The top Asia official on the White House’s National Security Council said Monday that President Biden’s recent comments on defending Taiwan “speak for themselves” and rejected the characterization that the White House walked them back.
“I do not believe that it is appropriate to call the remarks that came from the White House today as walking back the president’s remarks,” said Kurt Campbell, the NSC’s coordinator for Indo-Pacific affairs.
“The president’s remarks speak for themselves. I do think our policy has been consistent and is unchanged and will continue,” Campbell added.
White House National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan on Tuesday also claimed that Biden’s comments were not a change in policy and tried to downplay them, saying the president was only answering a “hypothetical question.” But Biden’s comments were the most explicit he’s made on the issue.
When asked in an interview with 60 Minutes if the US would defend Taiwan if China attacked, Biden replied, “Yes, if in fact there was an unprecedented attack.” When asked if that meant US men and women would defend Taiwan in the event of a Chinese invasion, he answered, “Yes.”
The comments marked the fourth time of his presidency that Biden pledged to defend Taiwan despite the long-standing US policy of strategic ambiguity on the issue. After the interview aired, a White House spokesperson claimed that US policy toward Taiwan hasn’t changed.
“The President has said this before, including in Tokyo earlier this year. He also made clear then that our Taiwan policy hasn’t changed. That remains true,” the spokesperson said.
The statement was notably less of an attempt at a walk back than previous clarifications from the White House concerning Biden’s pledges to defend Taiwan. In May, the last time Biden said the US would defend Taiwan, the White House walked his comments back, saying that he meant the US would provide Taiwan with weapons, not send troops.
Biden’s comments and the lack of clarity from the White House mark a significant shift away from the US policy of strategic ambiguity for Taiwan despite Campbell’s claims otherwise. Under the policy, the US does not officially say one way or the other if it would intervene to defend Taiwan. This is meant to deter either side from changing the status quo across the Taiwan Strait.
The policy was established after the US severed diplomatic ties with Taipei in 1979 to normalize relations with Beijing. China has lodged a complaint to the US over his comment, saying it “will not tolerate any activities aimed at secession.”
Biden’s foreign policy team is full of hawks and hypocrites.
Chock full of the parasites.
Historians looking back at us a hundred years from now … “In those last years of empire, opportunists and knaves populated the halls of state and sucked the last ounces of life force from the dying colossus.”
Nicely stated. And accurately stated.
There will be no historians a hundred years from now. The plutocrats and oligarchs are making sure of that now.
If there are humans at all 100 years from now…
This.
Sigh.
New tactic. Walking back the walk back. Waiting for the walking back of the walking back of the walk back. Then onto walking back th…….
lol.
Taiwan would never declare independence until assured that OUR policy and promises have changed.
So it’s out in the open the president can go to war whenever and wherever he wants? Aren’t we supposed to at least pay lip service to the constitution?
Again, it doesn’t matter. China knows perfectly well that the US alleged stance of “One China” is a lie and that nothing Biden says in that direction is true. They know the US wants Taiwan independence and intends to use Taiwan against China in the same manner the US uses Ukraine against Russia. And they are preparing for the war to come. Whether they use an invasion or a blockade is irrelevant. The US will attempt to prevent it and the US will be defeated militarily.
A US land war against China might be laughably hopeless but we can win a nuclear war against China on points because we can kill more of them than there are of us to kill. We might eventually regret DC is infested with crazed sociopaths.
Heh, yeah, we can kill more of them than there are of us, but they still win because it’s probably impossible to kill all of them without specifically targeting our entire arsenal to that purpose. And then there’s the question about what to do about Russia, since Russia is likely to support China in that nuclear war. So then we get nuked twice over and thus lose twice over. What we need are crazed sociopaths like me who dislike state crazed sociopaths.
It’s of course all up to the judges and whether they want to use percentages or total cadavers. We should probably get that in writing before launch.
LOL I’m not one to believe in the end of the world due to nuclear war, but that does raise the question of whether there will be any judges left. Maybe lizard aliens can weigh in on that.
No one “wins” a nuclear war.