WASHINGTON | Whether he promises to defend Taiwan or exclaims that Vladimir Putin “cannot stay in power”, Joe Biden is accustomed to sweeping foreign policy statements, which destabilize diplomats and experts.
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For journalists who follow the American president, in particular in his travels abroad, it would have become almost a routine: to jump on hearing a virulent formulation, then to wait for an anonymous “clarification” of advisers now experienced in the exercise.
On May 23, during a press conference in Tokyo, Joe Biden assured that the United States would defend Taiwan militarily if Beijing invaded the island.
It is the second time since he became president that he has made this commitment publicly, in an apparent break with decades of ambiguity which has seen the Americans supply Taiwan with weapons, but without recognizing its status as an independent state.
A White House official was quick to declare, “Our policy has not changed.” Then Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin repeated the same phrase. “The policy hasn’t changed at all,” Mr. Biden himself said on Tuesday.
“For God’s sake”
This is a furious reminder of March 26, when Joe Biden had dropped about Vladimir Putin: “For the love of God, this man cannot stay in power”.
The White House then hastily circulated a statement assuring that the United States was not calling for regime change.
Joe Biden had also caused trouble, before the invasion of Ukraine, by raising the possibility of a “minor incursion” by the Russian army, which would not automatically call for Western reprisals.
But this president who assumes, almost bravely, to express his indignation and his convictions as he sees fit, does not always backtrack.
After using the term “genocide” in a speech to describe the situation in Ukraine, Joe Biden wanted to drive the point home next.
The 79-year-old Democrat had also begun accusing Russia of “war crimes” long before his administration completed the legal process to reach this conclusion.
Each time, the same question: did this president speak “with his heart”, as his team described it on several occasions? Did he express a new doctrine of the United States? Both of them?
Regarding Taiwan, Joe Biden “said what he thinks, no doubt about it. (…) But it is a gaffe in the sense that it gives a bad reading of the American position, ”says Bonnie Glaser, a leading Asia specialist at the German Marshall Fund of the United States think tank.
“Dangerous”
Foreign policy “is more effective if it is clear and understandable to our friends, our allies and our enemies,” she stresses.
For Joshua Shifrinson, professor of international relations at Boston University, “it is very difficult to say whether these are blunders or a double game” with the president’s outbursts on one side and the more muted channels on the other. diplomats.
“If it’s a double game, it’s incredibly dangerous” and it can “exacerbate tensions” with rival countries, but also heckle the allied countries of the United States, he judges, recalling that after the turmoil of Donald Trump’s mandate, “we expected Joe Biden to be a man of great consistency”.
“Openness can be a good thing, but in a situation like Taiwan it can be really dangerous,” he said.
“The West’s strong response to Russian aggression in Ukraine could serve to deter China from invading Taiwan, but Joe Biden’s statements risk reversing this gain”, also worries on Twitter Stephen Wertheim, of the Carnegie Institute for Research and Analysis.
