At a joint news conference with Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida in Tokyo on Monday 23/05/2022, a CBS reporter again asked the US President if the US would intervene militarily to defend Taiwan in the event of a third attack. country. And his answer was “Yes, and this is our commitment”, essentially formulating a casus belli to China.
Joe Biden brought a dramatic shift in the policy of all his predecessors towards China, which since 1979 has been based on two pillars: the first of which is the adoption of a policy of one China. The United States recognizes only the Beijing government as a legitimate government with which it will henceforth have normal diplomatic relations. The second pillar is the law on relations with Taiwan, an island that seceded from China.
Although Taiwan is not recognized as a state, it enjoys the help of the United States, which says it opposes a unilateral challenge to the status quo and calls on both sides to resolve the issue through negotiations.
This unstable balance had long since begun to shake, as China represented, at least for the last three American presidents, the number one rival of the superpower. It was the first time that during the US presidency, in addition to providing US military equipment to the island, the US also sent US Marines to secretly settle in Taiwan and train its army.
In a recent statement by the US President, in which he then compared China’s behavior in the Indo-Pacific Ocean with that of Russia in Ukraine, Joe Biden confirmed that he was ready to cross the “river” and engage in a war to defend it. . The answer was immediate from the opposite side. Chinese and Russian military aircraft capable of carrying nuclear weapons conducted joint 13-hour exercises, and over the Sea of Japan while Joe Biden was still in Japan, attending the Quad Summit (USA, India). Japan, Australia), in an effort to build an anti-Chinese front.
This development confirmed that despite the shocks from the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the Moscow-Beijing front remains tight. Everyone remembers that on February 4, on the sidelines of the opening ceremony of the Beijing Winter Olympics, Vladimir Putin and Xin Jinping declared that their alliance knew no bounds and that the Russian president was waiting for the Games to end and just launch. day, its attack on Ukraine and Russia backs China in the Eastern and Southern China Seas.
Two Fronts
Joe Biden, challenging both of Eurasia’s great powers at the same time, led the way in setting up AUKUS as a new anti-Chinese NATO, pushing China closer to Russia, and seeking Russia’s overwhelming defeat in Ukraine and The fall of Vladimir Putin brought Russia even closer to China. Given this, Russia is not burning for the lifting of Western sanctions since its priority is relations with the great neighbor of the east.
The downside of Joe Biden’s anti-Chinese strategy lies in the economy. Unlike Putin’s Soviet Union and Russia, the Chinese economy has enormous special weight in the world and a very close connection to the American economy. Thus a frontal rupture will have very painful consequences for both sides and for the whole planet. That’s why US Treasury Secretary Janet Glenn is pushing for Joe Biden to lift Donald Trump’s sanctions on China, believing that in times of energy crisis and stagflation, the impact on American business and consumers could be unbearable.
