Jeffrey Mankoff
Russia’s ongoing military buildup along its border with Ukraine has cast into sharp relief the debate about how the United States, and its allies, can most effectively ensure security in the no man’s land lying beyond NATO’s eastern perimeter. Meanwhile, China’s mounting campaign of military pressure and intimidation against Taiwan is leading some observers to question the strength of U.S. commitments to the island. Though coordination between Russia and China on these efforts is likely limited at best, their attempts to bully Ukraine and Taiwan raise a common dilemma for Washington, one liable to become more pronounced and widespread in the new era of strategic competition among rival powers.
Neither Ukraine nor Taiwan is a formal U.S. ally, though Washington has committed itself in various ways to help secure them against their larger neighbors. The Taiwan Relations Act requires the White House and Congress to undertake “appropriate action” in the event of a threat to Taiwan’s security, while a recently signed U.S.-Ukraine Charter on Strategic Partnership commits Washington to “maintaining sanctions … and applying other relevant measures [emphasis added]” until Russia restores Ukraine’s territorial integrity.
These vague statements reflect a world in which Washington could often, at little risk, deter rival powers from coercing smaller U.S. partners. Today, however, Russia and China’s increasing military assertiveness may mean that the period in which the U.S. could ensure partners’ security on the cheap through this policy of ambiguity is coming to an end.
Russia’s military buildup against Ukraine and China’s aggressive posture toward Taiwan suggest the U.S. is approaching an inflection point when it will need to make hard choices about how far it will go to support beleaguered partners. The resulting choices are unappealing: either acquiesce to Moscow’s and Beijing’s aspirations for regional domination; or make much more explicit defense commitments, including forward deployment of U.S. forces, and accept the risk of conflict with nuclear-armed rivals on their own doorsteps.
Less Than Allies, More Than Friends
Since the end of the Cold War, ambiguity has worked well for the U.S. on multiple levels. It allowed successive administrations to navigate between interventionists and restrainers in Washington, while encouraging rival powers like Russia or China to exercise caution, lest they stumble into a conflict with a more powerful United States. Strategic ambiguity also helped deter partner states from making their own challenges to the status quo, for instance through a Taiwanese declaration of independence or Ukrainian efforts to retake the occupied Donbas.
This approach worked in part because the prospects that the United States would be called upon to respond militarily in either Europe or Asia were relatively low. More recently, however, military modernizations and buildups by both China and Russia, along with a perception of U.S. decline, increasingly appear to have shifted the balance of power at the regional level and given Moscow and Beijing newfound confidence in their ability to disregard Washington’s warnings of “serious consequences.”
Historical examples suggest that both strategic ambiguity and its end can be sources of danger at moments of heightened tension.
Sticking to ambiguity at a time of heightened tension raises the likelihood that one side or the other will miscalculate U.S. resolve and stumble into a much bigger conflict than they had prepared for. Arguably Georgia made this mistake in 2008, when then-President Mikheil Saakashvili misinterpreted statements of support from Bush administration officials and members of Congress as indications that Washington would come to his aid in the event of a conflict with Russia.
A bigger misreading of strategic ambiguity occurred during the July Crisis of 1914, when Imperial German officials believed they could convince Britain to stay neutral should the Central Powers go to war with France and Russia. At the time, London had refused to commit itself to any course of action, despite an informal understanding with Paris.
If hewing to ambiguity runs the risk of misperception, clarifying intentions and limits also has its own perils. The classic example is considered by many to have unintentionally sparked the Korean War. In a January 1950 speech, then-Secretary of State Dean Acheson failed to include South Korea in his definition of the U.S. defense perimeter in Asia. Acheson’s statement was subsequently seen as having confirmed to Pyongyang—and Moscow—that U.S. troops would not intervene if North Korean forces attempted to conquer the South. After North Korea did invade, the Truman administration nevertheless decided that the fall of South Korea—in the wake of the Communist takeover in China the previous year—posed an unacceptable risk to the U.S. position in Asia and agreed to dispatch troops for what proved to be a grueling, indecisive conflict that grinds on to this day.
Which Past as Prologue?
These historical examples suggest that both ambiguity and its end can be sources of danger at moments of heightened tension. In deciding whether to declare its position more clearly, the U.S. must worry more about the credibility of its commitments than it did at times of lower risk. Moscow’s military brinksmanship with Ukraine and China’s campaign of intimidation against Taiwan suggest a willingness to test Washington’s ambiguous commitments in a way both have until recently shied away from.
While ambiguity continues to serve a deterrent function vis-à-vis Moscow and Beijing, the value of that deterrent is diminishing as Russia and China gain escalation dominance in their respective regions. If that trend continues, ambiguous U.S. commitments will become more likely to produce a 1914-style miscalculation. In comparison, the likelihood that greater clarity will encourage Moscow or Beijing to run the risk Pyongyang did in 1950 can be mitigated by continued political and military support for partners, even if the limits of that support are clearly specified.
While the time is not yet ripe for a full abandonment of ambiguity as a framework for securing partners, it may be coming. For now, it still makes sense to keep Russia and China guessing just how far the U.S is willing to go to defend Ukraine and Taiwan. At a time of heightened passions and uncertainty, a formalized commitment to defend either could easily become a casus belli. Nor has the balance of power shifted enough to justify the kind of grand bargain Moscow is seeking that would assign Ukraine to a formal Russian sphere of influence.
At the same time, though, the U.S. has an obligation to be clear and direct with its partners about the extent of the commitments it is willing to undertake. While Washington cannot compel Kyiv or Taipei to accept domination by their larger neighbors, it should not give them misleading assurances about what it can and will do on their behalf either. Nor should it allow a policy of ambiguity to prevent it from undertaking detailed planning for how it would respond to an attempted military coup de main against Ukraine, Taiwan or other vulnerable partners. Washington can afford some ambiguity toward its rivals, in other words, but less toward its partners—or itself.
In a world characterized by competition among great powers with asymmetric interests, the U.S. will eventually have to make some hard choices about just how far it is willing to go to defend partners it can no longer secure on the cheap. Better to start preparing for that world now.
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