Thank you, Michael for the kind introduction and for the invitation to speak today. And I would also like to thank Chairman Willem De Vogel for organizing this event.
It’s great to be back at the Jamestown Foundation. For nearly four decades, your organization has advocated a strong, assertive, and decisive American foreign policy. I can think of no better institution with which to discuss the pressing crisis in Ukraine and its implications for our strategy regarding Taiwan.
First, I think it’s frankly essential to recognize that the current crisis in Ukraine didn’t begin in February 2022, it began in January 2021, when Joe Biden took the oath of office.
Remember that in his first week in office, Joe Biden handed Putin his number-one diplomatic priority; the unconditional renewal of the New START nuclear-arms treaty. Far from satiating Putin, this early accommodation only whetted his appetite.
Sensing weakness, the Russian dictator massed tens of thousands of troops, tanks, and munitions on the Ukraine border in April 2021. In response to this obvious blackmail, the White House scrambled to schedule a summit in Geneva in June that would elevate Putin’s international prestige and allow him to pretend Russia was on an equal footing with the United States.
Before the summit even began, President Biden gave him two massive and unreciprocated concessions. First, the administration waived congressionally-mandated sanctions on the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, despite President Zelensky’s warnings that the pipeline would deepen Europe’s addiction to Russian energy and empower Putin to attack Ukraine. Second, the administration then froze $100 million in military aid to Ukraine.
Putin thus entered the summit in triumph, having been handed several of his top foreign-policy objectives in the very first months of the new administration. He believed his power was ascendent, while his opposition on the continent was weak and disorganized.
But ultimately Ukraine’s fate wasn’t sealed in Europe or at a glitzy summit. It was sealed in the mountains of Afghanistan and on a single runway airport in Kabul. In those terrible August days, a relatively small Taliban force routed a military armed and trained by the West and captured Kabul without a fight, while Afghanistan’s president fled the country. Desperate crowds thronged the airport, hundreds of Americans were trapped behind enemy lines, and ISIS suicide bombers tragically exploited the chaos and killed 13 brave Americans and hundreds more Afghans.
During this defeat with dishonor, Putin was watching. If America could be humiliated by a band of seventh-century savages, it was in no state to help Ukraine resist the full might of the Russian military.
Precedents are important in foreign policy. Indeed, establishing effective precedents is essential to our credibility and our ability to deter adversaries. In Afghanistan, President Biden set a clear precedent that he would not act to save an ally. In so doing, he undermined American deterrence and set the stage for Russia’s renewed aggression.
In the months that followed, Russia assembled nearly 200,000 troops on the Ukrainian border. Again, the Biden administration made a series of unforced errors. The president said NATO might not take action if Russia’s attack was simply a “minor incursion.” At the same time, the president ordered the evacuation of our embassy in Kyiv, sending the clear message that America thought Ukraine would buckle without a fight.
For Vladimir Putin all lights were flashing green. He went for the jugular, sending air assault forces, armored columns, and teams of assassins to seize Kyiv and decapitate its government in one fell swoop.
To his credit, Zelensky rejected President Biden’s offer of evacuation. He stayed and fought—and so did his people. The uncommon valor of Ukrainian patriots resulted in the greatest embarrassment for the Russian military in a generation. Russia’s wild thrust toward Kyiv was repulsed, more than ten thousand Russian soldiers are dead, and a Russian flagship lies at the bottom of the Black Sea. The war that was supposed to be over in a few days and result in Ukraine’s total conquest has transitioned into a war of attrition in the East. Not only that, NATO is mostly united—and growing, as Sweden and Finland have applied to join the alliance as a result of Putin’s aggression. The war that was supposed to demonstrate Russia’s might has instead magnified its vulnerability.
Of course, these facts are cold comfort to Ukraine. Russia’s battlefield setbacks and Ukraine’s surprising fortitude should not be allowed to hide the string of failures that led us to this point. The true measure of a successful foreign policy isn’t stalemate or even victory on the battlefield. It’s the successful deterrence of conflict. By this measure, the Biden administration has undeniably failed.
We must now back Ukraine to the hilt, not only to check further aggression by Russia, but also to send a clear message to Communist China that if it invades Taiwan, it too will fail. For just as Russia watched what happened in Afghanistan, China is watching what’s unfolding in Ukraine. As I said before, precedents matter—we must set a clear precedent that is painful for the Russians and unmistakable for the Chinese.
Today, there are warning signs Beijing may be considering an invasion. Chinese aircraft regularly swarm Taiwan’s air defense zone and just last week, Beijing repeated its unlawful claim that the Taiwan Straits are “internal waters” that China has a right to control completely. A Chinese Communist Party spokeswoman even threatened Taiwan’s “demise” if it attempts to defend itself from invasion.
In response, President Biden on three occasions has rightly declared that America will defend Taiwan if China attacks—only for White House aides to immediately walk back these statements. The U.S. government has somehow succeeded in making strategic ambiguity even more ambiguous, when it should be doing the opposite.
Certainty is essential to deterrence. The United States should end the policy of strategic ambiguity and adopt one of strategic clarity. There must be no doubt: we will fight to defend Taiwan, and China will lose if it invades.
We must also learn the most basic lesson from the run-up to the Russian invasion of Ukraine: deterrence comes before a conflict, not during it. As we change our declaratory policy regarding Taiwan, we ought to substantially increase arms shipments to Taiwan. In doing so, we must keep in mind that not all arms are created equal. We should have a blunt conversation with the leaders in Taipei about what weapons they actually need. Instead of expensive and large weapons systems that will immediately be targeted in the event of a war, we ought to provide Taiwan with an arsenal of asymmetric, highly mobile weapons, such as Stinger missiles, ground-launched anti-ship cruise missiles, and sea mines. For decades, China’s military armed itself with these weapons to deter a superior America military. It’s only fitting we give the Taiwanese the same capabilities to deter China.
We must also work with Taiwan to expand and dramatically improve its reserve forces so that, in the event of war, they can augment the island’s defenses rapidly and effectively.
We must continue to readjust our own posture in the region, rebuild and reinvigorate our Pacific fleet, and deploy a full array of military assets to the Western Pacific. And we must expect our friends in the region to build up their own capabilities and share in the collective burden.
We should not rely solely on military tools. We must inform Beijing in no uncertain terms that we will also deploy a full array of economic measures to cripple their engine of growth and erode their keystone of domestic stability if they attack Taiwan. We must make clear that we will cut their economy off from global markets, freeze their assets in the U.S., expunge their companies from Western stock markets, and restrict their supply of raw materials from the rest of the world. They must know that their exports will rust and rot in port, their factories will go quiet, and their people will grow restless. The United States and our allies must be willing to cut China off from global trade and finance until they end their aggression and recognize that the Taiwanese people have a right to govern themselves.
The good news is the Chinese Communist Party can still be deterred. It is dangerous, but still vulnerable. The CCP depends on the outside world to feed the Chinese people above a subsistence level. Its military is enormous but untested, and it may be just as riven with nepotism and corruption as the Russian military. A fully rearmed America, standing strong with our allies in support of an armed and ready Taiwan, is not only capable of repulsing a Chinese attack on Taiwan, but also and more importantly likely to deter the attack in the first place.
We are living in unmistakably troubling times; we must meet them with unmistakable strength and resolve. Because only the strong can deter aggression, only the strong can preserve the peace, and only the strong can preserve their freedom in a dangerous world. Thank you.
