Joe Biden will be flying back from his trip to Asia having made a big promise: that the US will defend Taiwan if it is ever invaded by China. ‘It would dislocate the entire region,’ he said, ‘and be another action similar to what happened in Ukraine.’
Until now, America’s policy has been one of strategic ambiguity: this meant not saying whether or not it would come to Taiwan’s aid. Biden’s remarks go further than that policy and suggest a new dividing line: that the democracies punishing Russia for Ukraine also stand ready to confront China over Taiwan.
Biden’s comments in Tokyo were unscripted
Biden’s Asia trip underlines one of his recent themes: that the new divide is not ‘Russia vs The West’ but democracy vs autocracy – but this time on a global basis. I argued in my Daily Telegraph column last week that the invasion of Ukraine has seen Asian democracies take sanctions against Russia in a way they didn’t after Crimea in 2014 – throwing up an alliance that may now supplant ‘the West’ with something better.
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