In a recent essay in Foreign Affairs, titled “The Upside on Uncertainty in Taiwan,” Johns Hopkins University professor James B. Steinberg makes the argument that the concept of strategic ambiguity has kept a tenuous peace across the Taiwan Strait.
In his piece, Steinberg is primarily countering the arguments of Tufts University professor Sulmaan Wasif Khan, who in his thought-provoking new book The Struggle for Taiwan does some excellent out-of-the-box thinking looking at US policy toward Taiwan from 1943 on, and doing some fascinating “what if?” exercises.
Reading through Steinberg’s comments, and just starting to read Khan’s book, we could already sense that we would be coming down on Khan’s side. He does provide some fresh thinking on an issue that has for too long been encapsulated by some tired, old and ambiguous concepts dating back to the 1970s.
Khan’s basic argument is that at a number of moments in the triangular relationship between the US, China and Taiwan, Washington made ill-informed decisions, or no decisions, and lacked a strategic vision. Only more recently — after Taiwan’s momentous transition to democracy — has Taiwan’s trajectory been shaped by the democratic choices of Taiwanese.
As an example Khan retells the story of the 1943 Cairo conference, when Allied leaders planned the post-World War II world. There, then-US president Franklin Roosevelt decided to promise Taiwan, then still occupied by Japan, to Chiang Kai-shek (蔣介石). Khan argues that Roosevelt could instead have pushed for a UN or US trusteeship, which would have prevented Taiwan from becoming a political football in the civil war between Chiang’s Nationalists and Mao Zedong’s (毛澤東) Communists.
From there Khan describes a series of blunders and missteps in US policy toward the island. He also mentions the missed opportunity of the July 1949 memo by US diplomat George Kennan, who argued that the US should forcibly evict the Nationalists from Taiwan and establish a representative government that would hold a plebiscite to determine its future. The idea had first been promoted two years earlier by then-US president Harry Truman’s envoy to China, General Albert Wedemeyer, but never got off the ground. Khan argues that Mao might well have gone along with it.
In telling his account of past US missteps, Khan comes down on the side of strategic clarity, arguing that a clearer vision would have prevented the tense and muddled situation we have today.
In the remainder of his article, Steinberg counters this argument by stating that “for those who defend US policy, uncertainty is a virtue, not a vice,” adding: “Often derided as strategic ambiguity, Washington’s approach is in fact a nuanced strategy that has promoted prudence on both sides of the Taiwan Strait, by declining to specify under what circumstances it might intervene militarily in a conflict between Taipei and Beijing.” He then goes on for several pages in defense of “strategic ambiguity.”
There are several key problems with Steinberg’s approach.
One is that in his rendering of the US obligations under the Taiwan Relations Act, Steinberg totally neglects to mention the most fundamental clause, Sec. 3301 (b)(6), which states: “It is the policy of the United States ... to maintain the capacity of the United States to resist any resort to force or other forms of coercion that would jeopardize the security, or the social or economic system, of the people on Taiwan.”
Read in combination with Sec. 3302 (c), “The President is directed to inform the Congress promptly of any threat to the security or the social or economic system of the people on Taiwan and any danger to the interests of the United States arising therefrom. The President and the Congress shall determine, in accordance with constitutional processes, appropriate action by the United States in response to any such danger.”
This certainly looks as close to a NATO Article 5 as you could get, and forms a solid basis for US President Joe Biden’s statements that he would defend Taiwan in the case of a Chinese attack. It is unhelpful for Steinberg to try to diminish this commitment.
Another one is that in his enumeration of the benefits of ambiguity, Steinberg gives an account of the 1995-1996 Taiwan Strait missile crisis, which ended when then-US president Bill Clinton — after much hesitation — sent two aircraft carrier battle groups to the area around Taiwan, but not into the Taiwan Strait. Steinberg describes this as a measured reaction, which — together with the subsequent reaffirmation of the “one China” policy “created the context for reengagement with China.”
While the sending of the aircraft carrier battle groups had the desired effect of stopping the missile firings, the Clinton administration went way overboard in the subsequent conciliatory moves, and sold Taiwan down the river by letting Clinton himself state his so-called “three noes” in a meeting in Shanghai in June 1998: No support for “two Chinas,” no support for Taiwan independence, and no support for membership in international organizations that require statehood.
These points had been made by then-US president Richard Nixon and then-US national security adviser Henry Kissinger in secret meetings with then-Chinese premier Zhou Enlai (周恩來) and Mao in 1972, but had not been part and parcel of the policy lingo, until Clinton got weak-kneed and pronounced them in Shanghai in 1998. An example of how ambiguity leads to trouble.
However, as Steinberg rightfully notes, perhaps the most powerful lesson of Khan’s book concerns “agency.” As Steinberg describes it, “repeatedly, Khan reminds readers that the path to the present was not inevitable, but was rather the product of choices made by leaders in Beijing, Taipei and Washington.”
The problem is that for far too long, the people of Taiwan lacked agency, as they did not have a democratic system or any elected leaders. Decisions made before the early 1990s lacked the voice of the people of Taiwan, as decisions were made over their heads. Yet, the fundamentals of US policy, and the predicament in which Taiwan finds itself, are based on the decisions made by US governments in the 1970s.
So, instead of perpetuating ambiguity and clinging to a nebulous “status quo” that no one could live with, perhaps it is time to work out a solution that respects the fundamental right of Taiwanese to determine their own future under the UN Charter, and help them be a full and equal member in the international community.
Gerrit van der Wees is a former Dutch diplomat who teaches Taiwan history and US relations with East Asia at George Mason University and previously taught at the George Washington University Elliott School for International Affairs in Washington.
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