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“Walking-Back” President Biden’s Taiwan Policy
October 17, 2022
Taipei Times
Mon, Oct 17, 2022 page8
By John J. Tkacik, Jr.
In the clandestine services they used to say, “Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. The third time, it is enemy action.”
In the diplomatic services, “the fourth time the President of the United States says something, it’s policy.”
During a painful post-Afghanistan evacuation interview with ABC News’ George Stephanopoulos on August 19, 2021, President Joe Biden insisted that America’s global defense commitments remained rock solid. “We made a sacred commitment to article 5 that if in fact anyone were to invade or take action against our NATO allies, we would respond. Same with Japan, same with South Korea, same with Taiwan. It’s not even comparable to talk about that.”
Now, for those unschooled in American defense treaties, let me explain President Biden’s reference to “Article 5”: In US defense treaty format, “Article 5” invariably declares that “in an armed attack” each party to the treaty “would act to meet the common danger in accordance with its constitutional processes.” That is diplomatic argot for “go to war against the aggressor.”
In Taiwan’s case, however, the United States Congress crafted several sections of the 1979 “Taiwan Relations Act” to replace the Article 5 commitment in the United States’ 1955 Mutual Defense Treaty with Taiwan; Sections 2(b)(4) and (6) replace the first half of the old MDT’s “Article 5” language about “armed attack” and “meet the common danger” while Section 3(c) replaces the second half regarding “constitutional processes.”
Understandably, President Biden directly equated the TRA’s Sections 2 and 3 defense commitments to Taiwan with America’s Article 5 defense commitments to its formal treaty allies. When journalists called the White House national security staff for comments, the most they could get was “Our policy with regard to Taiwan has not changed” and an explanation that “We continue to have an abiding interest in peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait, and we consider this central to the security and stability of the broader Indo-Pacific region.” Most of the media accepted this as code for “The President misspoke” and just assumed that the White House was “walking-back” the President’s position.
Nonetheless, President Biden, who voted for the TRA when he was a young US senator from Delaware forty-three years ago, could certainly have made a credible case that he neither misspoke nor sought to change policy.
At any rate, a few weeks later on September 9, 2021, President Biden engaged in a one-on-one, 90-minute video conference with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) during which he believed he had reached an understanding on the Taiwan issue. The President said afterwards, “I’ve spoken with Xi about Taiwan. We agree … we’ll abide by the Taiwan agreement,” adding “we made it clear that I don’t think he should be doing anything other than abiding by the agreement.”
What “agreement”? Again (to repeat a point I make repeatedly in my “On Taiwan” commentaries), that agreement is this: “The United States pretends to have a ‘one China’ policy only so long as China pretends to have a ‘fundamental policy of striving for a peaceful solution’ of differences with Taiwan.”
I won’t speculate on what President Xi Jinping may have done shortly afterwards that may have angered Biden (perhaps it was an October 13th headline “China’s Military Holds Beach Landing Drills About 100 Miles From Taiwan) but at a “town hall meeting” with voters in Baltimore, Maryland, cable-cast by CNN exactly a year ago on October 21, 2021, the President doubled-down.
One participant asked “And can you vow to protect Taiwan?” to which the President unhesitatingly responded “yes and yes.” CNN host Anderson Cooper was horrified, “So are you saying that the United States would come to Taiwan’s defense if China attacked?” Mr. Biden: “Yes” and, asked again, “Yes, we have a commitment to do that.” Cooper quickly cut to a commercial and, after the break, asked Biden for stories about how the former vice president and late secretary of state Colin Powell drag-raced their Corvettes on a Secret Service race track in an undisclosed location.
The Corvettes didn’t make the news. But the next afternoon the White House was besieged with media clamors for clarification about Taiwan. White House press secretary Jen Psaki patiently repeated, “Our policy has not changed,” adding “He was not intending to convey a change in policy, nor has he made a decision to change our policy.” Unsurprisingly, The Wall Street Journal reported “the White House walked back comments Mr. Biden made about Taiwan.”
But, either the White House was not “walking back” the President’s comments, or President Biden hadn’t gotten the memo. Because on Monday evening, November 15, 2021, Biden held another marathon video conference call with Chinese President Xi.
“It was a good meeting,” Biden told a gaggle of journalists. Biden’s idea of a “good meeting” surely was not Xi Jinping’s.
“Any progress on Taiwan?” the gaggle asked. Biden assured them (and I quote): “Yes. We have made very clear we support the Taiwan Act, and that’s it. It’s independent. It makes its own decisions.”
Unable to believe what they heard, the American news media collectively dismissed the President’s comments as yet another gaffe. But on February 24, 2022, things changed cataclysmically as Russia invaded Ukraine. Three days into the invasion, the American State Department was so absorbed by the crisis that it plumb forgot to celebrate the Fiftieth Anniversary of the “Shanghai Communique,” and then the State Department launched a campaign of regular denunciations of the Chinese Foreign Ministry for distorting the substance of America’s “one China policy.”
By May 2022, the truth was beginning to dawn on the global news media. On May 23, from Seoul, The New York Times reported, “Maybe President Biden isn’t speaking off script after all. Maybe he just doesn’t think much of the script.” At a major press conference in Tokyo the day before (and after insisting that US policy on Taiwan “has not changed at all”) President Biden asserted that the United States had a “commitment we made” to “get involved militarily to defend Taiwan if it comes to that.”
This was not ambiguous. The President walked the press through his thinking: “The idea that it can be taken by force, just taken by force, is just not appropriate.” He added that an attack on Taiwan “would dislocate the entire region and be another action similar to what happened in Ukraine. And so it’s a burden that is even stronger.” Some in the White House staff may have tried to “walk-back” the president but according to The New York Times many on the President’s staff excoriated their back-walking colleagues “for undercutting their boss rather than ratifying his comments.”
And yet again, on Sunday, September 18, 2022, on the popular nation-wide Sunday evening news broadcast 60 Minutes, Biden was asked, “would US forces defend the island?” And he responded, “Yes, if, in fact, there was an unprecedented attack.” The President reiterated the United States remained committed to a “one-China” policy and said the United States was not encouraging Taiwanese independence. And then he explained: “We are not moving, we are not encouraging their being independent ... that’s their decision.”
Whatever back-walking there was at the White House ended the next day. President Biden’s top Indo-Pacific policy aide, Kurt Campbell, cautioned pundits that “the president’s remarks speak for themselves. I do think our policy has been consistent and is unchanged and will continue.”
A week later, over at the State Department, spokesman Ned Price was once again badgered by his nemesis, Associated Press correspondent Matt Lee: “I just want to make sure that I understand correctly that your ‘one China’ policy means that Taiwan is part of China and that you respect Chinese territorial integrity and sovereignty over Taiwan.”
Ned Price responded deftly: “Matt, ‘our one China’ policy has not changed. ‘Our one China’ policy has not changed in the sum of 40 years.” Lee pushed harder. “Well, what does your ‘one China’ policy say about Chinese territorial integrity for…”
At this, Ned Price cut him off: “Very, very basically, we don’t take a position on sovereignty. But ‘our one China’ policy has not changed. That is a — that is a position we made very clear in public.”
And then Price made an extraordinary disclosure: “It is a position that Secretary Blinken made very clear in private to [Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs] Wang Yi (王毅) when he met with him on Friday [September 23] ... We don’t take a position on sovereignty. But the policy that has been at the crux of our approach to Taiwan since 1979 remains in effect today.”
First, “independence is their decision”! And now “We don’t take a position on sovereignty”!
That’s a statement that no State Department spokesman has uttered aloud in a half-century. Taken together with the President’s four-time pledge that “US forces” would defend Taiwan, the spokesman’s words settle it: US policy toward Taiwan has not changed in the past forty years. What has changed is the policy of not talking about it.
John J. Tkacik, Jr. is a retired US foreign service officer who has served in Taipei and Beijing and is now director of the Future Asia Project at the International Assessment and Strategy Center.
星期專論》「收回」拜登總統的對台政策？ - 政治 - 自由時報電子報
二○二二年九月十八日週日，美國總統拜登在新聞節目「六十分鐘」專訪中表示，「如果台灣遭到前所未見的攻擊，美國將會出兵防衛台灣」。（翻攝自CBS頻道）
2022/10/16 05:30
◎譚慎格（John J. Tkacik）
在秘密行動組織裡，他們常說，「一次是偶然。兩次是巧合。第三次，就是敵對行動」。而在外交部門，「美國總統連續四次都說了一樣的話，那就是政策」。
..
連續四次都說一樣的話 就是政策
二○二一年八月十九日，美國總統拜登在接受美國廣播公司新聞網（ABC News）主持人史蒂法諾普洛（George Stephanopoulos）專訪時，談到美國不得已必須從阿富汗撤軍所造成的混亂，但也堅稱美國的全球防務承諾依然堅若磐石。「美國對（北大西洋公約）第五條做出神聖承諾，若任何人侵略或對我們北約盟友採取行動，美方會做出回應，對日本、南韓和台灣也一樣。這根本（與阿富汗）無法比較。」
現在，針對那些不太瞭解美國防務條約的讀者，請容我解釋一下拜登總統提到的「第五條」：在美國防務條約的格式中，「第五條」一貫宣稱，「在武裝攻擊中」，各締約國「將依其憲法程序採取行動，以對付此共同危險」。這就是「向侵略者開戰」的外交術語。
然而，就台灣而言，美國國會在一九七九年的「台灣關係法」中制定若干條款，以取代一九五五年「中華民國與美利堅合眾國間共同防禦條約」的第五條承諾；第二條第二款第四目和第六目，替換舊共同防禦條約「第五條」中關於「武裝攻擊」和「對付共同危險」的前半部，第三條第三款則取代關於「憲法程序」的後半部。
我們可以理解，拜登總統直接將「台灣關係法」第二條和第三條對台灣的防務承諾，等同於美國對其正式條約盟國的第五條防務承諾。當媒體記者打電話給白宮國家安全幕僚徵求意見時，他們最多只能得到「我們對台灣的政策沒有改變」，以及「我們對台海兩岸的和平與穩定仍然有持久的利益，我們認為這對更廣泛的印度─太平洋地區的安全與穩定至關重要。」的解釋。大多數媒體都認為，這應該是「總統口誤」的委婉說法，因而判定白宮正在「收回」總統的立場。
儘管如此，四十三年前，當拜登總統還是一名來自德拉瓦州的年輕聯邦參議員時，他就投票支持台灣關係法，所以他當然可以提出一個可信的說法，證明他既沒有說錯話，也並未試圖改變政策。
無論如何，幾週後的二○二一年九月九日，拜登總統與中國國家主席習近平舉行一場九十分鐘的一對一視訊會議，他認為雙方在會中就台灣議題達成共識。總統後來表示：「我和習近平談到台灣。我們同意…我們將遵守台灣協議。」他還說：「我明確表示，我認為他（習近平）除了遵守協議外，不應該做任何事。」
什麼「協議」？請容我再次重複我在之前的星期專論中反覆提到的一點，這個協議是：「只要中國聲稱有一個『爭取和平解決與台灣分歧的基本方針』，美國也會假裝有一個『一個中國』政策。」
去年十月「市民大會」 更堅定表態
我不想猜測習近平主席在之後不久可能做了什麼事，激怒了拜登（或許是十月十三日的頭條新聞「中國軍隊在距離台灣約一○○英里處舉行搶灘登陸演習」），但就在一年前的二○二一年十月廿一日，美國有線電視新聞網（CNN）在馬里蘭州巴爾的摩舉行的「市民大會」（town hall meeting）上，拜登總統對此做出更堅定的表態。
一名與會者問道：「你能承諾保衛台灣嗎？」總統毫不猶豫地回答：「是的，我會。」CNN主持人安德森．古柏（Anderson Cooper）大驚：「所以你是說，如果中國攻擊台灣，美國會防衛台灣嗎？」拜登先生說：「是的。」古柏接著又問了一次，拜登還是說：「是的，我們對此有承諾。」古柏很快切換到一則廣告，在此之後，他請這位前副總統講述和已故國務卿鮑爾（Colin Powell）是如何在地點不詳的特勤局賽車道上，開著他們的雪佛蘭Corvette跑車尬車。
Corvette尬車的故事並未成為新聞。但隔天下午，媒體紛紛要求白宮澄清拜登對台灣議題的發言。白宮新聞秘書莎琪（Jen Psaki）不厭其煩地複述：「我們的政策沒有改變」，還說「他沒有表達政策改變的意圖，也沒有做出改變政策的決定。」不出所料，華爾街日報報導，「白宮收回拜登先生關於台灣的言論。」
可是，要不是白宮沒有「收回」總統的發言，就是拜登總統沒有收到幕僚為他準備的備忘錄。因為在二○二一年十一月十五日週一晚間，拜登和習近平又舉行一場冗長的視訊會議。
「這是一次很好的會議，」拜登告訴一群記者。不過，習近平肯定不會認同拜登所說的「很好的會議」。
「台灣議題有進展嗎？」眾人問道。拜登向他們保證（容我引用）：「是的。我們非常明確表達支持台灣法案（指台灣關係法），就是這樣。它是獨立的，由它自己做決定。」
美國新聞媒體無法相信他們所聽到的，因此集體將總統的發言認定為又一次口誤，而未予重視。但在二○二二年二月廿四日，俄羅斯入侵烏克蘭，情勢出現災難性的變化。俄國入侵後的第三天，美國國務院全神貫注於這場危機，以至於完全忘記慶祝「上海公報」發表五十週年。接著，國務院還發起一場運動，駁斥中國外交部曲解美國「一個中國政策」的內涵。
到了二○二二年五月，真相終於開始浮現在全球新聞媒體的報導中。五月廿三日，紐約時報發自南韓首爾的報導指出，「也許拜登總統根本不是在脫稿講話。也許他只是根本沒有把發言稿當回事」。前一天在東京舉行的一場重要記者會上，而且是在堅稱美國對台政策「完全沒有改變」之後，拜登總統宣稱，美國「做過承諾」，「如果中國發動武力侵略，我們將軍事介入保衛台灣」。
這種說法一點也不含糊。總統向媒體闡述他的想法：「認為可以用武力奪取，用武力就能奪取的想法，是不合適的。」他還說，對台灣的攻擊「會使整個區域陷入動盪，像另一件類似烏克蘭（遭到入侵）的行動，而且那會是更加重大的負擔」。一些白宮幕僚或許試圖「收回」總統的發言，但據紐約時報報導，總統的許多幕僚指責有意踩煞車的同事，「對於老闆的表態不僅不予以支持，反而加以削弱」。
然後又一次，二○二二年九月十八日週日，在全國廣受歡迎的週日晚間新聞節目「六十分鐘」（60Minutes）上，拜登被問到：「美國軍隊會保衛台灣嗎？」他回答說：「會的，如果事實上發生了前所未有的攻擊的話。」總統重申，美國仍然奉行「一個中國」政策，並表示美國不鼓勵台灣獨立。然後他解釋說：「我們不會採取行動，我們不會鼓勵他們獨立…那是他們的決定。」
不管白宮試圖收回什麼，到隔天都已經煙消雲散。拜登總統的首席印度─太平洋政策助理坎貝爾（Kurt Campbell）以權威口吻提示，「總統的發言說得很清楚。我確實認為我們的政策向來維持一致，沒有改變，未來也會持續如此」。
一週後，場景轉換到國務院，發言人普萊斯（Ned Price）再次被他的死對頭美聯社記者李伊（Matt Lee）糾纏：「我只是想確認我的理解是正確的，就是你們的『一個中國』政策意味著台灣是中國的一部分，你們尊重中國的領土完整和對台灣的主權。」
普萊斯老練地回應道：「馬特，『我們的一個中國』政策沒有改變。四十年來，『我們的一個中國』政策始終沒有改變。」李伊進一步逼問：「那麼，你們的『一個中國』政策對中國領土完整的看法是…？」
國務院：未對台灣主權採取立場
聽到這裡，普萊斯打斷他：「非常、非常基本的是，我們在主權問題上並未採取立場。但是『我們的一個中國』政策沒有改變。這是我們在公開場合非常明確表達的立場。」
而且，普萊斯還披露了一個非比尋常的訊息：「國務卿布林肯在週五（九月廿三日）會見（中國外交部長）王毅時，私下非常清楚地表明這項立場…我們在主權問題上並未採取立場。但是，這項政策自一九七九年來做為美國對台做法的核心，今天依然有效。」
首先，「獨立是他們的決定」！然後現在「我們在主權問題上並未採取立場」！
這是半個世紀以來，國務院發言人從未公開發表過的聲明。再加上總統的四次承諾，「美國軍隊」將會保衛台灣，國務院發言人的表述一槌定音：美國對台政策在過去四十年來從未改變。改變的是「不談論它」的政策。
（作者譚慎格為美國退休外交官，曾分別在台北和北京任職，現任美國國際評估暨戰略中心「未來亞洲計畫」主任。國際新聞中心陳泓達譯）