Strategic Communications, Ambiguity, and Taiwan

In: Defence strategic communications: the official journal of the NATO Strategic Communications Centre of Excellence, Band 12, S. 65-83

Abstract

One of the biggest questions in the field of international security today, perhaps even this century, is whether Sino-US rivalry will metastasise into war. Taiwan is one of the most likely flashpoints. Will the People's Republic of China (PRC) absorb the island state against its will, or will America commit whatever it takes for Taiwan to remain free to determine its own course? Responses to these questions from all sides are rendered in some form of strategic ambiguity. Each of the big players involved—Taipei, Beijing, and Washington, DC—eschews clarity and keeps the others guessing on key elements of its policy. Taipei is ambiguous about the form of independence it claims. Beijing is ambiguous about when it will consummate a unification it calls 'inevitable'. Washington, despite President Biden's May and September 2022 statements that US forces 66Defence Strategic Communications | Volume 12 | Spring 2023DOI 10.30966/2018.RIGA.12.4would defend Taiwan, is ambiguous about what it would be prepared to do to prevent a forceful takeover by the People's Republic. But how much of that ambiguity is truly 'strategic'? Do some benefits of strategic ambiguity come at the expense of good strategic communications?