Monday 23 May 2022 07:37 PM Analysis: How White House has walked back Biden claim on Taiwan for the third ... trends now
President Joe Biden's aides knew what was coming. They squirmed in their seats, according to people present, as he was asked whether he would defend the autonomous island of Taiwan if it was invaded by China.
'Yes,' Biden replied. 'That's the commitment we made.'
In so doing, he went beyond official American foreign policy of 'strategic ambiguity' which helps arm Taiwan and its government but is vague on how far Washington would actually go in protecting its freedom.
The result was swift - just as it has been on each of the previous two occasions in the past nine months when he has said the U.S. would defend Taiwan.
Chinese officials expressed outrage while the White House played clean-up, insisting the president had not been announcing a new policy.
But China and analysts see something different: A president who is pushing U.S. policy to go further in standing up to an increasingly aggressive Beijing.
Biden may be out ahead of his advisers but that was very different to a gaffe, said David Sacks, an expert on U.S.-China relations at the Council on Foreign Relations.
'I'm kind of old fashioned where I think that what the president says, especially in terms of matters of war and peace, and when push comes to shove, if China were to use force against Taiwan, there's only one person who could order the United States to come to Taiwan's defense, and that's the president of the United States,' he said.
'Not a spokesperson in the White House or the National Security Council or the State Department.'
President Joe Biden on Monday said the U.S. would defend Taiwan if it was invaded by China. 'That's the commitment we made,' he said in Japan
The island of Taiwan lies 100 miles from China. Beijing insists that Taiwan is a part of its territory and cannot exist as a sovereign nation. The U.S. acknowledges the Chinese claim
Just as he has got ahead of his officials in saying he wanted to unseat Vladimir Putin in Moscow or accusing Russian troops of war crimes, so too his comments this time may reflect the reality of U.S. policy before anyone else wants to say it publicly.
China has been flexing its muscles in the Indo-Pacific region in recent years, building military bases and expanding its territorial claims.
And it has sent warplanes on sorties into Taiwan's 'air defense zone' with alarming frequency.
Biden is visiting the region for the first time as commander in chief in a trip designed to highlight that Washington remains focused on Asia. It coincided with five days of Chinese military drills in the disputed South China Sea.
On Monday, Biden appeared at a press conference with Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida in Tokyo.
'We agree with the One China policy and all the attendant agreements we made,' he
