The New US National Security Strategy and the Taiwan Issue |
One of the most remarkable innovations of the latest US National Security Strategy (NSS), as compared to the previous documents of the kind, is that Taiwan was included in the list of key priorities.
Preliminary Remarks
From the author’s standpoint, both this emphasis and the overall framing largely correspond to emerging realities, which favourably sets this document apart from all its predecessors. Primarily due to a radical shift in its conceptual foundation from ideology to pragmatism. The sources of specific “ideologisation” of global problems, particularly those related to climate change, migration flows, and the suppression of opposition forces, are identified quite explicitly by the strategy. These sources are said to be the current supranational structures of Europe, as well as certain national “elites.” And it should be mentioned, utterly hostile to the interests of the countries and peoples of the continent.
This tendency is one of the substantial preconditions for the shift of the focus of US foreign policy interests from the Euro-Atlantic area to Latin America (the “Western Hemisphere”) and to the Indo-Pacific region with China as the key source of challenges. For this reason, the importance of the regional Quad configuration, comprising the United States, Japan, India, and Australia, is particularly highlighted.
At the same time, Washington would prefer not to push its relations with Beijing towards direct military confrontation, instead concentrating its claims and demands primarily on the trade and economic sphere. The Taiwan problem, in fact, turns out to be the principal challenge to the long-standing “tightrope-walking strategy” that has for many years characterized US policy towards China and is merely indicated as such in the document at issue.
Strategic Ambiguity as the Core Principle of the US Approach to the Taiwan Issue
It should once again be outlined that the US strategy regarding Taiwan (the NSS has not altered it to any tangible extent) was formed back in the late 1970s and early 1980s, when the realities of the Cold War required the establishment of diplomatic relations........