From Ambiguity to Flexibility: Reframing U.S. Taiwan Policy

Tim Boyle

Source Link

Strategic ambiguity has become a liability for U.S. policymakers. Though merely an informal shorthand, it is commonly treated as official policy in media and among national security professionals. This framing reduces U.S. decision-making to a false binary between war and inaction, 

obscuring a spectrum of options and overlooking legal commitments under the Taiwan Relations Act. With Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth warning that Chinese aggression could be “imminent,” Washington should recalibrate perceptions of U.S. Taiwan policy to strengthen deterrence and make its commitments and options unmistakably clear to Beijing and Taipei.

Rather than abandoning strategic ambiguity outright, U.S. officials should steer discourse toward flexibility as a defining feature of U.S. Taiwan policy. Flexibility avoids the binary trap by rejecting both indifference and rigid clarity. Instead, it rests on the presumption that the United States will respond to Chinese aggression, 

while preserving discretion over how — emphasizing optionality to employ varied and scalable instruments of power, with or without military force. Crucially, this narrative shift requires no change in policy or disavowal of strategic ambiguity. It simply reframes how existing policy is communicated and understood, offering a more credible and adaptable approach to managing the growing risk of conflict in the Taiwan Strait.

Though often linked to the U.S. One China Policy, the term strategic ambiguity does not appear in the Taiwan Relations Act, the three Joint Communiqués, the Six Assurances, or any other law, regulation, or formal policy directive. It emerged as an informal concept in the mid-1990s when Joseph Nye,