With war over Taiwan becoming more likely, Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump need to state clearly their positions on the volatile issue — Harris because she is a new presidential candidate with relatively unknown views, and Trump because he is an old candidate with incoherent views
President Biden has said on four different occasions that America would intervene to defend Taiwan against a Chinese attack, and each time his own officials dismissed his remarks as nothing new. U.S. policy on defending Taiwan was unchanged, they said, without explaining what that policy is.
Neither the Biden administration nor any of its predecessors ever issued a declaratory, fully vetted policy statement committing the U.S. to defend Taiwan, even though it would send a strong message of deterrence to China and would be overwhelmingly supported by both parties in the House and Senate. Instead, despite Biden’s statements, his national security team has insisted on following the policy of strategic ambiguity first stated by the Clinton administration in 1995: “It would depend on the circumstances.” Every administration since has adopted that approach.
When asked in 2019 how he would react if China attacked Taiwan, Trump only said ominously, “China knows what I’m gonna do.” But he did not deign to share that information with Congress or the American people, giving him the same plausible deniability earlier presidents have hidden behind.
Trump had started off on a hopeful, resolute basis immediately upon his election in 2016, when he accepted a congratulatory call from Taiwan’s President Tsai Ing-wen. When China objected to the unprecedented conversation between an American and Taiwanese president, Trump brusquely rejected the complaint, saying, “I can talk with anyone I want.”
His defiant attitude toward China liberated his stellar national security team from the ossified legacy constraints of prior administrations. Ever since Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger made their cynical deal on Taiwan with Mao Zedong and Zhou En-lai in 1972, subsequent administrations have walked on eggshells with China on the issue.
Trump’s disruptive approach even encouraged his first (and short-lived) secretary of State, Rex Tillerson, to assert at his confirmation hearing, in White House-approved testimony, that the U.S. would block China’s access to the militarized artificial islands it had constructed in the South China Sea in contravention of Xi Jinping’s explicit 2012 promise to President Barack Obama.
When it came to China, Vice President Mike Pence, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, and a half-dozen other national security officials took full advantage of Trump’s willingness to challenge old habits. They launched a series of major addresses and policy initiatives to get tough with China while deepening and broadening U.S. relations with Taiwan.
The Biden administration reluctantly adopted the Trump approach on China and Taiwan, with Secretary of State Antony Blinken even agreeing with Pompeo’s last-minute finding that China was guilty of genocide against the Uyghurs in Xinjiang.
But it later became clear from Trump’s most recent China-friendly statements and his infatuation with Xi — and other autocratic leaders like Vladimir Putin, Kim Jong Un and Viktor Orban — that his administration’s favorable Taiwan policies reflected only the values and convictions of his appointees, not his own, then or now.
Taiwan’s status in a second Trump administration would be a matter of negotiation between Trump and Xi. Taiwan would be justified in praying that Trump would not act on the views of Taiwan he has expressed to journalists and others.
His vice presidential nominee, JD Vance, unlike a Pence or a Pompeo, seems to possess no deeply held or well-informed foreign policy views of his own, nor has he shown any inclination to disagree with Trump, saying at one point, “I really don’t care about Ukraine, one way or another.” Putin’s Hitlerian aggression and war crimes in Ukraine seem to have escaped Vance’s attention, though in 2015 he did warn of the danger of a Hitler-like figure in the U.S. — the man he is now running with.
Dramatic developments have shaken this year’s political landscape — Biden’s disastrous debate performance; the attempted assassination of Trump; his botched convention speech and selection of Vance; Biden’s forced withdrawal from the presidential race by his own party; and the speedy coronation of Harris ahead of the Democrats’ convention. But there is one more potential major event waiting to happen before November.
Given Trump’s squandered opportunity to unify and heal the nation after his near-death experience, his unhinged performances on the campaign trail, and his refusal to accept the election outcome if he loses again, the 78-year-old GOP nominee should follow the example of his erstwhile elderly opponent and withdraw from the race.
That would honor his debate statement that the prospect of another Biden term was the reason he was running in the first place instead of enjoying a relaxed retirement at one of his “beautiful places.” Biden’s exit now gives him that opportunity.
He and Vance should make way for a new team that is better positioned to represent most Republicans, appeal to independents, and defeat the “radical leftist” Harris, who has excited Democrats and is doing far better in the polls against Trump than Biden was. Unlike Biden’s assertion that his withdrawal was an act of patriotism, Trump, having already been anointed by his party, can make that claim plausibly. He can bow out with his dignity, and his ego, intact.
Like the Democrats, Republicans can and should organize a virtual vote to select a new ticket.
Joseph Bosco served as China country director for the secretary of Defense from 2005 to 2006 and as Asia-Pacific director of humanitarian assistance and disaster relief from 2009 to 2010. He is a nonresident fellow at the Institute for Corean-American Studies and a member of the advisory board of the Global Taiwan Institute.