The Death of ‘Strategic Ambiguity’: Why the United States Abandoned Longstanding Policies Towards China and Taiwan

President Nixon realigned US Cold War policies by withdrawing formal support for the Taiwan government’s sovereignty, without endorsing China’s position that Taiwan was rightfully a Chinese province. Then, after Carter withdrew the US promise to intervene militarily to defend Taiwan against a Chinese invasion, Congress and subsequent presidents continued to support Taiwan’s de facto independence—thus adopting a posture of ‘strategic ambiguity’. From the 1980s, trade and investment with China mushroomed, and US leaders hoped that China was evolving into a status quo stakeholder and maybe also a democracy. The Trump and Biden administrations abandoned many of these longstanding US policies. A bargaining framework is used to evaluate why. China’s growth gradually but significantly altered its comparative advantage and relative military power. Taiwanese identity and security policy evolved. Xi Jinping’s ‘New Era’ ideology and changing domestic and foreign policies put a rising China on a collision course with the US-led regional and world order. Presidents Trump and Biden responded by making the US military defence of Taiwan—as part of a general revamp of economic and security policies towards China—one of the few areas of bipartisan consensus. Any retreat from the new consensus risks a major geopolitical crisis.