When Chinese President Xi Jinping comes to Washington next week, will U.S. President Barack Obama again miss an opportunity to permanently deter conflict with China over Taiwan, as he and his predecessors have repeatedly done?
Obama is proud of accomplishing things no other president could achieve: health care reform, recognizing the Communist government of Cuba, and negotiating the Iran nuclear deal.
A Landmark Decision
During Xi‘s visit, the president can unilaterally announce a landmark decision that won't require either the concurrence of the U.S. Congress (which would support him on this issue in any event) or reciprocal action by the government of China. On his own, Obama could declare publicly that the United States will defend Taiwan against aggression or coercion from China.
For the first time since 1979, when President Jimmy Carter unilaterally terminated the U.S.-Taiwan Mutual Defense Treaty, Beijing would know with certainty that any use of force against Taiwan would mean conflict with the United States. Since China's leaders are not suicidal, such a presidential declaration would prevent potentially disastrous Chinese miscalculation. This is the same kind of deterrence President Dwight Eisenhower achieved when he entered into the 1954 treaty with the Republic of China.
After Carter severed the Taiwan security pact 25 years later, Congress immediately passed the Taiwan Relations Act, pledging U.S. arms for Taiwan's self-defense, but the legislation did not commit the United States to directly defend the island. In the ensuing years, Taiwan began its transition from dictatorship to democracy, over the strong objections of China, which claims the island as part of its territory even though the Communist government has never ruled it.
To protest Taiwan's democratic trend, in 1995 and 1996 China mobilized forces and fired missiles toward Taiwan. President Bill Clinton responded by sending aircraft carriers to the Taiwan Strait to deter any further Chinese moves against the island.
But when Chinese officials asked then-Assistant Secretary of Defense Joseph Nye what Washington would do if China actually attacked Taiwan, his response was less than a resounding statement of U.S. resolve: "We don't know and you don't know; it would depend on the circumstances." It was the explicit articulation of a strategic ambiguity that successive administrations have deemed expedient to follow.
While Washington hedges, Beijing has been busy planning and building its military capabilities to create precisely "the circumstances" that will prevent the United States from once again coming to Taiwan's defense. Anti-ship ballistic missiles and attack submarines are the instruments that enforce China's area denial and anti-access strategy.
At one point, an American president seemed prepared to clear the murky policy and make explicit the U.S. commitment to Taiwan. After the EP-3 incident in April 2001, President George W. Bush was asked what the United States would do to defend Taiwan against Chinese aggression. "Whatever it took," he replied.
But Bush's strategic clarity was shortlived. Asia specialists in and out of the government immediately began walking the president's words back as too provocative to China, forcing the administration to announce that there had been "no change" in the U.S. posture of strategic ambiguity.
An Aggressive China
A bemused Beijing stayed on its course of building a counter-deterrent to U.S. intervention in any future Taiwan crisis. As voices in the United States increasingly questioned the wisdom of even the ambiguous commitment to Taiwan, Beijing decided its strategy was proving effective and extended it to the entire region. In 2009, it announced a "nine-dash line" claiming 90 percent of the South China Sea as Chinese waters and territory. Its aggressive claims have resulted in numerous maritime clashes with other regional claimants as well as the United States. In recent years, China has upped the ante by building up rocks and reefs, making them large enough to support airfields and other military installations.
