The Case for Maintaining Strategic Ambiguity in the Taiwan Strait

Chang‐Liao, Nien‐chung; Fang, C.

doi:10.1080/0163660x.2021.1932088

Cited by 6 publications

(2 citation statements)

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“…This approach largely fails to account for how collective violence can be mobilized and intensified beyond state-to-state apparatuses, particularly through the discursive power of war – which often treats Taiwan as indefensible and therefore as needing to be subsumed under greater powers. This perspective also justifies US ‘strategic ambiguity’ by claiming that any clearer interventions across the Taiwan Strait would upset Beijing (Chang-Liao and Fang, 2021). As a result, US–Taiwan relations are not considered official cross-national diplomacy and face extra layers of constraints in an already risky geopolitical context.…”

Section: The New Cold War and Its Discontentsmentioning

confidence: 93%

The mundane politics of war in Taiwan: Psychological preparedness, civil defense, and permanent war

Liu

2023

Security Dialogue

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The concept of war has always been taken for granted in the study of Taiwan vis-a-vis the People’s Republic of China. Under the dominant international narrative, Taiwan is often framed as a contested territory, where its land and sovereignty are up for competition. While recent escalating geopolitical tension has brought increasing international attention to Taiwan, international discourse on Taiwanese sovereignty has been largely limited to a traditional conception of war that views Taiwan as a geopolitical pawn in a ‘new Cold War’ between the United States and the People’s Republic of China or, under the banner of ‘geopolitical realism’, treats the rise of Taiwanese national identity as war-making. Both approaches minimize the significance of Taiwanese sovereignty and subjectivity in the struggle between superpowers. This article intervenes in both of these views by applying the framework of martial empiricism with an analysis of the subjectivity of war preparedness in Taiwanese civil society to demonstrate that war has become a normative and liberal mode of politics in Taiwan. From my ethnographic fieldwork on the grass-roots mobilization of civil defense in the time of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, I illustrate how civil defense rearticulates war not as a distant, spectacular event but as a mundane scenario that can be prepared for through daily practices and communal planning in Taiwan.

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Section: The New Cold War and Its Discontentsmentioning

confidence: 93%

The mundane politics of war in Taiwan: Psychological preparedness, civil defense, and permanent war

Liu

2023

Security Dialogue

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“…Some scholars have noted that US policy-makers have positioned themselves in different positions along a continuum between strategic clarity and ambiguity in the history of US foreign policy (Hsu, 2010; Wu, 2021). Moreover, the existing recommendations appear to be an extension of the strategic ambiguity (Chang-Liao and Fang, 2021) because most of them do not match the rigid definition of strategic clarity. Both methodological and practical pitfalls reflect that a more specific spectrum to distinguish the types of US Taiwan policy is required.…”

Section: Theoretical Framework Of Us Taiwan Policymentioning

confidence: 99%

From Strategic Ambiguity to Maximum Pressure? Explaining the Logic of the US Taiwan Policy in the Post–Cold War Era

2021

Journal of Asian and African Studies

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How do changes in US Taiwan policy play out? What is the logic behind these changes? To address these questions, existing studies have formulated four schools of explanation, providing valuable theoretical insights. However, these studies have obvious problems with unidirectional dichotomy and thus fail to identify a causal mechanism explaining the long-term trajectory of US Taiwan policy. This article conducts a re-typology of US Taiwan policy to break the traditional strategic ambiguity–clarity dichotomy by establishing three key indicators and argues that the orientation of US China policy and Taiwan’s US policy are the two major factors triggering changes. By conceptualizing and operationalizing the two independent variables as engagement-oriented, coopetition-oriented, containment-oriented, and hedging/bandwagoning/binding, this article develops a systemic theoretical framework to demonstrate how the US Taiwan policy transits between strategic clarity, maximum pressure, partial strategic clarity, between partial strategic clarity and strategic ambiguity, strategic ambiguity, and controlling the pro-independent forces. This article conducts empirical studies by reviewing the transition of US Taiwan policy under different presidencies in post–Cold War era to demonstrate how the theoretical framework works in realpolitik.

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The Impacts of U.S. Foreign Policy on Taiwanese Public Support for Independence

Son,

Lee

2024

J OF CHIN POLIT SCI

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The Case for Maintaining Strategic Ambiguity in the Taiwan Strait

Cited by 6 publications

References 0 publications

The mundane politics of war in Taiwan: Psychological preparedness, civil defense, and permanent war

The mundane politics of war in Taiwan: Psychological preparedness, civil defense, and permanent war

From Strategic Ambiguity to Maximum Pressure? Explaining the Logic of the US Taiwan Policy in the Post–Cold War Era

The Impacts of U.S. Foreign Policy on Taiwanese Public Support for Independence

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