As US chips away at its one-China policy, fears grow for Taiwan’s uneasy peace
- Calls in Washington to jettison ‘strategic ambiguity’ – under which the US does not commit to defend Taiwan if China attacks – in favour of ‘strategic clarity’
- Instability, distrust and miscommunication is a classic ‘security dilemma’, where each side sees its motives as pure and its adversaries’ as the opposite
A steady erosion of long-standing norms, deep-seated US-China mistrust and crumbling safeguards are making the Taiwan Strait increasingly dangerous amid concerns that Washington is “hollowing out” the one-China policy that has held the fragile peace for half a century, according to US, Chinese and Taiwanese analysts and former officials.
The seminal policy, under which Washington officially recognises Beijing and officially does not recognise Taipei, will hold for the time being, they said. But as hardliners on both side of the Pacific heighten tensions, and as US-China contacts wither, the situation is looking more tenuous than it has in decades.
“This is the first time in my career where the presumption of high-level dialogue is not there,” said Kevin Nealer, a former US diplomat and intelligence official, now a principal with the Scowcroft Group in Washington. “The guardrails are not up, there’s no governor on this process, it creates its own instability and miscalculation.”
For generations, the strait has enjoyed an uneasy peace thanks to a series of opaque, agree-to-disagree policies. In recent years, however, hardening attitudes on all sides threaten to erode the one-China policy amid US calls to jettison “strategic ambiguity” – under which the US does not commit to defend Taiwan if China attacks – in favour of “strategic clarity”.
02:20
Heightened tensions in Taiwan amid Russian invasion of Ukraine
Driving this is a growing bipartisan consensus that authoritarian China under President Xi Jinping cannot be trusted and that support for democratic Taiwan should be more explicit and full-throated. Similarly, Beijing sees little to trust in Washington’s China policy and believes the US is focused on holding it back, and goading it over Taiwan.
“Washington is accelerating its efforts to drain the one-China principle of its essence,” said Li Fei, a Taiwan expert at China’s Xiamen University. “The US must be careful not to overplay the Taiwan issue because it may force China to take counteractions.”