Brent Christensen, the Director of the American Institute in Taiwan (AIT), has recently said that arms sales to Taiwan are a bipartisan consensus in the US, adding that there will still be US$5.2 billion’s worth of such sales in 2021. However, if Joe Biden is sworn into the White House in 2021, will he adjust the US’s strategic clarity or ambiguity towards Taiwan? How will he adjust it? This has attracted considerable attention from observers.

In essence, strategic clarity and strategic ambiguity are designed to achieve deterrent effects. They are about how to intimidate an enemy into maintaining the status quo instead of acting rashly. When it comes to the trilateral relations between the US, China and Taiwan, the key should be about which deterrent policy the US should take so as to deter the CCP regime led by Xi Jinping from waging a war on Taiwan.

Academically speaking, “strategic clarity” extremely limits one’s policy options for intimidation. This, to the intimidating side, is a demerit, but it can achieve a greater deterrent effect. In contrast, “strategic ambiguity” expands the policy options for intimidation, which to the intimidating side is a merit. However, this approach has a reduced deterrent effect, as the other side might misjudge the situation easily or be able to achieve its aim with salami tactics. Since 1954, the US’s strategies towards Taiwan have gone through the stages of both clarity and ambiguity:

The Sino-American Mutual Defense Treaty, which came into effect in 1955, made Taiwan and the US military allies. As stipulated by the treaty, the two nations should create a collective defense mechanism to defend themselves from military aggression from outside. The treaty also accords the US with the right to deploy land, air and sea forces in and about Taiwan and the Pescadores. The most important article is Article V, which states that each party recognizes that an armed attack in the West Pacific Area directed against the territories of either of the parties would be dangerous to its own peace and safety.

All in all, it can be seen that the treaty contains “strategic clarity” components, as it states that an armed attack on Taiwan is equivalent to an attack on the US. And the US and Taiwan will counter military attacks from outside “jointly” and with “mutual aid”. In the 1958 Taiwan Strait Crisis, the US Seventh fleet assisted in our country’s logistics of sending supplies to Kinmen, provided Taiwan with powerful missiles and armament, and set up a command center in Taiwan. All that was the concrete manifestation of “strategic clarity”.

The 1979 Taiwan Relations Act is the most important law between Taiwan and the US so far. In the law, the “strategic ambiguity” about whether the US should intervene in the event of a conflict in the Taiwan Strait is manifested in section 3C: when there is “any threat to the security or the social or economic system of the people on Taiwan and any danger to the interests of the United States arising therefrom”, “The President and the Congress shall determine, in accordance with constitutional processes, appropriate action by the United States in response to any such danger.” The “appropriate action” provided here is the most important key to the deterrence of an invader. But it is also where strategic “ambiguity” lies, since “appropriate action” can mean verbal condemnation, economic sanctions, diplomatic isolation or threats, or the actual employment of military might.

In the 1996 Taiwan Strait crisis, the US deployed two aircraft carrier battle groups centered on USS Independence and USS Nimitz respectively to Taiwan seas as the “appropriate action” in the Taiwan Relations Act. That was a classic example of a successful deterrence of China’s military threat to Taiwan.

Since the Trump administration took office in January 2017, the strategic ambiguity of the Taiwan Relations Act has remained unchanged. But the US administration, out of its national interests derived from an “anti-Communism, anti-China and pro-Taiwan” stance, has introduced a string of “tactically clear” policies towards Taiwan. They include ten arms sales, the signature of Taiwan-friendly acts such as the “Taiwan Travel Act”, the initiative taken to declassify the “Six Assurances” made by the Reagan administration to Taiwan, and high-ranking US officials’ visits to Taiwan. Although it is impossible for the Trump administration’s “tactical clarity” to be directly converted to “strategic clarity”, it is possible for a “quantitative change” to become a “qualitative change”, so much so that the “ambiguity” in a “strategically ambiguous” approach lessens and the “clarity” increases. This might ultimately mean success in deterring the CCP leadership from waging a war on Taiwan rashly.

Strategies are a matter of essence and principles. Tactics are a matter of manifestations and techniques. Joe Biden has yet to announce his specific strategies towards China. While the “strategic ambiguity” of the Taiwan Relations Act will not change, the Biden administration is likely to switch from Trump’s “tactical clarity” to “tactical ambiguity”. Looking back in history, Biden opposed the Taiwan Security Enhancement Act in 1999, arguing that the US should not “add fuel to the fire” to “leave China with no choice but to start a war”. In 2001 Biden criticized George W. Bush for saying that the United States would do “whatever it took to help Taiwan defend herself”.

Therefore, Biden seems to believe that the enhancement of Taiwan’s national security and the US’s commitment to Taiwan is a provocation to China, and that the US should avoid being involved in a Taiwan Strait conflict due to tactical clarity. The Biden administration’s policies towards Taiwan will ultimately be determined by how it sees China strategically and the level of China’s actual threats to Taiwan in time to come. On the campaign trail, Biden stated clearly that Russia was the biggest threat while China was “the biggest competitor,” and that the US will cooperate with China on “climate change” and “public health”.

We might be able to use these indicators to evaluate whether the Biden administration’s policies towards Taiwan will be tactically clear or ambiguous: whether it will sign Taiwan-friendly bills from Congress, whether it will maintain the existing practice of reviewing arms sale proposals “immediately upon request”, the quality and quantity of arms sales, and the frequency of government officials visiting Taiwan and their ranks. To summarize, the Biden administration will be most likely to adopt tactical ambiguity towards Taiwan. From my point of view, the US’s deterrence against China’s invasion of Taiwan is likely to weaken.

(Lin Tai-ho is a professor at National Chung Cheng University’s Institute of Strategic and International Affairs.)

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