Biden locks in defence of Taiwan, Australia will have to respond

Tokyo: Once is a chance. Twice is a coincidence. Three times is a pattern. Four times appears to be a change of policy.

US President Joe Biden once again said on Monday morning AEST that the United States would defend Taiwan if China attacked. The comments overturn decades of strategic ambiguity towards the defence of Taiwan and threaten to draw Australia into another future conflict.

The gravity of the statement in an interview with the US 60 Minutes program drew a request for clarification from reporter Scott Pelley. Pelley asked if that meant that unlike in Ukraine, US forces – American men and women – would defend Taiwan in the event of a Chinese invasion, Biden replied: “Yes.”

US President Joe Biden.Credit: Bloomberg

For the fourth time in a year, the White House then released a statement stating US policy towards Taiwan had not changed.

Biden is either deliberately muddying the waters to discourage Beijing from thinking about any future attack, has formed a personal commitment to protect the Taiwanese people, or he is ignorant of the US foreign policy position.

The last is highly unlikely. “This confirms his statements are not a gaffe, and never were a gaffe,” said Centre for Strategic and International Studies fellow Brian Hart.

The fourth statement from the White House can only lead to one conclusion: Biden and the White House appear to believe that committing to defending Taiwan is consistent with their interpretation of the US “one-China policy” and the Taiwan Relations Act, even when previous administrations have taken a less forceful position. The position of “strategic ambiguity” has been maintained over decades to avoid triggering an escalation that could turn into open conflict. Biden’s own Indo-Pacific chief, Kurt Campbell, has pushed back against “strategic clarity” – diplomatic speak for committing to defending or not defending Taiwan, but that time now appears to have passed.

Having personally committed four times to defend the key strategic gateway to the Pacific it would be unthinkable for the US not to intervene if China attacked while Biden was in office.

US military hegemony, diplomatic credibility and its place as the world’s dominant superpower would all be at risk.

Xi told his armed forces last week that he wanted the capability to attack by 2027. That’s the same year US military generals believe China will have enough firepower to attempt to take the democratic island of 24 million people.

Amanda Hsiao, the senior China analyst at the International Crisis Group, said the most significant part of the 60 Minutes interview was Biden’s position that Taiwan should make their own judgments about independence. “[The] long-standing policy is that the US does not support [Taiwan] independence and is opposed to unilateral changes from either side,” she said.

Taiwan, which most recently split from the mainland after the Chinese civil war in 1949, has been self-governed for decades but is not recognised by most international institutions as being run by an independent government. Up to 85 per cent of Taiwanese people support maintaining the status quo, while 76 per cent of those surveyed in a MyFormosa poll believe the current situation already equates to de facto independence.

China has said it would crush any move towards formal independence – a red line that could trigger an invasion by the People’s Liberation Army.

The combination of Biden’s statements and China’s growing military capability now puts Australia in a very difficult position.

The Coalition government was tested last year after one of Biden’s last commitments to defend Taiwan was dismissed as an off-the-cuff remark. Then Defence Minister Peter Dutton said it would be “unthinkable” for Australia not to join the conflict with the US. Labor leader Anthony Albanese has since repeated that he “supports the status quo with regard to the Taiwan Strait”, but has yet to be challenged by a permanent shift in direction from the very top of the White House.

What if the US has changed the status quo?

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