What's Wrong with American Taiwan Policy

From the signing of the 1972 Shanghai Communiqué until the mid-1990s, American policy was that the United States would be satisfied by any resolution of the status of Taiwan that was acceptable to people on both sides of the Taiwan Strait, so long as the resolution was achieved peacefully. American policy sought to deter each side from taking actions to resolve the situation in a way not acceptable to the other.

This policy was frustrating to Beijing because it prevented the use of China's military and diplomatic advantages to preempt a resolution of the Taiwan problem. Since 1995-1996, however, because Washington has become concerned that Beijing is losing its patience, it has shifted its policy emphasis toward reassuring Beijing. In effect, it has come to see peaceful resolution as resolution on terms that will satisfy Beijing and has tried to push Taiwan to start talking about solutions. The policy has failed to calm tensions because it is based on a wishful belief that the people of Taiwan can be made to accommodate Beijing at Washington's behest. Instead, American efforts to ease People's Republic of China (PRC) anxieties have motivated the Taiwanese to defend their interests even more assertively and thus have made the situation more difficult rather than less.

To be sure, the Taiwan situation is a bad problem with no easy solution. But the least worst choice is to return to the policy that served the United States well for a quarter-century, which combines clarity about the ends of the policy with "strategic ambiguity" about the means. Instead, recent American efforts to mollify Beijing have encouraged confusion about both ends and means and have increased rather than decreased the risk of war.

The Origins of 'Strategic Ambiguity'

To understand the recent shift in American policy requires a careful decoding of texts and slogans that were encoded purposely in order to avoid clarity, achieving what became known as "strategic ambiguity." The 1972 Shanghai Communiqué set down the essence of what was then a new policy:

The United States acknowledges that all Chinese on either side of the Taiwan Strait maintain there is but one China and that Taiwan is a part of China. The United States Government does not challenge that position. It reaffirms its interest in a peaceful settlement...

Here, the United States put in place both ends and means that were to serve it well for years to follow. Abandoning a long-standing position, the United States no longer characterized Taiwan's regime as the legitimate claimant to all of China. But it now made clear that whatever outcome was to occur must be achieved peacefully. At this time, under the rule of Chiang Kai-shek, there was no risk that Taiwan would declare independence from China, and Chiang's plans to attack the mainland over the years had been blocked by the United States. So the insistence on peaceful resolution was aimed essentially at deterring mainland attack. Strategic ambiguity lay in the fact that the United States never explicitly stated what it would do to enforce this requirement. It did, however, conspicuously maintain in and around Taiwan the means for a military response adequate to any PRC action.

Normalization of U.S.-China relations in 1979 changed this position, but not by much. The United States recognized the PRC as the sole legal government of China and (in the English text) "acknowledge[d] the Chinese position that there is but one China and Taiwan is part of China" or (in the Chinese text) "recognized [chengren] the position taken by China, namely, there is but one China and Taiwan is part of China." ¹ At the same time, the United States terminated its security treaty with Taiwan, but nonetheless declared that it "continues to have an interest in the peaceful resolution of the Taiwan issue." To bolster this declaration, Congress adopted the Taiwan Relations Act, which...