Over the weekend, Taiwan elected a new, strongly China-critical president . An election result that reinforces the conflict with China, which considers the island as part of the People’s Republic, while Taiwan itself considers itself an independent state.
And Taiwan’s relationship with China also constitutes an explosive juncture in the pending great power rivalry between the US and China.
The US has promised support to Taiwan in the event of a Chinese invasion, and it seems that Biden is willing to risk a third world war to keep this promise, assesses senior researcher Rasmus Sinding Søndergaard from the Danish Institute for International Studies.
– Rhetorically, he goes a step further than the US has done before, in relation to the commitment it has given to help Taiwan defend itself. Biden is planning for the US to actively come to the rescue. In Ukraine, they limit themselves to supporting with weapons.
According to Rasmus Sinding Søndergaard, however, it is difficult to determine how far Biden will actually go to protect Taiwan’s independence from China. And there is a strategic point in that:
– The USA’s policy regarding Taiwan must be up to interpretation. The idea is that it is the best way to deter the Chinese. They don’t quite know how far America will go. And it must similarly deter Taiwan from declaring independence.
