Biden's Gift to the China Hawks

Whatever Biden’s true intentions may be, it isn’t up to him to decide whether the U.S. goes to war over Taiwan.

I wrote about the president’s dangerous words on Taiwan in my latest Antiwar column:

The United States is not obliged to go to war over Taiwan, and it is wrong and dangerous for the president to suggest otherwise. The US should be striving to avoid war with China, and it should not be drawing lines that make that war more likely.

The White House has tried to spin Biden’s remarks as an endorsement of the status quo, but it was clear from the wording of the question that the reporter was asking about Biden’s view of direct U.S. intervention in a war over Taiwan. There is no question that this is what the reporter meant by “involved militarily,” and there was no way that Biden could have misunderstood the question as being about something else. It raises the question of why Biden chooses to mischaracterize the nature of the U.S. commitment when there is no commitment to fight on their behalf.

The greatest immediate danger from Biden’s words is that they will be seized on by the usual warmongers to agitate for more aggressive policies in Asia. This is already happening in just the last few days.