US President Joe Biden confirmed on Tuesday May 24 in Tokyo that “strategic ambiguityWashington on Taiwan remained unchanged, while he had assured the day before that the United States would defend the island militarily if it were attacked by China.
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“Nope“, replied Joe Biden when journalists asked him if this American doctrine on Taiwan was now a thing of the past. “The policy hasn’t changed at all, I said it yesterday (Monday, editor’s note)“, he added.
Informal support
Since many decades, “strategic ambiguity» American vis-à-vis Taiwan consists in diplomatically recognizing only mainland China, while committing to give the autonomous island the military means to defend itself in the event of an invasion, but without explicitly promising an American intervention. .
The White House and then the Pentagon had already hastened on Monday to ensure that this doctrine had not changed after the last words of Joe Biden, which the media around the world wondered how to interpret: reinforced firmness vis-à-vis Beijing or another presidential blunder?
“Play with fire”
“This is the commitment we made“, said Joe Biden in Tokyo on Monday when the press asked him if the United States would intervene militarily in the event of an invasion of Taiwan, unlike that of Ukraine by Russia.
Taiwan, a territory ruled since the end of the Chinese Civil War in 1949 by an autonomous government from Beijing, welcomed on Monday the apparent extension of the American commitment to it formulated by Joe Biden, while China had seen red, invoking hissovereigntyand accusing Washington ofplay with fire“.
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Joe Biden has been in Tokyo since Sunday, where he meets the leaders of the other Quad countries on Tuesday, a diplomatic format bringing together Japan, Australia and India in addition to the United States, and designed as an alliance to counterbalance the growing weight of China in Asia-Pacific.