US presidents need precise Taiwan wording. Sometimes they slip

Summary

The policy that governs U.S. statements about Taiwan has long been built around a deliberate uncertainty—one that American presidents and their senior advisers treat as a verbal tightrope as they manage relations with Beijing. Under the “One China” policy, Washington acknowledges China’s position that Taiwan is part of China while maintaining informal relations with the island. The approach is intended to be vague about how the United States would respond if China attempted to force a unilateral change, with the goal of ensuring Taiwan has the resources to defend itself without promising a specific military path.

That tightrope has been sharpened by decades of crisis signaling, including a widely cited exchange in 1995 involving assistant defense secretary Joseph Nye. As Chinese officials questioned how the United States would react to a Taiwan crisis, Nye said, “We don’t know, and you don’t know.” The statement captured the logic behind the policy’s carefully calibrated wording.

Former White House press secretary Mike McCurry later described the discipline behind that language, saying in an interview that there were “too many people listening and paying attention,” and that officials had to stick to “the very careful language that’s been crafted and don’t vary.” In a similar vein, John Kirby—who served in Democratic administrations and in the State Department, Pentagon and White House spokesmanship during Joe Biden’s tenure—warned that Taiwan-related phrasing requires exactitude. Kirby said, “It’s the precision of the words,” adding that officials “have to be so extraordinarily precise when you’re talking about Taiwan” because “quite frankly, the stakes are enormously high.”

The policy’s emphasis on precision is now expected to draw fresh attention during President Donald Trump’s visit to China this week, AP reported, as past misstatements by U.S. officials have at times forced swift diplomatic cleanup. In recent years, those clarifications have come after moments when U.S. presidents’ remarks appeared to stray from the long-established script about whether the United States would respond militarily to an invasion or other move to change Taiwan’s status.

AP reported that President Joe Biden, during several public appearances, suggested at times that the United States would intervene militarily if China invaded Taiwan—prompting White House officials to backtrack to reinforce the “One China” policy’s decades-long framework. One such instance came in an August 2021 ABC News interview, where Biden discussed a U.S. commitment to respond militarily if NATO allies were attacked and then added, “Same with Taiwan.” The White House later said U.S. policy toward Taiwan had not changed. The AP also reported that Biden told a CNN forum in October that the United States was committed to defending Taiwan should China attack, and that a May 2022 news conference in Tokyo included Biden answering “yes” to a question about using military force to defend Taiwan—remarks that led Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin to reaffirm the “One China” policy.

AP further reported that Biden’s comments prompted additional clarifications after he suggested a similar commitment during a September 2022 interview with CBS’ “60 Minutes.” Taken together, the episodes illustrate how even indirect, off-the-cuff comparisons can be interpreted as altering the deterrent message Washington intends to project.

Trump’s first administration also saw moments in which Taiwan-related wording became a diplomatic problem, AP reported. In 2016, Trump was president-elect when he took a call from Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen, which the report described as likely the first such call after the U.S. severed diplomatic relations with Taiwan in 1979. AP said Trump later scoffed at the controversy by posting, “Interesting how the U.S. sells Taiwan billions of dollars of military equipment but I should not accept a congratulatory call.” The AP also reported that in 2017 the Trump White House issued a statement about a meeting in Germany between Xi and Trump that described Xi as president of the Republic of China—the formal name for Taiwan rather than the correct People’s Republic of China—and that the event’s transcript was later altered to fix the mistake.

AP said Miles Yu, now a senior fellow and director of the China Center at the Hudson Institute, pointed to how difficult it can be to align language and intent with policy goals. Yu told AP that while there is “a lot of difficulty to navigate a lot of these concepts,” the reason, he said, was that “a lot of misunderstanding and misspeaking” was driven by “conceptual traps set up by China.” He added, “You cannot explain something that’s unexplainable.” Yu also argued that the “One China” principle was devised by Beijing, saying it was “completely of Chinese making,” and he told the AP that no ambiguity existed in Beijing about Washington’s resolve to defend Taiwan.

In Yu’s view, the United States should not treat ambiguity as a necessary element of deterrence. He said the United States has instead adhered to a strategy of defending Taiwan in proportion to Chinese threats, pointing to Washington repeatedly mobilizing forces to the Taiwan Strait over the years amid heightened tensions. AP reported that Yu framed the “One China” policy or principle—described as Beijing’s insistence that Taiwan is an inalienable part of China—as a concept that does not reflect ambiguity in China’s internal assessment.

The AP report also traced how the wording discipline emerged historically after the Chinese civil war ended in 1949 and U.S. recognition patterns shifted. Under an agreement with Beijing beginning in 1979 under Jimmy Carter, the United States began adhering to the “One China” policy. The report said Carter’s administration spent months in secret negotiations to reach that agreement, and that Carter later said it “does nothing to prevent” a future president or Congress from “even going to war” to protect Taiwan.

AP said subsequent presidents also grappled with the policy’s delicate balance. The AP reported that during a 1998 roundtable in Shanghai, Bill Clinton backed what he called the “three no’s”: that the United States would not support Taiwan independence, would not support the “two Chinas” idea, and would not back Taiwan’s admission into international organizations. Yet AP said Clinton later suggested in a 1999 comment that the United States could do something similar to previous interventions, saying, “You know what I’ve done in the past.” The report also said that in a 2001 Associated Press interview, George W. Bush was asked about whether the United States might use military force to counter a Chinese attack on Taiwan and answered, “It’s certainly an option,” before later telling CNN that the phrase did not mean the U.S. was toughening its stance, while saying, “I have said that I will do what it takes to help Taiwan defend itself.”

The emphasis on correct wording extends to symbolic details as well. AP reported that in 2005, during a state visit by Hu Jintao to Washington, the Bush White House announcer mistakenly said the national anthem of the Republic of China would be played instead of the People’s Republic of China, and that the correct anthem was ultimately played. Even in those moments where intent was not in doubt, AP’s examples show how quickly slip-ups can trigger attention and require correction to prevent misreading by allies and by Beijing.

AP reported that some presidents and officials have stayed on message, yet even senior people acknowledge how easy it is to “freelance” the Taiwan script. Kirby said that when Taiwan came up at the State Department, the Pentagon, or even in the White House podium setting, people went to “your notes” and “You didn’t freelance it.” Kirby also recounted that he “got cocky once and didn’t,” mischaracterizing the policy and causing “a little kerfuffle,” and he described how senior U.S. policy officials tend to respond quickly, saying they are “highly encouraged to make a statement correcting it right away.”

This month’s focus on the wording discipline comes as the policy continues to sit at the center of deterrence calculations—where, as Nye’s quote suggests, uncertainty is not an accident but a feature, intended to prevent unilateral changes in Taiwan’s status while preserving room for diplomatic maneuvering in a crisis.