 The U.S. Naval War College is a Navy's home of thought. Established in 1884, NWC has become the center of naval seapower, both strategically and intellectually. The following issues in national security lecture is specifically designed to offer scholarly lectures to all participants. We hope you enjoy the upcoming discussion and future lectures. Good afternoon and welcome to our fourth issues in national security lecture for this academic year. I'm John Jackson and I will serve as host for today's event. I'd like to note that we are gathered together here in person. We also have a large audience dialed in via Zoom and I extend a very warm welcome to the students and faculty from the officer training command Newport who have also joined us. Over the 2023-2024 academic year we are offering 10 lectures from some of the best scholars in the world, our resident faculty. This is intended to share a portion of the Naval War College's academic experience with the spouses and significant others of our student body. We also welcome participation by the entire Naval War College extended family, including members of the Naval War College Foundation, international sponsors, civilian employees, colleagues throughout Naval Station Newport, and others around the globe. While the primary purpose is to share information and learn together, we do offer documentation in the form of certificates of completion to all participants who attend at least 70 percent of the offered lectures. You can participate here in the audience via Zoom or even by watching the lectures when they're posted on YouTube. We ask you to keep track of how and when you participate and we'll ask you to self-certify your completion toward the end of the series. Our next lecture will be on 23 January 2024 when Professor Jim Holmes will discuss China and zombies. One of the best lectures and by and far the best title of any of our lectures. Okay, on with the main event. At the conclusion of the presentation we'll welcome questions from our in-person audience. Please use the microphones located at each seat, press the button and hold the button while you ask your question. Virtual participants should feel free to ask questions using the chat feature of Zoom and we'll get to as many of them as we can. So let's move on to the educational portion of today's event. Since prior to the end of World War II, U.S. foreign policy concerning the status of Taiwan and its government has shifted repeatedly along with shifts in the global security dynamics. These policy shifts have left us with challenging international law issues that remain just below the surface of U.S.-China and Taiwan relations. Now with the People's Republic of China's increased military and economic clout, China's increasing pressure on Taiwan to reunite with the mainland and a consequential election in Taiwan next month, the year 2024 may be another strategic turning point. This lecture will trace the history of U.S. policy concerning Taiwan from World War II to the present, including which pressures led to policy shifts and consider whether the time is ripe for another shift in U.S. policy concerning our relations with and the status of Taiwan. Our presenter, Dr. Peter Dutton, is Professor of International Law in the College of Stockton Center for International Law. He previously served as Interim Dean of the Center for Naval Warfare Studies and as Director of the China Maritime Studies Institute. A retired Navy Judge Advocate and former Naval Flight Officer, he holds a PhD from King's College London, a JD from the College of William & Mary, an MA from U.S. Naval War College, and a BS from Boston University. He's also an adjunct professor at NYU's School of Law and is a faculty advisor to NYU's U.S. Asia Law Institute. I know of no one better qualified to address the timely important subject of today, so please welcome Dr. Peter Dutton. Thank you John. Thank you very much for that. Thank you John and thank you all for coming this afternoon. I will probably be walking around the stage. That's my normal approach, but before I do, there's a couple things I want to say by introduction and I needed to write them down, so I'll do that from here. The first is that I have to issue a disclaimer, which is the views you're about to hear are my own views, not necessarily that of the Navy or the any other element of the United States government. Additionally, I want to ask a question, really the presentation asks the question, why should we even focus on Taiwan? John, in his introduction, made a couple of remarks about why. We have a consequential election coming up in January 2024, next month in Taiwan, and the shift in government in May 2024, that's when the presidential transition will occur. And this has been a period, the last couple of years have been a period of increased tension between China and Taiwan and the United States over the Taiwan issue. And the United States Secretary of Defense has said, Secretary Austin has said that China is our pacing challenge as a military and Taiwan is the pacing scenario, right? We have to focus on this issue because we may be called into conflict and in fact some have called this the decade of danger. And China's leaders have made clear that Taiwan as a separate entity from the mainland is an issue that has to be resolved eventually, right? And Xi Jinping has said a number of times, the current Chinese leader has said a number of times that this separation cannot go forever. In his vision, the China dream involves unification of all of China's claimed territories. So why should we focus on the history of Taiwan, the history of the evolution of Taiwan and US policy concerning it? Well, perhaps it's because the United States is one of the most significant factors in what happens in the future of Taiwan. We, the United States, have been a very significant component of providing stability in the region through our Taiwan policy in the past. And we have stabilized the situation in the cross-strait region for now at least 75 years with our policies. And because of the pressure that you're seeing in over Taiwan and the status of Taiwan, you're seeing some calls for change in the US China policy. And I think because we have a presidential election coming up in 2024, this will be an issue that you'll probably see some debate over during that time. And so I thought, well, we might as well begin the year with a focus on these big questions. You might be surprised at the title, right? This is a lecture about Taiwan. And I'm asking you to think about from Shimonoseki to Shanghai. And one of the interesting things about the Taiwan policy is how little of Taiwan's future is actually decided on Taiwan. And so the way I've actually set up the discussion today, or the presentation that I'll give you, is looking at where in different cities around the world, Taiwan policy has been made and how these decisions have been affected by the evolution of history over the course primarily of the 20th century. But we have to begin in the 19th century. It's very important. So first of all, where is Taiwan? I know probably everybody in the room knows where Taiwan is and understands a little bit about the geography and why this is important. But we have some people who might be tuning in who aren't familiar with it. So here we have Taiwan. Taiwan is just off the coast of mainland China. It's an island that if, for those of you who are from this area, you know about the size of Massachusetts and Connecticut, that's about the size of Taiwan. Only the population of Massachusetts and Connecticut together is about 15, no, correction, 10 and a half million, 10 and a half million people in Massachusetts and Connecticut combined. In Taiwan, it's about 23 million people. That's the population of all of Australia, a country the size of a continent, but it's also the population of the city of Shanghai, believe it or not. So like Shanghai, Taiwan is a very densely populated area, especially since it's very mountainous, the center of it's very mountainous and not very habitable. So it's a very densely populated area off island off the coast of mainland China that has a very large economy and it's a thriving democracy with a very large economy. It's roughly around 20th or 21st in terms of national economies around the world. But we've also seen, as I mentioned earlier, Chinese pressure on Taiwan increasing over the course of this year. It really began at Spike. This you see the picture on the left here is the PLA, mostly that these are PLA flights around the island of Taiwan. This was in September 2022. There was a spike in September 2022. The month after Nancy Pelosi, Speaker Pelosi visited Taiwan, what you began to see was an increase in pressure by the mainland on Taiwan. And so why? What drove that? Why would the Chinese care? There's members of the House of Representatives that visit countries and localities around the world. Why would China be so upset about this? And so this is one of the questions that I hope to answer for you. And also we have to consider, especially those of us who are in the military, what pressures, what military pressures could be next and what are the policy implications of them. So China's policy is actually crystal clear and easy to understand, right? This is Xi Jinping, the leader of the Communist Party of China and also the President of China, Secretary General. And the PRC perspective, there is one China in the world. And Taiwan is a part of China. It's an inalienable part of China is the PRC perspective. And the People's Republic of China is ruled by the Chinese Communist Party, which is the only legitimate government of all of China. So that's a very simple, very easy to understand. Chinese policy has three components. One China, one government. Taiwan's a part of all of China. It should be under the governance of the People's Republic of China and not separate from the mainland. So China's policy is clear. What about US policy? Well, we've got another half an hour anyway to discuss what the US policy is because it's not clear. We have to begin with a little bit of history, though. Taiwan was not always part of China. Taiwan was a separate entity from China up until the late 1500s, early 1600s, when it was actually first colonized primarily by the Dutch and the Spanish. There was some Japanese occupation there, but mostly it was the Dutch and the Spanish in the 1500s and 1600s. And there was an indigenous population on the island that had a culture very much more similar to sort of Polynesian and Southeast Asian island populations, very different from the culture of mainland China. And then we also have to fast forward a little bit to your 1644. I'm not going to give you a detailed history lesson, but what you have to know is that there was a change in dynasty in roughly 1644. It happened over a period of years, actually. But we look at 1644 because the Ming dynasty was conquered by the last Chinese dynasty known as the Qing dynasty. And the Qing dynasty took time for the Qing to conquer all of China. And during that period of time, the Ming loyalists and those who were trying to escape the Civil War, many of them crossed the strait for the first time and began to colonize the island of Taiwan in the 1640s and 1650s. And in that period of time, when the Qing dynasty, the last dynasty, was trying to consolidate its hold. This was also the last holdout of Ming loyalists in that transition period, a sort of historical parallel that is not lost on the People's Republic of China today. So 1644 was when China began to colonize Taiwan or Chinese people began to colonize Taiwan, but it wasn't until later in the 1600s that the Chinese dynasty actually went across the strait and began to take control of Taiwan in order to end the possibility of Ming loyalists of being sheltered there. So in that period of time, between 1644 and the late 1800s actually was a period of increasing Chinese migration to Taiwan and increasing governmental control over the island. So it took about 200 to 250 years for the Chinese to begin to actually control Taiwan, but they did. And now we have to get to the first city that, where Taiwan's destiny was decided, and that first city is not in Taiwan, it's in Japan. Because in 1894 and 1895, Japan and China fought a war and Japan won. And as a result of that war, Japan signed a peace treaty with China in the city of Shimonoseki in the very southern part of the main island, Honshu of Japan. And as a result of that peace treaty, the island of Taiwan was seated, formally seated, by treaty from China to Japan. And so as a matter of international law and international politics, from 1895 forward, the island of Taiwan was no longer Chinese, it was Japanese, it was completely accepted that it was Japanese. Now, this was a period of time, this is some Japanese art from the time period here. And you can see some aspects of this that are really reminiscent of the way in which both the Chinese and the Japanese felt about this conflict. On the right of the Japanese, and you can see that they saw themselves as modern and as on the ascendance, right? So they're standing tall, they're on the ascendance, Japan is on the ascendance during this time period. And China is not there, they're in more traditional clothes and they're bowing. And this is Japanese artwork trying to portray that Japan was on the rise as the leader, the new leader of Asia, the modernizers and the new leaders of Asia. And the Chinese were backward and no longer ought to be the leaders of Asia because they were not strong enough and not modern enough to be. And this is not forgotten by the Chinese today about this particular conflict, right? That the Chinese recognized that part of the reason that they lost Taiwan is that they were not modern enough, they were not strong enough, they did not have the strong enough military power and a strong enough central government to retain control of the island. All right, so there we are. So the policy of the United States as of 1895 was that the island of Taiwan was a part of the empire of Japan. That only makes sense. It was everyone's policy, including China's, by the way. So the next place we need to go is Cairo, Egypt. The second place where Taiwan's status was determined. And in this case, we have to pause for a moment and we have to talk about that period of time. Remember, I said all of the Ming loyalists went to Taiwan and at that time there was an indigenous population on Taiwan. And so there has been a Chinese population, Chinese heritage population on Taiwan for more than 300, almost 400 years. And an indigenous population. And that group of people over time developed an independent identity, an independent identity as being from Taiwan as opposed to being necessarily from China or from connected to the mainland. And that's important because there's a political party that represents that perspective today. It's the DPP or the Democratic Progressive Party. And the party holds the presidential office today. The second party is the Nationalist Party. There we are. The Nationalist Party was led at the time. And the Nationalist Party was the party established at the end of the Qing Dynasty. Remember I said the Qing was the last dynasty? What happened after that dynasty fell in 1911 and 12 was a republic rose up. It was the Republic of China. And the government of that republic was run by the Nationalist Party known as the Kuomindang, KMT or GMT, Kuomindang. And the Kuomindang was led by Chiang Kai-shek, the gentleman on the left. And his wife is on the right. That's an interesting story we can ask about in the Q&A if you like. But she was very active in the negotiations. And this was during World War II, 1943, the very end of 1943, around the time of Thanksgiving in fact. Thanksgiving was celebrated in Cairo. And the President Roosevelt insisted on meeting with Chiang Kai-shek and Winston Churchill prior to going to Tehran. So the three of them met in Cairo. Then they went to Tehran to meet with Stalin. Because what they were deciding at that time was whether to invade Normandy, a cross-strait invasion of Normandy in order to open up a second front in the German front. So the Soviets had been fighting in the east and Britain and the United States were coming to terms with agreeing with Stalin to open up that second front. Now what does Chiang Kai-shek have to do with that? Roosevelt's position was that Chiang Kai-shek was holding down, by continuing to fight the Japanese, was holding down a million Japanese soldiers that the Americans would not have to fight. And in holding down those soldiers, what he was doing was enabling America to shift power to the European theater in order to invade Normandy. And so this, to Roosevelt, Chiang Kai-shek's participation was very important. But Churchill didn't like this at all. He didn't want to give up anything in order to support Chiang Kai-shek. He thought there was enough power that the United States could generate without having to do that. But Roosevelt insisted. But Churchill ensured that there really wasn't anything given to Chiang Kai-shek at that point in time. And so because you have to have success at every major senior leader meeting, there was a communique that came out. And the communique said, Japan shall be stripped of the islands in the Pacific. This was the gift to Chiang Kai-shek for continuing to fight the Japanese, which he has seized or occupied since the beginning of the First World War. And that includes Formosa, that the previous name of Taiwan is Formosa, and the Pescadores. Those are the islands, the Pungu Islands today that are off the coast of Taiwan. So Roosevelt decided to give that American promise that Taiwan and the Pungus would revert to China at the end of the war, once Japan, the imperial owner of Taiwan, had been defeated. So US policy of 1945 was that the status of Taiwan is that it'll be a part of China, right, in accordance with the American commitments made at Cairo. So what happened when on the right you have the Japanese, on the left you have the Chinese, turning over administration of Taiwan at this time, was it something called retro-session? Remember I said the Treaty of Shimonoseki ceded Taiwan from Japan to China? Retro-session would be to cede it back, to return it back to China. Is that what occurred with the exchange of occupation? Or was it a military occupation, like the American military occupation of the main islands of Japan? This is the debate. So the Chinese say, nope, this was the point at which we acquired sovereignty. The mainland says this is the point in which we acquired sovereignty. In fact, the KMT says it as well. This is the point at which we acquired sovereignty over the island and we are, I say the KMT says it, they have said it in the past. Today it's a little bit more of a debate. But the other possibility is that no, this was simply an occupation. And that's an important distinction we'll see why in just a couple of minutes. Alright, so the next important point is Korea. Why? Because, so perhaps I should put Pyongyang, right? Because the North invaded the South in 1950. In fact, it was June, if I recall correctly, June 25, 1950, which is an important date, because it forced President at the time Truman and MacArthur, who was leading American, actually the Allied occupation of the Asian region, including Japan. MacArthur was Supreme Allied Commander at the time. And so a debate and a discussion arose about what to do about Taiwan. Remember, at this point in time, it's been occupied by the Chinese. The question is, has it become under Chinese sovereignty? And as a matter of international law, the answer is no. Why? Because there was no peace treaty that had given the island back from Japan to China. So the best legal answer is it was occupied by Chinese forces and it was not retroceded back. Now that becomes important because Truman decided the strategic, the geostrategic, the location, the geography of Taiwan was more important to retain American control over and not to let the mainland have control over that island after the North invaded the South in Korea. Why? For two primary reasons. One was that Truman looked out at the world and he saw Joseph Stalin, who was still the leader of the Soviet Union, expanding outward, attempting to make more communist countries around the periphery of Asia, right? And so to make the Korean Peninsula communist. China was already communist. Southeast Asians had communist insurgencies. There was communist insurgencies in the Middle East. And also Eastern Europe was becoming increasingly communist. And so Truman looked around and said, we have to stop this. And this was at the very early days of the Cold War and the concept where containment became the American concept. And so Truman said, we need, the geography of Taiwan has strategic importance. He agreed with MacArthur. And so that two days later, they were at the Blair House. This is the house across the street from the White House. Why? Because the White House was under reconstruction at the time. So they met at the Blair House and the president made a decision to reverse Roosevelt's policy. He reversed Roosevelt's policy and said the seventh fleet, U.S. seventh fleet, still based in Yokosuka, Japan, would proceed to Formosa and prevent an attack by the mainland onto Taiwan Formosa. But it would also prevent Chiang Kai-shek, who dearly wanted to go back and conquer the rest of China, would stabilize the situation. That's the second reason that Truman decided to use the seventh fleet to separate Taiwan from the mainland. Because it could give strategic stability to the region. So the first was communist containment and the second was regional strategic stability. So those were the reasons for the policy change. And so the ultimate policy was at that point in time, as of June 27th, was the determination of the future status of Formosa must await the restoration of security in the Pacific. So the status of Taiwan went from an American political commitment to give it back to China when the peace treaty with Japan was finally signed to know the status of Taiwan shall remain undetermined for the time being and wait until restoration of peace and security in the region is established. So American policy regarding Taiwan is tied in part to peace and stability on the Korean Peninsula and in part to regional peace and stability around East Asia more broadly. So now we get to the peace treaty. Now recognize that this came after the Chinese participation in the invasion with North Korea of South Korea. That may not be something that you're aware of, but that part of what Truman's calculus was about wasn't just about Joseph Stalin. It was also about the fact that the Chinese were participating with the North Koreans in attacking South Korea. So at the San Francisco peace treaty, China was not represented at the peace treaty, in part because the Allies could not agree which China should be represented. Now this is two years after the end of the Chinese Civil War in which the Republic of China ended its control of the mainland, not its claim of a right to govern the mainland, but ended its control of the mainland and the Chinese Communist Party took over and established the People's Republic of China. What was left was a small contingency of Chinese forces and the Chinese leadership and the Chinese government on the island of Taiwan plus a few minor outlying islands. That was what was left of the Republic of China and that's what's left of the Republic of China today. Today, after 1949, you've had essentially two governments in this entire area, each of which claims a right to govern all of China, the Republic of China and the Nationalists and the People's Republic of China and the Communists. But at the San Francisco peace treaty, Japan was required to renounce its control over Taiwan, but note that Taiwan as a sovereign entity was not assigned to any other country. Japan just simply walked away and so this was how Truman put into international law and international politics an ambiguous status for the future of Taiwan. That future being waiting until peace and stability are achieved in East Asia. And this was also recognized when Japan made a separate treaty with the Republic of China on Taiwan. It recognized the same essential status. It recognizes that Japan renounced its title and claim to Taiwan and the Pescadores, but it did not assign it to any other country. So the policy as of 1952, the end of this whole crazy period, was that the status of Taiwan, the American policy, was the status of Taiwan is undetermined and will await future action. So now we move to Shanghai, right? Another city also not in Taiwan. And I should say also Beijing, they were both active at the time. And this gentleman on the left, some of you may know Richard Nixon and his wife Pat, Pat Nixon, went to China in 1972. Why? Because Nixon was changing the geopolitical landscape around the world. Nixon was worked very hard to build up Cold War containment policies and decided to weaken the Soviet Union's ability to fight back by opening up and engaging with China. It was a global geopolitical move, a major shift in global geopolitics. So Nixon went to China, spoke with Mao, spoke with Joe Enlai, the Premier and the foreign secretary at the time, and opened up a relationship, began to open up a relationship. It actually took some time, opened up a relationship with Communist China. Now by 1972, many other countries had begun to recognize the People's Republic of China. The number of countries around the world that recognized the People's Republic of China as the legitimate government of all of China outpaced the number of governments that continued to recognize the Republic of China as the legitimate government of all of China. And in this period of time, the Republic of China, remember Chiang Kai-shek and his government lost control of the Chinese seat in the United Nations. Up until this 1971, actually, the Chinese seat in the United Nations was actually occupied by the government on Taiwan, the Republic of China, Chiang Kai-shek, the nationalists. But in that year, it shifted from the nationalists to the communists. And at that point, the People's Republic of China began to be ascendant in international politics. And this is not directly due to Nixon's change in American approach to China, but it's in part a reflection of American policy change. So at this point in time, this is Joe Enlai, by the way, on the right, Richard Nixon, of course, on the left. Now at this point in time, American policy shifted one more time, right? Because global politics were shifting, and so American policy shifted. Nixon said specifically to Joe Enlai, principle one, there is one China, and Taiwan is part of China. So this seems to be a reversal of something going back to the Roosevelt approach that Taiwan would be part of China, as opposed to Truman's approach, which was followed by Kennedy and Johnson after him, that the status of Taiwan would be undetermined. So Nixon's toasting with Joe Enlai says these words, but at the same time he says two other things. He says, our written policy won't be quite that clear, because we have all kinds of interests, bureaucratic interests, that have to be addressed. We also ensure, the second thing he said, was our policy is based on regional peace and stability, right? So the status that even Nixon's policy, where he was willing to go back to that Roosevelt approach, accepting that Taiwan is part of China, was based on non-use of force and non-coercion and no major impacts to regional peace and stability. So even that policy was tied and conditioned on those. So now we come to Washington, because Washington has had a lot to say about the status of Taiwan. After Nixon engaged with Taiwan, there were four things that happened that you should know about. The first thing is that, remember that the seat shifted in 1971 in the UN from the Republic of China, the Nationalists on Taiwan, to the Communist, to Communist China. And Congress began increasingly uncomfortable with the way American policy seemed to be leaving the Republic of China and Taiwan kind of hanging out there. And so Congress passed the Taiwan Relations Act, which made clear that it's American policy, among other things, that our entry into diplomatic relations with Beijing would be based, conditioned on the fact that Beijing would not use force against Taiwan and would not even coerce Taiwan into accepting mainland control. So that's an important component that Congress added to our policy in 1979 with the Taiwan Relations Act. And then there were three communiques that you will hear about, the three communiques. There was the one that Richard Nixon signed, which acknowledged that all Chinese on both sides of the straight claim that there is one China and Taiwan is a part of China. They just disagree on what government should be in charge. But the question is who are the Chinese? Remember I said earlier that there was a separate identity for the people of Chinese heritage that came over in the 16 and 1700s to the mainland. And the ones that came in 1949 after the retreat of the nationalists to Taiwan, sure, they were Chinese. They considered themselves Chinese. But it's not necessarily clear that the rest of them on Taiwan considered themselves Chinese. American policy took advantage of that ambiguity so that Americans could say that all Chinese on both sides of the straight agree that there's one China and Taiwan is a part of China. And we acknowledge that as our policy. And we don't challenge that as our policy. So what are we acknowledging? Well, both the Kuomintang and the communists believe that there's one China, but is that the same as believing that all time when I think the same? Again, we have this ambiguousness built into our policy in order to give us some latitude to shift policy as necessary or to emphasize different aspects of our policy as necessary in accordance with shifting strategic dynamics. The second communique was signed by Jimmy Carter when he was president. He actually opened up the relationship between the U.S. and China, established diplomatic relationships between the U.S. and Beijing, and shifted away our diplomatic recognition of the Republic of China on Taiwan and established a sort of parallel structure, non-official parallel structure to maintain relations with Taiwan, which we no longer recognized as a separate sovereign entity, separate sovereign government from the mainland. So we couldn't have diplomatic relations with both the island, the Republic of China on Taiwan, and the People's Republic of China on the mainland. So we had to sever those diplomatic relations and make them unofficial. That's what that did in 1979. And then in 1982, Ronald Reagan signed a third communique, which had to do with regulating arms sales and our agreement that over time, in accordance with conditions across the strait that the United States would reduce our arms sales to Taiwan. The Reagan administration was very internally, at least, that meant that we would not be reducing arms sales anytime soon, especially since the mainland began a period of time in which they were building up their military. So the United States has a policy of maintaining a capacity in Taiwan to defend itself. So this is where the arms sales agreements come to. All right, so in Washington, by 1982, after these three communiques were formed and the Taiwan Relations Act was passed by Congress, now the policy is we acknowledge all Chinese on both sides of the strait claim there's one China and Taiwan is a part of China. And our agreement to enter inter-diplomatic relations with the PRC rests on the basis that the future of Taiwan will be settled by peaceful, uncoerced means. So what does uncoerced mean? Again, we leave some policy latitude there. All right, so where are we today? Where are we now? Just last month, there was a meeting between Xi Jinping and President Biden, and you'll see some familiar phrases came out of the communique related to that. Remember, leaders have to have something that they agree on, and so out it goes. This is the US statement, actually. The United States opposes any unilateral changes to the status quo from either side, we have to say either side, in part because what does that mean? That means we don't support Taiwan independence. That's an important component of American policy. We do not actively support Taiwan independence any more than we support the policy, a policy of the mainland to use force to attack or coerce Taiwan and bring it under Chinese control. Second, we expect cross-strait differences to be resolved by peaceful means. This is an important statement because it really, American policy includes peaceful, non-coerced means. The Chinese look at peaceful means as being military means only. In the South China Sea, you see sometimes it's referred to as gray zone. You see all the time the Chinese use Coast Guard vessels to harass and to fairly aggressively attack other boats in the region. You've seen it just in the last couple of weeks. In fact, today there was an article about water cannons used by Chinese Coast Guard vessels and essentially they're called sound cannons used by Chinese Coast Guard vessels to try to deter the Philippines from reinforcing one of its positions in the Spratly Islands. The Chinese call this peaceful means. Why? The Chinese believe that it's below the threshold of military and therefore it's peaceful. Well, it doesn't look peaceful if you're on the receiving end of it. That's why American policy is not just peaceful means but non-coerced means. That's in the Taiwan Relations Act quite specifically. Third, the world has an interest in peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait. This goes back directly to that statement of Xi Jinping I showed you at the beginning which attempts to look at the Taiwan Strait issue as an internal domestic Chinese issue where there is no international interest. This is within the scope of the sovereignty of China only and therefore no international interference should be brooked. Almost as if say Long Island had 75 years ago separated from the United States and this would be only an American internal sovereign issue to bring it back under our control. Like that's the way the Chinese view, the mainland views, the Taiwan issue as a solely sovereign. We're pushing back on that and have since the very beginning and said that the world has an interest in peace and stability in the region and across the Taiwan Strait. We're pushing back on that narrative that there's one China, Taiwan's a part of China. This is an internal affair not for international interference. Eli Ratner, Assistant Secretary of Defense has testified numerous times and so the Biden administration policy in part comes out from Eli Ratner where he says we have not supported Taiwan independence. That's true. We do not support it now. So not in the past and not now. And we stand firmly behind the principle that cross-strait differences should be resolved by peaceful means and by peaceful we include non-coerced. Taiwan, there should be a big but or however there right because however Taiwan is located at a critical node within the first island chain. The first island chain of course being those islands off the coast of Asia extending from the Japanese islands through Taiwan through the Philippine islands and the Indonesian archipelago. The first island chain off the coast of the Asian mainland. So Taiwan is located at a critical node within the first island chain in the Indo-Pacific region and its security is critical to the region's security and the global economy. So we have an interest in the security and stability of Taiwan as it stands today is what he's saying. So we don't support its independence but we do have an interest in its stability and perhaps even if you're Chinese you can be forgiven for looking at this and saying that the United States has an interest in maintaining a separate status for Taiwan from the mainland for as long as possible. And President Biden has on more than one occasion essentially said the same thing. He asked whether U.S. forces would defend the democratically governed island claimed by China. The president replied yes if in fact an unprecedented attack occurred. Right so so we see we're sort of coming full circle from the beginning where we started was a period of increased political tensions in part because the PRC military is now has now grown very strong in the region and our capacity to balance the strategic regional strategic dynamics has become challenged in part because the United States has sent political signals that that that we have an interest in Taiwan and Taiwan as a democratic country as a country where we have a democratic entity and an entity in which we have strong economic relations with and a government that we have an interest in stabilizing in Taiwan. What we've expressed is an interest in Taiwan itself and stability in the region over over 75 years since we very first expressed an interest in stability in East Asia and that hasn't changed at all. So let me conclude here and we'll get to some of your questions. What would be the implications of a Chinese attack on or coercion of Taiwan for U.S. policy? I want to be clear right here that I'm not advocating a change for American policy. American policy has been based on deterrence which has a component of political reassurance deterrence is actually achieved by two in two ways. One is by strong military means a credible military response to the potential use of force by China to settle the issue of Taiwan credible military response. The second is a policy of reassurance. This is the political component of it. This is that our policy regarding Taiwan has built in ambiguity. Why? It has enabled us to maintain to establish and maintain diplomatic relations with the PRC and to and to engage in political relations economic relations for the last 40 years now. But at the same time we have retained sufficient ambiguity about what is the status of Taiwan to allow us to revert to a different policy should we choose. And what would be the basis of that choice? It would be a violation of the larger agreement by which the Chinese use force to resolve the situation. If the Chinese were to use force or coercion to try to resolve the situation that could then drive a change in our policy that says all right well then we're going to be clear that the that will shift policy to be clear that our view of Taiwan is that it is a separate entity from the mainland and its status remains to be determined in the future. That is one possible outcome should Taiwan choose to use force against Taiwan. And so at some point the PRC's action could nullify the past agreements if there is force that is used. Second US policy could change again. We've left that room open to us. And third US policy has asserted that this is not just an internal affair of China settling an old dormant civil war between the communists and the nationalists. This is a matter of international peace and security and stability in the region and of interest to governments around the world. That's the American policy. So again I want to make clear I don't think we should be in any hurry to shift our policy. But if China chooses to use force how would we have a legitimate basis for intervening? My view is twofold. One is the status of Taiwan remains to be determined at a later date. That could become our policy. And second it would be China has breached the agreement for peace and stability in the region and we therefore have a right to use force to restore peace and stability in the region. Thank you for your attention. Okay. Thank you very much sir. Thank you. Thank you all for coming genuinely and for listening to sort of it's always a little hard to know how to engage in this history and policy discussion. But thank you for sort of staying alert and engaging. I appreciate it. So we will be back after the holidays in January and learn more about China. Thank you.