Biden Says U.S. Will ‘Militarily Defend’ Taiwan against Chinese Invasion
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President Joe Biden announced that the United States would militarily defend the island of Taiwan in a potential conflict with the People’s Republic of China.
Biden made the remarks during a speech in Tokyo alongside Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, during his ongoing week-long tour of Asia. In response to a reporter’s question about whether the U.S. would involve itself militarily in Taiwan’s defense, Biden said: “Yes. That’s a commitment we made.”
Biden’s remarks signal a big shift in U.S. foreign policy regarding Taiwan. Under the “one China policy” China claims the island nation as one of its provinces and insists that only one state representing the Chinese people may exist. Taiwan, formally named the Republic of China, has bristled at the term and resisted reunification with the mainland Chinese, to which the latter has responded with violent rhetoric and a perennial threat of war. Biden’s remarks are a partial departure from conventional policy since 1979, when President Jimmy Carter was in office.
The U.S., in response, has long been a supplier of weapons and technical training to the island – though it does not recognize Taiwan as a state under international law.
In his statement, Biden said that “We agree with the One China policy and all the attendant agreements we made. But the idea that it can be taken by force, just taken by force, would just not be appropriate.” A White House official later cited the Taiwan Relations Act, a 1979 law that mandates the U.S. defend Taiwan, as the statutory authority to support Biden’s position, who compared any invasion of Taiwan to Russia’s campaign in Ukraine. On the chance of an actual invasion, however, he said “my expectation is that it will not happen, it will not be attempted.”.
Reactions to Biden’s statement were swift from all parties. A spokesperson for Taiwan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Joanne Ou, in conversation with CNN claimed that the country “expresses sincere welcome and gratitude to President Biden and the United States government for reiterating its rock-solid commitment to Taiwan.”
Meanwhile, the People’s Republic of China reacted harshly to the decision, with spokesperson Wang Wengbin opposing it on grounds of interference in China’s “internal affairs.” They urged the Biden Administration to “be cautious in words and deeds on the Taiwan issue,” since China had “no room for compromise” on the subject. In the U.S., Biden’s comments drew bipartisan support in both chambers of Congress.
The nation of Taiwan was formed in 1949 after the Kuomintang, then-China’s nationalist government, fled the mainland for the island of Formosa in exile after losing a civil war against the Chinese Communist Party. The United States has maintained friendly relations with Taiwan throughout the latter’s history and has supplied weapons and other equipment in the past. Taiwan’s location, status as a democracy in East Asia, and controversial regard in mainland China have made it a top priority for the United States.
The People’s Liberation Army Air Force normally files fighter aircraft into Taiwan’s airspace, considering it to be their own – seen as heralds of a future military campaign on the island. For that reason, warships of the U.S. Navy’s 7th Fleet have regularly patrolled the Taiwan Strait – a 110-mile-wide strait between mainland China and Taiwan. However, fears of an invasion were raised, recently, after U.S. Navy Admiral Phil Davidson, the former head of the military’s Indo-Pacific Command, said that China would be ready to invade Taiwan within six years.
