The visit by French President Emmanuel Macron and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen to Chinese Communist Party General Secretary Xi Jinping (習近平) proved to be more momentous than expected. While Von der Leyen delivered a clear deterrent message on Ukraine, human rights and Taiwan, Macron gave Xi a double gift and seriously damaged Western solidarity.
First, he effectively legitimized Beijing’s claim to Taiwan by equating it to political unity in Europe, saying: “As Europeans, our concern is our unity. The Chinese are also concerned with their unity, and Taiwan is a component [of this unity] from their point of view.”
He did not mention Russian President Vladimir Putin’s claim of “Russian unity” to justify invading Ukraine.
Macron then distanced France from Washington’s position, saying: “Do we [Europeans] have an interest in speeding up on the subject of Taiwan? No. The worst of things would be to think that we Europeans must be followers [one translation said “vassals”] on this subject and adapt ourselves to an American rhythm and a Chinese overreaction.”
In a separate interview, he said: “We don’t want to get into a bloc versus bloc logic... We should not be caught up in a disordering of the world and crises that aren’t ours.”
So far, US President Joe Biden’s administration has downplayed the obvious schism between France and the rest of the West on China and Taiwan, but the gap is too wide to ignore.
Before the neo-isolationist posture of Macron gains momentum in Europe, Biden needs to articulate not only the moral basis for defending Taiwan against Chinese aggression, but also the strategic imperative.
Taiwan in the hands of an aggressive communist China would threaten Southeast Asia just as Imperial Japan did in World War II using its “unsinkable aircraft carrier,” as US General Douglas MacArthur described Formosa. What Macron calls “crises that aren’t ours” suddenly would be everyone’s, as happened on Dec. 7, 1941.
Biden needs to formalize his four off-hand commitments to defend Taiwan. Whether China took at face value any of those remarks or the single less explicit ones by former US presidents George W. Bush and Donald Trump is unknown, because administration officials immediately said US policy had not changed, without stating what the policy is on defending Taiwan.
That no US administration has been willing to make that commitment in a formal policy declaration dilutes the deterrent message to China’s political leaders and strategic planners.
The US policy of strategic ambiguity on Taiwan was stated concisely by former US assistant secretary of defense Joseph Nye during the Third Taiwan Strait Crisis in 1995. When asked by Chinese officials what the US would do if China attacked Taiwan, he said: “We don’t know and you don’t know; it would depend on the circumstances.” Nye did not mention the Taiwan Relations Act, which requires the US to “maintain the capacity to resist” a use of force against Taiwan, but does not mandate it.
Then-US secretary of defense William Perry said Nye’s statement “perfectly” expressed US policy, and no administration since has repudiated or modified it. The Trump and Biden administrations quietly opposed the US Congress’ attempts to clarify Washington’s resolve through the Taiwan Invasion Prevention Act, which would have provided advance authorization for the executive branch to come to Taiwan’s defense.
Now that Macron has urged the US’ allies in Europe to stay out of the US-China confrontation over Taiwan, Biden needs to make the public case for Western unity even more strongly than he has on Ukraine.
Joseph Bosco is a fellow of the Institute for Taiwan-American Studies.
Taiwan stands at the epicenter of a seismic shift that will determine the Indo-Pacific’s future security architecture. Whether deterrence prevails or collapses will reverberate far beyond the Taiwan Strait, fundamentally reshaping global power dynamics. The stakes could not be higher. Today, Taipei confronts an unprecedented convergence of threats from an increasingly muscular China that has intensified its multidimensional pressure campaign. Beijing’s strategy is comprehensive: military intimidation, diplomatic isolation, economic coercion, and sophisticated influence operations designed to fracture Taiwan’s democratic society from within. This challenge is magnified by Taiwan’s internal political divisions, which extend to fundamental questions about the island’s identity and future
The narrative surrounding Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s attendance at last week’s Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) summit — where he held hands with Russian President Vladimir Putin and chatted amiably with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) — was widely framed as a signal of Modi distancing himself from the US and edging closer to regional autocrats. It was depicted as Modi reacting to the levying of high US tariffs, burying the hatchet over border disputes with China, and heralding less engagement with the Quadrilateral Security dialogue (Quad) composed of the US, India, Japan and Australia. With Modi in China for the
The Jamestown Foundation last week published an article exposing Beijing’s oil rigs and other potential dual-use platforms in waters near Pratas Island (Dongsha Island, 東沙島). China’s activities there resembled what they did in the East China Sea, inside the exclusive economic zones of Japan and South Korea, as well as with other South China Sea claimants. However, the most surprising element of the report was that the authors’ government contacts and Jamestown’s own evinced little awareness of China’s activities. That Beijing’s testing of Taiwanese (and its allies) situational awareness seemingly went unnoticed strongly suggests the need for more intelligence. Taiwan’s naval
The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) has postponed its chairperson candidate registration for two weeks, and so far, nine people have announced their intention to run for chairperson, the most on record, with more expected to announce their campaign in the final days. On the evening of Aug. 23, shortly after seven KMT lawmakers survived recall votes, KMT Chairman Eric Chu (朱立倫) announced he would step down and urged Taichung Mayor Lu Shiow-yen (盧秀燕) to step in and lead the party back to power. Lu immediately ruled herself out the following day, leaving the subject in question. In the days that followed, several
RSS