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Yes, the news report quotes that Biden knows the wordings well. He warned Bush when the latter used “whatever
it took” to defend Taiwan by saying that “the United States has not been
obligated to defend Taiwan.”
Noted that he used the word "obligate" and "commit" on
different occasions.
Referring to Biden’s comment on the U.S.to protect Taiwan, he used the language
“commitment,” under the Taiwan Relations Act, rather than “obligation.”
The commitment is a word for mutual agreement, meaning there are other relevant
parties, while under the domestic law, it is the “obligation,” non-negotiable
with no parties related.
We can almost sure a critical thing: the Taiwan Relations Act is just not just
a domestic law of the U.S., but is a legal mandate authorized by the Treaty of
Peace with Japan in 1951, which mandates the U.S., the Principal Occupying
Power, to hold the commitment.
Biden Said the U.S. Would Protect Taiwan. But It’s Not That Clear-Cut. David E. Sanger@NYT 20211022
After the president’s remarks at a CNN event, the White House quickly declared
that the American policy of “strategic ambiguity”
over the island’s defense had not changed.
WASHINGTON
— American presidents have spent decades trying to sidestep the question of how
forcefully the United States would come to the aid of Taiwan if China invaded it
or, more likely, tried to slowly strangle the island in an effort to force it back
under the control of the mainland.
The American
policy — called “strategic ambiguity” because it leaves vague exactly how the United
States would react — does not lend itself to a tough-sounding response. So the White House was quick to declare that American
policy had not changed after President Biden was asked at a CNN town hall event
on Thursday night whether the United States would protect Taiwan and he said, “Yes,
we have a commitment to do that.”
“The president
was not announcing any change in our policy and there is no change in our policy,”
a White House statement read.
On Friday,
both the defense secretary, Lloyd J. Austin III, and the State Department spokesman,
Ned Price, repeated in detail longstanding language
intended to signal to Beijing that it should do nothing to change the status quo,
and to Taipei that it should not think about relying on the United States if it
considered declaring independence.
Mr. Biden’s
wording was a reminder of what a minefield Taiwan remains for the United States,
42 years after the passage of the Taiwan Relations Act and amid a major buildup
of Chinese military forces in the region. And once a strategy
of ambiguity is described in less-than-ambiguous terms, as he seemed to do on Thursday,
it is hard to walk it back.
Mr. Biden
is hardly new to the issue: He is one of the very few political figures who have
been around Washington so long that he voted for the act, in 1979, as a young senator
from Delaware. As chairman of the Senate
Foreign Relations Committee, he traveled to Taiwan and
understood the nuances of the wording.
He understood
it so well, in fact, that 20 years ago Mr. Biden warned
President George W. Bush that “words matter” after Mr. Bush said he would
do “whatever it took” to defend Taiwan. When, a few hours later, the Bush White House did
what the current White House did, saying that nothing had changed, Mr. Biden wrote
an opinion column correcting him, noting that “the
United States has not been obligated to defend Taiwan.”
“There is
a huge difference,” Mr. Biden wrote in The Washington Post, “between reserving the
right to use force and obligating ourselves,
a priori, to come to the defense
of Taiwan.” He accused Mr. Bush of “inattention to detail.”
Mr. Biden’s
blunt statement on Thursday to Anderson Cooper was not
the first time he had made such a commitment.
In August,
after the American withdrawal from Afghanistan left some allies wondering how much
they could rely on American commitments, he told ABC that “we would respond” if there was an action against a
NATO ally, adding, “same
with Japan, same with South Korea, same with Taiwan.”
In fact, the
treaty obligations with NATO, Japan and South
Korea are quite different from what they are with Taiwan, or the Republic of China,
which Beijing has declared as its territory since it was established in 1949.
But he may
be reflecting a desire to toughen Washington’s language
to counter new Chinese capabilities, which would allow far more subtle moves
to strangle Taiwan — cutting off undersea cables, internet
connections and liquid natural gas shipments — than an outright invasion.
And some believe
that the era of strategic ambiguity should come to an end — that ambiguity no longer fits the moment. “It’s grown long in the tooth,” said Richard Haass,
a former senior State Department and national security official who is now president
of the Council on Foreign Relations. “It
is time to change from strategic ambiguity to strategic clarity.”
Mr. Haass
and a number of other experts and former government officials think it would be
wiser to make it clear to Beijing exactly what kind of economic
penalties would follow any effort to intimidate or take over Taiwan.
That may yet
happen whenever Mr. Biden gives his long-delayed China strategy speech, laying out his
approach to a country that is a military, economic and technological challenge on
a scale the United States has not seen before. But the White House
is not ready for any kind of alteration to its policies.
“What should
be clear from all his comments on Taiwan,” a State Department official said in a
written statement, is that “our support for Taiwan is rock solid and we are committed to peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait.”
David E. Sanger
is a White House and national security correspondent. In a 38-year reporting career
for The Times, he has been on three teams that have won Pulitzer Prizes, most recently
in 2017 for international reporting. His newest book is “The Perfect Weapon: War,
Sabotage and Fear in the Cyber Age.” @SangerNYT • Facebook
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