Should the United States publicly pledge to defend Taiwan?

A wide majority of senior experts and academics - related to the Sino-American conflict over Taiwan - have expressed their disagreement with America's public and formal pledge to use military force to defend Taiwan if China invades.

This showed an opinion poll - conducted by the American magazine "Foreign Affairs" - whether America should publicly adopt, as an official policy, a pledge to use military force to defend Taiwan and all lands under its direct control, in the event of a Chinese invasion.

The magazine organized the poll to complement what it said were recent articles it had published about the threat of a Chinese invasion of Taiwan, US policy on the island, and the risk of a US-Chinese conflict over the Taiwan Strait.

The magazine said - in a report - that it asked a wide group of experts, consisting of 54 senior academics and specialists related to the subject, to give their opinions and answer specifically if they agree or disagree with the aforementioned undertaking.

39 of the respondents answered with disagreement, while only 8 answered with approval, while 7 of them remained neutral.

Divergent opinions

What has been overlooked recently in the discussions, says one opponent, is that the US policy of strategic ambiguity is based on the dual deterrence of both China and Taiwan, with America acting as a moderating force between China and the Taiwanese seeking to move beyond de facto independence to de jure independence.

While one agrees, strategic uncertainty is unlikely to continue to deter an increasingly capable and emboldened China from attacking Taiwan.

After Chinese President Xi Jinping paid a small price for militarizing the South China Sea and crushing democracy in Hong Kong, he may have concluded that if he were to attack Taiwan, there would be a similarly weak response.

The United States should effectively make it clear that it will defend Taiwan but not overtly, and it is in America's interest for it to defend Taiwan, said one neutral, however, "The main challenge for that interest is whether we can do so at a reasonable level of cost and risk. "It is indeed possible that China will appreciate that we will come to Taiwan's defense. The question now is whether we can, with Taiwan's own efforts, do so effectively. We should focus more on sharpening the stick, less on talking about it."