US ‘strategic ambiguity’ creeps from Taiwan to Ukraine — and worries both

U.S. officials keep lowering the time frame for China to make its military move on Taiwan. In 2021, Adm. Philip Davidson estimated that China would try to invade Taiwan within the next six years. A short time later, his successor, Adm. John Aquilino, said it could happen sooner than anyone expected.  

Last month, Adm. Mike Gilday, chief of naval operations, saw the prospect for war across the Taiwan Strait as substantially more imminent: “When we talk about the 2027 window, in my mind that has to be a 2022 window or potentially a 2023 window.”

Yet, over the past year or so, China has not significantly increased its military capabilities to attack Taiwan. That has been a quarter-century of power augmentation since the U.S.-China standoff in the 1995-96 Taiwan Strait Crisis.

Instead, what has changed are Beijing’s intentions as it assesses the main obstacle to a military conquest of Taiwan: the will of the United States to prevent it.

On four occasions, President Biden has said U.S. forces would be deployed to help defend Taiwan. In 2001, President George W. Bush also said he would do “whatever it took” to defend Taiwan, and in 2020, President Trump, when asked, growled, “China knows what I’m gonna do.”  

But on all six occasions over three U.S. administrations, White House and State Department officials diluted the warnings by “clarifying” that U.S. policy on defending Taiwan “has not changed” — without stating what that policy actually is.

That vague formulation left in place the policy of strategic ambiguity, definitively articulated by the Clinton administration during the 1995-96 Taiwan Strait Crisis, when China first launched missiles toward Taiwan and Washington sent two carriers to deter further Chinese aggression.  Asked by Chinese officials at the time how the U.S. would respond if China attacked Taiwan, Assistant Defense Secretary Joseph Nye answered, “We don’t know and you don’t know; it would depend on the circumstances.”

Beijing then escalated its military preparations to change “the circumstances” for the next crisis. Today, Chinese anti-ship ballistic missiles and attack submarines threaten, as one Chinese admiral put it in 2018, to sink a U.S. carrier or two and quickly kill 5,000 to 10,000 sailors.

The dramatic difference in relative China-U.S. capabilities and intentions was demonstrated in this year’s Fourth Taiwan Strait Crisis after House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) visited Taiwan and infuriated Beijing.

Its barrage of missile firings and naval and air operations on the water, in the air, and through the space surrounding and over Taiwan brought no overt U.S. or allied response, despite all the statements and warnings invoking the Taiwan Relations Act (TRA), which describes threats to Taiwan as “a matter of grave concern to the United States.”

Western acquiescence to the greatest display of hostile military capabilities since the Vietnam War may well have been the result of a behind-the-scenes understanding with Beijing that Washington would not oppose China venting its displeasure symbolically on a temporary basis.  Still, the symbolism of vast Chinese military power being exercised unchallenged against America’s strategic “security partner” and democratic soulmate in the Indo-Pacific was a graphic demonstration of how the 1995-96 physical and psychological “circumstances” have changed.

Along with Adm. Gilday’s abbreviated time frame for China to attack Taiwan was his caution that, in the meantime, Beijing would continue increasing the military pressure on Taiwan. That increased pressure could take the form of repeat rehearsals of the post-Pelosi demonstration of force, which was effectively a trial run for a no-fly, no-sail zone over and around Taiwan — in other words, a blockade of the island, explicitly opposed in the TRA. 

Another changed circumstance was Biden’s calamitous abandonment of Afghanistan in August 2021. Beijing — and much of the world — saw it as an important demonstration of a flagging U.S. will to sustain commitments to security partners that are less than formal allies, such as Taiwan and Ukraine.

While Biden tolerated China’s no-fly, no-sail zone around Taiwan, he rejected Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s urgent requests for a no-fly zone over Ukraine as a certain invitation to “World War III.”

The dueling policy approaches were perhaps expressed by Defense Under Secretary Colin Kahl, who recently said of the security dangers in both theaters: “We believe we can walk and chew gum at the same time.” He noted that the global network of U.S. allies and partners “are a hedge against a two-war scenario.”

Moscow and Beijing may see the U.S. security dilemma somewhat differently as they reinforce each other’s opposition to the U.S.-led international order. Their lesser allies, North Korea and Iran, are providing weapons systems to support Russia’s aggression against Ukraine and may stand ready to assist China’s against Taiwan.

Aside from sending arms, they also can support their senior partners by precipitating crises in their own regions, distractions that would enable both vertical and horizontal escalation, which Washington deeply fears in both Europe and the Indo-Pacific.

That concern is why Biden, and to a certain extent Trump before him, denied both Ukraine and Taiwan the capabilities needed for a forward defense with weapons that could strike military targets in Russia and China, respectively.

Washington’s anxieties also are evident in the administration’s subtle pressure on Ukraine to moderate its expectations for a successful outcome. National security spokesperson John Kirby said last week, “Mr. Zelensky gets to determine — because it’s his country — what success looks like and when to negotiate.”

But Secretary of State Antony Blinken, also last week, explained the administration’s Ukraine policy objective this way: “Our focus is to make sure Ukraine has … what it needs to … take back territory that’s been seized from it since Feb. 24.”

As to whether Washington would send arms to support Kyiv’s larger objective of recovering all Russian-occupied territory, especially Crimea, Blinken would say only, “For us, the No. 1 principle is nothing about Ukraine without Ukraine.”

But the administration seems to be deciding which weapons systems to send, or whether to impose a no-fly zone, based not entirely on what Ukraine needs to defend itself but also on expectations of what Vladimir Putin will accept.

Secretary Kahl correctly noted that “there has to be a daily effort to shape our adversary’s perception” of U.S. and allied capabilities in both regions. But at least equally important are the potential enemies’ grasp of firm and clear U.S. and allied intentions. It seems, however, that a bit of strategic ambiguity is seeping from Taiwan policy into U.S. intentions on Ukraine as well. 

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 served in the Pentagon when Vladimir Putin invaded Georgia and was involved in Department of Defense discussions about the U.S. response. Follow him on Twitter @BoscoJosephA.