US President Joe Biden said in an interview broadcast on Sunday that US troops would defend Taiwan in the event of a Chinese invasion.
Asked on CBS’s “60 Minutes” if “the Americans would defend Taiwan in the event of a Chinese invasion,” the American leader replied: “Yes, if there really was an unprecedented attack.”
The US president wanted to emphasize that he was not “encouraging” the island to declare independence. “It’s his decision,” he said.
China considers Taiwan, with a population of around 23 million inhabitants, as one of its provinces, which has not been able to reunite with the rest of its territory since the end of the Chinese civil war (1949).
In seven decades, the communist army never managed to conquer the island, which remained under the control of the Republic of China, the regime that once ruled mainland China and now rules only Taiwan.
Joe Biden had already angered Beijing by saying in late May that the United States would intervene militarily in support of Taiwan in the event of an invasion by Communist China.
He then reversed course, affirming his commitment to “strategic ambiguity,” a deliberately vague concept that has governed US policy on Taiwan for decades.
“Strategic ambiguity,” in which Washington refrains from saying whether or not the United States would intervene militarily to defend Taiwan in the event of an invasion, has so far helped maintain some stability in the region.
Pressure on Taiwan has been mounting since Xi Jinping came to power in Beijing a decade ago.
Tensions reached the highest level in decades last month. China has carried out large-scale military exercises around Taiwan, an unprecedented show of force in retaliation for US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taipei.
Source: TSF
