Roving Periscope: the US will defend “self-ruled” Taiwan if China attacks it, says Biden
Virendra Pandit
New Delhi: In the clearest warning yet to China, US President Joe Biden announced on Monday that America will militarily defend a “self-ruled” Taiwan if the Dragon attacked it.
China is “flirting with danger”, he said, adding the US will defend Taiwan if invaded.
“That’s the commitment we made,” President Biden said in Tokyo when asked if the US would intervene militarily against a Chinese attempt to forcibly take control of Taiwan.
He is currently in the Japanese capital to take part in the Summit of leaders of the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (Quad)—Prime Minister Narendra Modi (India) and his counterparts in Japan and Australia.
The Quad, billed as an emerging ‘Asian NATO’, is trying to stitch together an alliance to contain China’s economic expansion and military adventurism.
In strongest terms yet, the US President said that China does not have “jurisdiction to take a self-ruled Taiwan by force”, signaling a subtle change in America’s “One China” policy, according to the media reports.
His careful use of the word “self-ruled” for Taiwan showed this policy change.
Beijing claims Taiwan is a renegade province yet to be unified with mainland China and has, in the recent past, repeatedly threatened it by flying combat aircraft in Taiwanese air space.
“We agreed with One China policy, we signed on to it… but the idea that (Taiwan) can be taken by force is just not appropriate”.
“It will dislocate the entire region and be another action similar to what happened in Ukraine,” the US President said, delineating the subtle change in its One China policy and linking China’s potential attack on Taiwan with the ongoing Russian invasion of Ukraine.
In his strongest comments to date on the issue, President Biden directly linked the outcome of Western attempts to help Ukraine repel the Russian invasion with lessons likely to be learned in Beijing regarding Taiwan.
It’s “important that Putin pay a price for his barbarism in Ukraine,” President Biden said. “Russia has to pay a long-term price,” indirectly asking Chinese President Xi Jinping to beware.
This is “not just about Ukraine”, Biden said, because China is watching to see if Western pressure on Russia slacks off.
“What signal does that send to China about the cost of… attempting to take Taiwan by force?” he asked.
Signaling that he expects an invasion “will not happen”, Biden said however that this “depends… how strong the world makes clear” there would be a price for an invasion.
