Taiwan elected a new, strongly China-critical president this weekend. An election result that exacerbates the conflict with China, which considers the island part of the People's Republic, while Taiwan itself considers itself an independent state.
And Taiwan's relationship with China also constitutes an explosive hub in the ongoing great-power rivalry between the United States and China.
The United States has pledged support for Taiwan in the event of a Chinese invasion, and it appears that Biden is willing to risk a third world war to keep this promise,
Rhetorically, he goes a step further than the United States has done before in terms of the commitment it has made to help Taiwan defend itself. Biden is setting the stage for the United States to come to the aid actively. In Ukraine, support is limited to weapons.
However, it is difficult to determine how far Biden will actually go to protect Taiwan's independence from China. And there is a strategic point in this:
U.S. policy on Taiwan must be open to interpretation. The idea is that this is the best way to deter the Chinese. They don't quite know how far the United States will go. And it should similarly deter Taiwan from declaring independence.
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