Thu, May 14, 2026 page3

• US’ official stance on Taiwan is a game of hairsplitting

  STRATEGIC AMBIGUITY: A US official in 1995 told Chinese officials wondering how the US would react to a Taiwan crisis that ‘we don’t know, and you don’t know’

  • AP, BEIJING
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  It is a verbal tightrope US presidents have had to walk for about 50 years, where even small slip-ups when stating official US policy toward Taiwan and China can trigger geopolitical alarm bells.

  The way the US views Taiwan under the “one China” policy acknowledges the Chinese position that Taiwan is part of China, while still allowing for informal US relations with Taiwan.

  It is intended to be vague, built on what has become known as strategic ambiguity.

  

  The flags of the US, front, and the Republic of China, center, flutter outside the Chungshan Institute of Science and Technology in Taoyuan on March 30.

  Photo: I-hwa Cheng, AFP

  Then-US assistant secretary of defense Joseph Nye in 1995 said to Chinese officials wondering how the US would react to a Taiwan crisis: “We don’t know, and you don’t know.”

  “The idea was, stick to the very careful language that’s been crafted and don’t vary,” said Mike McCurry, former White House press secretary under former US president Bill Clinton.

  “Because there are too many people listening and paying attention,” McCurry said.

  The policy could again be pushed into the spotlight during US President Donald Trump’s visit to China this week.

  In the past, some US officials have flubbed it, requiring swift diplomatic cleanup.

  “It’s the precision of the words,” former US National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said. “They just have to be so extraordinarily precise when you’re talking about Taiwan because, quite frankly, the stakes are enormously high.”

  Former US president Joe Biden suggested four times that the US would intervene militarily if China were to invade Taiwan, forcing White House officials to clarify that he was not undoing decades of precedent.

  Trump was president-elect in 2016 when he took a call from then-president Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) — likely the first president to do so since the US severed diplomatic relations with the nation in 1979.

  He later scoffed at the hubbub, posting: “Interesting how the US sells Taiwan billions of dollars of military equipment, but I should not accept a congratulatory call.”

  The following year, the Trump White House issued a statement about a meeting in Germany between Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) and Trump that described Xi as president of the Republic of China, the formal name for Taiwan — not the People’s Republic of China.

  “There is a lot of difficulty to navigate a lot of these concepts. However, the reason why that is the case — a lot of misunderstanding and misspeaking — is because those concepts are conceptual traps set up by China,” said Miles Yu (余茂春), principal China policy adviser to former US secretary of state Mike Pompeo. “You cannot explain something that’s unexplainable.”

  Yu, now a senior fellow and director of the China Center at the Hudson Institute, has advocated for more firmly stating the US commitment to defending Taiwan.

  The concept of a “one China” policy or a “one China” principle, as Beijing calls its insistence that Taiwan is an inalienable part of China, was “completely of Chinese making,” he said.

  “No one inside the Chinese high command has ever believed there is any ambiguity as to America’s resolve to defend Taiwan,” Yu said.

  Instead, the US has long adhered to plans to defend Taiwan in proportion to Chinese threats, as evidenced by Washington repeatedly mobilizing forces to the Taiwan Strait over the years amid heightened tensions, he said.

  Today, the Trump White House says there has been no change in policy, but scoffs at the idea of verbal gymnastics required in stating it, saying that Trump has approved major arms sales to Taiwan over the years.

  The policy was always hard to articulate.

  Under an agreement with Beijing beginning in 1979 with then-US president Jimmy Carter, the US began adhering to the “one China” policy.

  Carter’s administration spent months in secret negotiations with China to reach the agreement, yet Carter later said that it “does nothing to prevent” a future president or US Congress from “even going to war” to protect Taiwan.

  Clinton, during a 1998 roundtable in Shanghai, said he supported the “three no’s”: The US not supporting Taiwanese independence, not supporting the “two Chinas” idea and not backing Taiwan’s admittance into international organizations.

  However, the following year, Clinton said: “You know what I’ve done in the past,” seeming to point to previous US military interventions and suggesting he could do something similar involving Taiwan.

  During a 2001 interview with The Associated Press, then-US president George W. Bush was asked whether the US might use military force to counter a Chinese attack on Taiwan and answered: “It’s certainly an option.”

  Bush later told CNN that did not mean the US was toughening its stance, saying: “I have said that I will do what it takes to help Taiwan defend itself.”

  In 1989, then-US president George H.W. Bush said during a banquet in China that while the US adheres to “the bedrock principle that there is but one China, we have found ways to address Taiwan constructively without rancor.”

  During a 2014 joint news conference in Beijing with Xi, then-US president Barack Obama said: “We encourage further progress by both sides of the Taiwan Strait towards building ties, reducing tensions and promoting stability on the basis of dignity and respect.”

  Still, getting it right can be tricky.

  “Anybody who has been at the State Department, the Pentagon or even the White House podium can tell you: When the issue of Taiwan came up, you went to your notes,” Kirby said. “You didn’t freelance it.”

  Yet Kirby recalled that he “got cocky once and didn’t,” mischaracterizing the policy and causing “a little kerfuffle.”

  Any big error usually first draws complaints from US policy officials, who are not shy with their displeasure, Kirby said, adding that “you’ll be highly encouraged to make a statement correcting it right away.”
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