During his recent visit to Vietnam, President Joe Biden, in response to a reporter’s question, uttered these words: “I don’t want to contain China.” In the coming years, this phrase may become known as the Biden Doctrine. The president continued: “We’re not looking to hurt China — sincerely. We’re all better off if China does well.” The people of Taiwan and our other allies in the region surely took note of the president’s remarks. The communist rulers in Beijing did, too.
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Containment, of course, has echoes of the 20th century’s Cold War with the Soviet Union. The American diplomat George F. Kennan explained that policy of containment in his famous “X” article in Foreign Affairs in July 1947. The classified version of the policy was issued in April 1950 in NSC-68. The policy of containment was generally followed (with some variations) by every Cold War American president. Biden, however, refuses to acknowledge that we are in a new cold war with China. His remarks brought this response from Rep. Michael McCaul, the House Foreign Affairs Committee chair: “The whole point of him going to the region, in my view, was to get our friends and allies and partners together in the event of an invasion of Taiwan and a greater invasion into the South Pacific Sea.” McCaul called Biden’s remarks “the wrong message to send.” And, as Niall Ferguson notes, Biden’s key Indo-Pacific adviser on the National Security Council, Kurt Campbell, is using the language of détente to describe U.S.–China relations. Campbell recently stated that the administration is “seeking careful, productive, strategic interactions with China. … a more predictable, judicious set of interactions across a variety of spheres.” That is a far cry from “the adroit and vigilant application of counter-force at a series of constantly shifting geographical and political points” and “firm and vigilant containment” that informed our policy during the Cold War with Soviet-led communism.
Biden’s remarks come on the heels of China’s recent revision of its so-called nine-dash-line map that includes virtually the entire South China Sea as Chinese territory. The revised map adds a 10th dash located east of Taiwan. China’s message couldn’t be clearer — Taiwan is its territory, and it intends to have it. In the Chinese leaders’ view, taking back Taiwan is the unfinished business of the Chinese civil war. It was only the American 7th Fleet, which was dispatched to the Taiwan Strait after North Korea invaded South Korea in June 1950, that prevented Mao Zedong’s army and navy from invading Taiwan. In the mid-to-late 1950s, the People’s Liberation Army shelled the Nationalist-held Kinmen and Matsu islands in an effort to intimidate the Taiwanese into submission, causing the Eisenhower administration to obtain congressional approval to arm and defend Taiwan and to threaten China with nuclear weapons. That was “firm and vigilant containment.” And it worked.
Ferguson notes that there is a disturbing widening naval gap in the western Pacific — in China’s favor. China has significantly more warships than the United States. America needs to modernize its submarine fleet and increase its shipbuilding capabilities, Ferguson writes. Otherwise, we may not be able to counter a Chinese naval blockade of Taiwan. The geography of the western Pacific — with China’s lengthy east coast potentially hemmed in by a series of island chains — is suitable to a containment policy, assuming sufficient naval power and access to base facilities along those island chains. Taiwan is the geographical anchor of the island chains. Should it fall to the PLA, containment would no longer be a feasible option.
But, according to the president, it is the Biden administration’s policy not to contain China. So why should we be worried about Taiwan? And what was the purpose of the president’s trip to Asia?
