Time to clarify U.S. defense of Taiwan

In August 1995 and March 1996, China fired missiles across the Taiwan Strait, closing it to international commerce.

On both occasions, President Bill Clinton sent aircraft carriers to deter Chinese escalation, the first time directly through the Taiwan Strait. China condemned this "violation" of its sovereignty (just as it now objects to planned U.S.-South Korea naval exercises in the Yellow Sea) and threatened "a sea of fire" for the next battle group entering the strait.

The ships stayed out, China stopped firing missiles, and the crisis dissipated.

That time.

Fast-forward to a just-released Defense Department assessment that describes China's continuing military buildup and its potential to enforce territorial claims on Taiwan, in the South China Sea and elsewhere in the region.

The anti-Western hostility and paranoia of Chairman Mao's years have resurfaced in fresh charges of U.S. "containment" and "encirclement" of China. But now that sense of grievance and resentment is backed by the massive economic and military power the West helped China build.

U.S. Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates has openly questioned Beijing's defiant approach to international norms. And Adm. Michael G. Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, recently stated: "I have moved from being curious about what (the Chinese) are doing to being concerned about what they are doing."

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton correctly warned Beijing against cutting off freedom of navigation in the South China Sea. The Obama administration worries that Beijing is defining its claims there as "core interests" on a par with Tibet and Taiwan, and if unchallenged, that could lead to dangerous Chinese adventurism.

Yet, on the Taiwan flashpoint, President Barack Obama's team has unwisely perpetuated the policy of "strategic ambiguity" followed by every administration since Richard Nixon's.

Under that policy, Washington periodically sells Taipei weapons for minimal self-defense against an overwhelming Chinese attack. But Washington does not commit the United States to intervene, or not to intervene. We rely on American unpredictability to stay Beijing's hand.

The missile incidents of the mid-1990s were the closest the U.S. and China had come to open conflict since the Korean War.

At the time, Chinese military officials asked Assistant Secretary of State Joseph Nye how the United States would respond if China were to attack Taiwan.

He replied: "We don't know and you don't know. It would depend on the circumstances."

U.S. officials have repeated that mantra ever since, while Chinese generals have twice suggested that a U.S. defense of Taiwan could result in nuclear war reaching the American mainland.