The Daily - Is the U.S. Changing Its Stance on Taiwan?

Episode Date: May 24, 2022

For decades, the U.S. has walked a careful line when it comes to Taiwan — vowing to protect the island from China, without saying exactly how far it would go to do that.On Monday, that appeared to change.Guest: David E. Sanger, a White House and national security correspondent for The New York Times.Want more from The Daily? For one big idea on the news each week from our team, subscribe to our newsletter. Background reading: President Biden’s seemingly offhand remarks about Taiwan, made during his visit to Asia, caught some of his staff by surprise.The Russian invasion of Ukraine has been closely watched by those in Taiwan who feel that their island faces a similar threat from Beijing.For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily. Transcripts of each episode will be made available by the next workday. 

From The New York Times, I'm Sabrina Tavernisi. This is The Daily. For decades, the United States has walked a careful line when it comes to Taiwan, vowing to protect the island from China, without saying exactly how far it would go to do that. On Monday, that appeared to change. I spoke to my colleague, David Sanger, on why the shift in thinking about Taiwan has a lot to do with the lessons of the war in Ukraine.

It's Tuesday, May 24th. So David, tell us what happened over the weekend. Sabrina, President Biden was on his really first big trip to Northeast Asia since he became president. And that was a big deal because his foreign policy prior to the invasion of Ukraine was all about the pivot to Asia, to focusing American attention on China, because that's where our biggest competition economically comes from, because that's where our biggest competition economically comes from, because that's where our biggest military competition comes from, and because that's where our biggest technological competition comes from. So he made his first stop in South Korea, and he was barely off the airplane before he was in a Samsung factory that makes semiconductors, a factory that is being replicated in the United States. And the whole purpose of that visit

was to say, South Korea, our ally, is helping us become less dependent on China for microelectronics. And then he went on to the usual visits there. And then he got to Japan, where he met with Fumio Kishida, the prime minister. Ladies and gentlemen, the prime minister of Japan and the president of the United States. They had a brief press conference. Well, thank you very much, Mr. Prime Minister. And President Biden was asked about Taiwan, the island that has long been at the center of tension between the U.S. and China.

And the question has always been... Are you willing to get involved militarily to defend Taiwan? Would the United States defend Taiwan militarily if China tried to take Taiwan by force the way Russia took Ukraine by force? And his answer was... Yes. You are. That's the commitment we made.

That's the commitment we made. And then he immediately seemed to recognize that he was stepping into that great diplomatic black hole of how one talks about Taiwan. Because, of course, the United States has had, ever since Nixon recognized China, a one-China policy that has basically been designed to say that there is only one China, that it's up to China and Taiwan to sort out their relationship, but they must do it peacefully. And so he went on to say, We agree with a one China policy. We signed on to it and all the attendant agreements made from there.

We're not changing anything from back in the Nixon era. But the idea that it can be taken by force, just taken by force, is just not appropriate. It will dislocate the entire region and be another action similar to what happened in Ukraine. And so it's a burden. So David, I guess I'm wanting to kind of roll the clock back and understand what is our relationship with Taiwan? Sabrina, it is one of the most complicated relationships in diplomacy around the world. And that's rooted in a pretty messy history. Of course, there was a civil war underway in the 30s and 40s in China. In 1949, it was clear that Mao's forces were going to take all of mainland China.

And that's, of course, what created what Washington called during the Cold War, communist China. But about 2 million followers of Mao's chief opponent, General Chiang Kai-shek, fled to Taiwan, just about 100 miles across the Strait of Taiwan, and set up the Republic of China. So there were two Chinas at the time. There were two of them. We only recognized Taiwan, right, the Republic of China. And of course, during the Cold War, that was the China that the United States recognized for so long. This all changed come 1972,

when Nixon shocked the world by going to China and meeting Mao, became the first president to visit the mainland while in office. And that raised the question of how do you deal with Taiwan? Right. Because Mao made it clear to Nixon during their talks that they would not normalize their relations with the United States as long as Washington had formal diplomatic relations with Taiwan. So eventually, the United States switched its recognition to Beijing, and Nixon said that the U.S. did not support Taiwanese independence. But instead, through a series of communiques that were carefully negotiated out, the concept was that there was a single China, that Beijing had to sort out its own

relationship with Taiwan, but that it had to be a peaceful resolution, and that the United States, we determined over time, would continue to sell the arms to Taiwan that were needed to assure that Taiwan could not be taken over militarily. Now, in all of these agreements, in the Taiwan Relations Act, there's nothing that requires the United States to send its own troops or its own navy to defend Taiwan. It only requires that we help Taiwan defend itself, whatever that means. And there is actually only one senior politician still in power in Washington who is deeply familiar with the Taiwan Relations Act. Who's that? It's Joe Biden.

Oh, wow. Who was a young senator from Delaware at the time, deeply interested in foreign affairs. Went to Taiwan many times as the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, knows the ins and outs of the wording, the delicate politics. So this is not as if we have a neophyte to this issue, stumbling into wording on the topic. Right. He knew exactly the sensitivities. Joe Biden has a PhD in this relationship. And a lot of practical experience with what happens when you talk about it wrongly. In fact, about 20 years ago, when I was first covering the White House,

George W. Bush answered a question similarly to the way President Biden did yesterday and said he would do whatever it took to defend Taiwan. And then, of course, you know, the White House backtracked a bit. But there was a really searing op-ed that appeared in The Washington Post reminding President Bush that words matter when it comes to discussing such a sensitive issue. And the op-ed went on to say, there's a huge difference between reserving the right to use force and obligating ourselves, Americans, to come to the defense of Taiwan. And the author of this accused Bush of inattention to detail. And of course, it was written by Joe Biden. Huh.

Interesting. So he's been thinking about this for a long time. He has, Sabrina. And he's been thinking about how presidents talk about the issue. Because at the core of this is an American doctrine that we maintain something called strategic ambiguity about how we would defend Taiwan. Now, I realize that sounds like total diplo-speak, right? It does. I don't understand it. Right. But what it means is you want to leave some doubt in the minds of the Chinese leaders

about how heavily the United States would come to the defense of Taiwan so that they think twice about trying to take over Taiwan or even putting an embargo on Taiwan, squeezing it, depriving it of food or fuel, any of the things you could do to basically quarantine an island, right? So you want to make the Chinese think about the possibility that they could be facing the U.S. Navy if they did this. Keep them guessing. That's right. But President Biden, as president,

has begun to talk in the kind of stronger terms that Bush did 20 years ago. He was asked about Taiwan after the U.S. withdrew from Afghanistan, and he made it clear that we considered it a commitment to come to their defense. And then back in October, he appeared at a CNN town hall event, and he was asked whether the U.S. would protect Taiwan. And he said, yes, we have a commitment to do that. And of course, the White House immediately jumped in to say, no, no, no, he wasn't changing policy. We still have strategic ambiguity. Well, what did he do? He came back and

basically did the same thing during this trip to Korea and Japan. And that's pretty fascinating because now the context is so different, given the Russian invasion of Ukraine. So how has the war made such a difference? It's an interesting question, Sabrina, because it's made the possibility of an invasion and the United States getting sucked into a war with another nuclear armed superpower incredibly real. People are thinking about this now in an entirely different way. And so the United States has learned a huge amount from the world reaction organized largely in Washington to the Russian invasion of Ukraine. And the U.S. is hoping that China's been watching

and learning the same lessons as well. We'll be right back. So, David, what lessons has the Biden administration taken from the conflict in Ukraine when it comes to China? You know, it's really interesting, Sabrina. I think the Biden administration is hoping that the first lesson that is clear from the reaction to the Ukraine invasion is that America is back. the political upheavals that surrounded the last election in January 6th, that we were sort of left for dead by the side of the road and they could continue their clear march toward exceeding the United States economically, technologically, and militarily in the next few decades. But the performance of the U.S. and its allies over the past three months has sent some potentially different messages. First, Biden and his allies organized an incredible airlift of arms to the Ukrainians that were remarkably effective in taking on a much larger, presumably more sophisticated Russian military. Second, the U.S. and its allies put together some truly damaging sanctions that have made

Russia sort of an international pariah. And so what President Biden is clearly hoping is that the Chinese would look at this and say, could this all happen to us? And that the experience of the Ukraine war would add to the deterrent effect that would make the Chinese think twice if in case they were planning on taking on Taiwan, either with a direct attack or trying to go slowly squeeze it. But David, also, you know, China isn't Russia and Ukraine isn't Taiwan. So how would a potential conflict with China over Taiwan be different from the one we see in Ukraine? It's a great question because while there are some superficial similarities, there are a lot of big differences.

I mean, the first thing the Chinese will tell you is, well, our military isn't the Russian military and our gear isn't built by Russian engineers. It's built by Chinese engineers in Chinese factories with Chinese artificial intelligence infused in it. intelligence infused in it. So their first reaction would be, don't confuse the kind of fight the Russians put up with what the Chinese military could do. Because the Chinese think their military is better. That's right. And there are also geographical differences, right? This has been a land war we have been watching unfold for the past three months. But it would be very different in the case of Taiwan. That's a war that would take place largely at sea and, of course, in outer space. What do you mean? Key to running the Chinese and American navies around Taiwan would be communications,

intelligence, and visibility that comes from our satellite assets. And that's one of the reasons that the Chinese have invested so heavily in anti-satellite technology. So that's a huge difference. The Chinese would actually be shooting our satellites out of the sky. That's right. They would be trying to blind us, and we would be trying to blind them. us and we would be trying to blind them. And along the way, we would probably be turning off each other's cyber capabilities, our internet, and so forth. Got it. And there's another key difference in this example, Sabrina. You know, Ukraine and Taiwan are incredibly different places. So a conflict in Taiwan would impact the Western world

on a scale which the war in Ukraine simply cannot. Taiwan is a huge exporter of the semiconductors that we all need the most. They come out of a giant factory up on a hill outside of Taipei owned by Taiwan Semiconductor. Taiwan Semiconductor makes the world's most sophisticated chips. It exports them to the United States. So if there was a war over Taiwan, you could see the United States plunge into a recession or depression by virtue of the fact that we might not be able to get the chips that run our cars and run our factories and run our new equipment. But David, hasn't the U.S. made a big push to build its own semiconductors?

We have, but it's at its very infant stages here. So that's why President Biden was visiting that Samsung factory. It's why he celebrated when Taiwan Semiconductor announced that it was going to build a major facility in the United States and begin producing here as well. But that's going to take years to come together. And even when it does, it's going to account for maybe 5% of Taiwan semiconductors production. Oh, wow. Hardly what you would need in order to maintain an independent supply in the United States. Remember that cars used to have a few hundred semiconductors to them. The low end of the BMW line now has several thousand.

The high end has tens of thousands. And as you move to self-driving cars, those numbers rise quickly. And that's just the auto industry. So we're in a position now where it's going to be a long, long time before we can declare any kind of independence in the semiconductor arena. And until then, China's got leverage. So David, we've been talking about this looming confrontation between the U.S. and China as if it's this real possibility. But how seriously should we be thinking about a potential invasion of Taiwan? I mean, is that a real threat?

I think it's a real possibility. You know, certainly if you ask around in the Pentagon, a Chinese invasion of Taiwan is one of those scenarios that is constantly war-gamed, where we often try to figure out who would gain the advantage. It's rarely talked about in public. So it really struck me the other day when Admiral Charles Richard, who's the commander of the United States Strategic Command, that's the command that runs all of our nuclear arsenal, said that he was worried that Beijing was learning lessons from the way that President Putin has threatened Ukraine and that it would apply those lessons to Taiwan. has threatened Ukraine and that it would apply those lessons to Taiwan. He said in some congressional testimony that the Chinese are, quote, watching the war in Ukraine closely and will likely use nuclear coercion to their advantage in future conflicts. And he said explicitly that Beijing's aim, quote, is to achieve the military capability to reunify Taiwan by 2027, if not sooner. Now,

remember, he said the word capability. He didn't say they would actually go do it. But that was pretty stark. Right. David, what do this trip and Biden's comments tell us about the administration's China policy? Well, the first thing that it tells us is that the hawks inside the administration who believe that the United States has to take a much tougher line with competing with China wherever we can and pushing back on China's military ambitions are sort of winning the day. But the second thing that it tells you about this administration is that they may be rethinking the utility of strategic ambiguity. How so? There is a line of thought in the foreign policy community that strategic ambiguity was terrific

during that period from the Nixon trip in 1972 to roughly the present day. But that it has, as Richard Haass, the president of the Council on Foreign Relations and a longtime diplomat, put it not so long ago, it's grown long in the tooth. And maybe what one needs to deal with a much more aggressive and much more capable China is some strategic clarity, some clear statement to the Chinese that if you take on Taiwan, you are taking on the United States as well. And so it's possible that what we're watching unfold here is Biden trying to signal somewhat subtly to the Chinese, yeah, we still have strategic ambiguity,

but it's not that ambiguous while I'm around. That if you did something truly overt with Taiwan, you'd be looking at the Americans in the region, even if you weren't looking at them in direct combat. He may be just using the Ukraine crisis here to make the Chinese leadership think twice about what price they would pay if they sailed forward around Taiwan. David, thank you. Thank you. We'll be right back. Here's what else you need to know today.

On Monday, a Russian diplomat at the United Nations mission in Geneva resigned, saying he had, quote, never been so ashamed of my country as when Russia invaded Ukraine. Boris Bandaryov became the most prominent Russian official to resign and publicly criticize the war, a move that is unlikely to reach most Russians, but is a sign of discontent in the upper ranks of Russian power. In an email to his colleagues, he said that those who started the war, quote, want only one thing,

to remain in power forever. And he said that they are willing to sacrifice as many lives as it takes to achieve that. And an investigation published by America's largest Protestant denomination, the Southern Baptist Convention, said that national leaders of the 14 million strong denomination suppressed reports of sexual abuse and resisted proposals of reform for over two decades. The report was commissioned last year after mounting pressure from survivors of

sexual abuse in Southern Baptist churches. It found that the church's executive committee had kept a list that contained the names of hundreds of alleged abusers, but the church officials had covered it up. It also found a pattern of intimidation of survivors. found a pattern of intimidation of survivors. Today's episode was produced by Aastha Chaturvedi, Michael Simon-Johnson, Ricky Nowetzki, and Sydney Harper. It was edited by Michael Benoit and M.J. Davis-Lynn, contains original music by Dan Powell and Marian Lozano, and was engineered by Chris Wood. Our theme music is by Jim Brumberg and Ben Lansford of Wonderly.

That's it for The Daily. I'm Sabrina Tavernisi. See you tomorrow.