President Joe Biden (Image: Jonathan Ernst/Pool Photo via AP)

Deputy Prime Minister Richard Marles bravely took one for the political class on Monday by volunteering to be Sarah Ferguson’s first interview in the chair at 7.30, and, as expected, he emerged missing limbs and leaving a trail of blood as Ferguson pressed him repeatedly about Australia’s position on the US position on Taiwan, and whether we endorsed President Biden’s abandonment of “strategic ambiguity” over the US response if China attacked Taiwan.

Problem is, it’s not quite as simple as Ferguson made it seem in the interview.

Biden has not, in his now-famous “that’s the commitment we made” comment, committed US military forces to the defence of Taiwan in the event of a Chinese attack. Instead, he said he was “willing to get involved militarily to defend Taiwan, if it comes to that”.

It’s lazy to assume this means a commitment of US forces. The US, for example, is militarily involved in the Ukraine. It is the major supplier of arms and munitions to the Ukrainian government, having provided over $5 billion in weapons systems, vehicles and aircraft since January 2021. It is also furnishing critical military intelligence to Ukraine, including information enabling Ukraine to target Russian generals, who have been killed in large numbers during the invasion.

Biden’s comments are consistent with the US providing extensive military and intelligence assistance to Taiwan in the event of a Chinese attack, without the commitment of US naval, air or land forces.

So what Marles was being pressed about was not a fundamental change in US policy, but a confirmation that the US would provide military support for Taiwan. That doesn’t mean he handled the interview well, but the distinction is very important. Why? Because guaranteeing that the US and Australia will commit forces to defend Taiwan gives Taiwan itself an incentive to act more riskily.

We have been here before. In the Taiwan Strait Crisis of the mid-1950s, Nationalist forces in Taiwan placed troops and built defensive structures on small islands in the Taiwan Strait. Communist Chinese coastal artillery heavily shelled the island of Quemoy and the Nationalists responded by mounting air raids against mainland China. President Eisenhower made a secret pledge to defend some islands in return for a Nationalist withdrawal.

The Nationalists used this American guarantee to dig in their forces, rebuffing US requests to withdraw, even turning down a US offer to blockade China’s coast opposite Taiwan in exchange. The US later retracted its pledge in an April 1955 meeting with Taiwan’s premier, Chiang Kai-shek.

Strategic ambiguity also deters China. In the 1995-96 Taiwan Strait Crisis, China conducted military exercises and missile tests near Taiwan, and the United States deployed two carrier battle groups to the east of Taiwan. Unsure about exactly how far the US would go, China did not deploy large numbers of air superiority fighters or warships, and its vessels did not approach or lock their radar on US ships. It gave advance warning of the location of its missile firings so that no foreign vessels would be harmed. And its missiles did not carry warheads.

Ending strategic ambiguity would be a a major change. But Biden has not abandoned long-standing US policy. His “commitment” to “get involved militarily to defend Taiwan” remains what it has been for decades. It is a form of co-belligerency: assisting the war effort of one of the belligerents against its adversary through military supplies furnished on an intergovernmental basis.

Marles was correct to “welcome President Biden’s remarks”. His so-called “freedom of navigation” patrols, as Crikey has reported before, are another matter altogether.