insignificant and the relationship with the United States as the only one that really matters for Taiwan.[10] This is a mistake, because it fails to understand the significance of not just full diplomatic recognition but also non-diplomatic representation and non-governmental identification to China, to Taiwan, and to other states in the international community.
China’s obsession with isolating Taiwan and policing all references to it is not mere pettiness or diplomatic fussiness. It is a deliberate strategy to ensure that no other country, institution, or entity will be connected enough to Taiwan to defend or support it when China goes to seize it. Diplomatic and public recognition as a sovereign state are neither necessary nor sufficient for assisting a country in need, but it will be far more difficult for a state to overcome its domestic hurdles to aiding Taiwan without those reinforcing geopolitical ties.
THE U.S. GOVERNMENT HAS OCCASIONALLY DRIFTED FROM STRATEGIC AMBIGUITY AS A POSTURE DESIGNED TO CONFUSE ADVERSARIES INTO A POLICY THAT SERVES TO CONFUSE ITS OWN POLICYMAKERS.
Given its formal and informal global leadership on Taiwan security issues, including its 1979 Taiwan Relations Act, the effect of American strategic ambiguity has been to signal to other countries that they should also be ambivalent about the value of Taiwan’s sovereignty for defending a rules-based global order, by discounting the strategic value of incremental non-military activities like diplomatic pressure.[11]
The U.S. government has occasionally drifted from strategic ambiguity as a posture designed to confuse adversaries into a policy that serves to confuse its own policymakers. Such confusion leads the U.S. to resist some valid policy options. For example, the U.S. withholds regular arms sales to Taiwan in order to placate China, instead agreeing only to infrequent, ad hoc sales that are less effective for deterring Chinese invasion; recently, the U.S. excluded Taiwan from its proposed Indo-Pacific Economic Framework, which would have better embedded Taiwan in a formal international network, and is instead pursuing a separate trade dialogue with Taiwan.[12] It is true that other countries in this economic initiative wanted to exclude Taiwan for fear of China’s reaction, but that apprehension comes in part from the U.S.’ own public, long-standing ambiguity about supporting Taiwan. As the only credible counterweight to China in the Asia-Pacific region, the U.S.’ ambivalence generates uncertainty for everyone—opponents and partners alike—about Taiwan’s standing and future, and makes the prospect of more deeply engaging with Taiwan seem too risky for many.
U.S. foreign policy analysts have recently been reconsidering the CCP’s threats to global security through the lens of strategic competition, which was only reinforced by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine this year. U.S. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi’s August 2022 visit to Taiwan, which was the highest-profile American congressional delegation to Taiwan in over two decades, led to a sharp Chinese response. The ensuing five days of live-fire military drills surrounding Taiwan’s main island, including ballistic missile launches over Taiwan and join anti-submarine and sea assault operations, brought the timely questions about American strategic ambiguity to widespread public attention.
China’s threat to Taiwan is a threat to the post-1945 norms of state sovereignty, which calls for the U.S. to rally other stakeholders in defense of the principles of state sovereignty and legitimate governance. Strategic ambiguity vis-à-vis Taiwan has led the U.S. to cultivate fewer partners than it needs, should a test of its capacity to defend those principles arise in Taiwan. That a handful of small states have nonetheless resisted Chinese pressure regarding Taiwan along various dimensions, at some cost to themselves, suggests that a much more widespread, coordinated, and effective global response to Chinese threats could be possible if the U.S. chose strategic clarity.[13]
CHINA IS NOW FAR MORE LIKELY TO INVADE TAIWAN THAN TAIWAN IS TO DECLARE INDEPENDENCE, AND IT IS A MISCALCULATION TO DISSUADE THEM IN EQUAL PARTS.
Because both countries have changed in relevant ways in the past five decades, strategic ambiguity is already unbalanced. U.S. is calibrating its strategy against circumstances that no longer hold, and the two sides of the Taiwan Strait should no longer be equivalently deterred. China is now far more likely to invade Taiwan than Taiwan is to declare independence, and it is a miscalculation to dissuade them in equal parts. For a liberal democracy like the U.S. that wants to stabilize a liberal global order, deterring an autocratic and expansionary China from invading Taiwan is both strategically and normatively essential, while deterring a liberal democratic Taiwan from declaring independence is not—and may even be detrimental. In the game of great power competition, it is common to overlook small states’ perspectives, but better accounting for not only China’s but also Taiwan’s domestic circumstances and world view would help correct strategic ambiguity’s outdated perspective and pave the way for a clearer Taiwan and Asia-Pacific strategy that is consistent with U.S.’ own long-term global interests.
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