How Word Games Became War Games In The Taiwan Strait

Washington has deemed China's moves an unwarranted and destabilizing overreaction to Pelosi's trip and vowed to sustain its own military posture in the Taiwan Strait to deter any actual Chinese use of force.

Two U.S. Navy guided-missile cruisers transited the Strait on August 28; and the Biden administration reportedly is poised to announce $1 billion in new arms sales to Taiwan.

The bottom line is that it is futile if not meaningless to talk about "The status quo" on the Taiwan Strait without recognizing and acknowledging that there is no mutual agreement among the relevant parties on how to define or even characterize it.

The status quo on the Taiwan Strait has never been static.

It is not clear whether the Biden administration is politically or diplomatically prepared to supplement its military deterrence against China on the Taiwan Strait with diplomatic assurances to Beijing that there are still clear boundaries in U.S.-Taiwan relations.

There has also been a semantic debate about whether Pelosi's trip has sparked a new Taiwan Strait "Crisis." Some political scientists apparently are disinclined to designate it a crisis on the grounds that they assess little potential for actual military conflict.

The longer the current dynamic persists without an effort by both Washington and Beijing toward greater mutual understanding on how the Taiwan issue will be managed, the more likely a serious, undeniable crisis will develop.

https://nationalinterest.org/feature/how-word-games-became-war-games-taiwan-strait-204571