Recently, the Liaoning aircraft carrier battle group and the USS Roosevelt aircraft carrier battle group sailed into the South China Sea to face each other around the Taiwan Strait. The State Department reiterated Wednesday (7) that the U.S. commitment to Taiwan is “rock solid. Meanwhile, calls for “strategic clarity” from the Biden administration have resurfaced in the United States.
On Wednesday, State Department spokesman Ned Price said at a media briefing that the U.S. is highly concerned about ongoing coercive actions by the Chinese Communist Party military against Taiwan in the region. In support of long-standing U.S. policies such as the Taiwan Relations Act, the U.S. military retains the responsibility to defend against any force or other coercive action that could endanger the security, social or economic systems of the people of Taiwan.
Price reiterated, “The United States will continue to work with our allied partners to support each other’s shared prosperity, security and values in the Indo-Pacific region, which also includes peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait.”
On the 3rd of this month, a battle group consisting of the Liaoning aircraft carrier and five warships sailed south from Okinawa and Miyako Island into the Pacific Ocean. The Chinese Navy subsequently announced on the evening of the 5th that the carrier group was conducting drills around the Taiwan Strait and that the drills would become a regular occurrence.
In the meantime, the USS Roosevelt carrier battle group sailed into the South China Sea via the Strait of Malacca on April 4. The USS John S. McCain, a Burke-class U.S. Navy Seventh Fleet destroyer, passed through the Taiwan Strait on April 7 on a “freedom of navigation” exercise, while the USS Liaoning aircraft carrier sailed through the Strait of Malacca. “The Liaoning aircraft carrier battle group was conducting military exercises in the waters near Taiwan.
According to Radio Free Asia, former U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates suggested during an online event for the Washington Post that the situation in the Taiwan Strait is so dangerous that the United States should consider abandoning its long-standing “strategic ambiguity.
Former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s chief China policy adviser Yu Maochun expressed the same position in an interview with Radio Free Asia’s Viewpoint program. He argued that strategic ambiguity is a very important shortcut to armed conflict.
Yu cited the outbreak of the Korean War in 1950 as an example of the “strategic ambiguity” practiced by the United States at the time, which gave the Chinese Communist Party the illusion that the United States would not intervene in North Korea’s invasion of South Korea; in addition, in the early 1990s, U.S. intelligence agencies and diplomats had already received information that then-Iraqi President Saddam Hussein had proposed an attack on Kuwait. In addition, in the early 1990s, U.S. intelligence agencies and diplomats had already received information that then-Iraqi President Saddam Hussein was proposing to attack Kuwait, but the U.S. authorities only gave a very vague statement, which contributed to Saddam’s aggressive ambitions and led to the outbreak of the Iraq War.
Yu Maochun admits, “I think ‘strategic ambiguity’ is very unnecessary, and we should pursue ‘strategic clarity’.”
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