To protect Taiwan and the Philippines, the US must show strength in the seas 

The security of Taiwan and the Philippines are inextricably linked.  

On Dec. 7, 1941, when Imperial Japan attacked Pearl Harbor with planes launched from aircraft carriers in the Pacific, it simultaneously launched an air assault on the Philippines from Taiwan, which Gen. Douglas MacArthur called “the unsinkable aircraft carrier.” Now, the Philippines, Taiwan and democratic Japan are under severe threat from communist China, whose illegal claim to the entire South China Sea emulates Imperial Japan’s Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere.  

Like that aggressive power’s ambitions triggering World War II, China’s expansionist claims threaten to set off a regional war that could quickly erupt into global conflict. 

The role of the United States is critical to the fate of both Taiwan and the Philippines; the Taiwan Relations Act declares that America would “consider any effort to determine the future of Taiwan by other than peaceful means, including by boycotts or embargoes, a threat to the peace and security of the Western Pacific area and of grave concern to the United States.”  

But Beijing has not viewed that language or America’s belated fidelity to it as signifying a genuine willingness to go to war over Taiwan.  

When Chinese officials in 1995 asked America’s intentions in such a scenario, Joseph Nye, then assistant secretary of Defense, made no mention of the TRA, stating only that any direct U.S. response to a Chinese attack “would depend on the circumstances.” President Clinton’s secretary of Defense confirmed the position verbatim, and no subsequent administration has deviated from what became known as the policy of strategic ambiguity. 

China has spent the decades since building massive “anti-access/area denial” capacity — including attack submarines and anti-ship ballistic missiles known as “carrier killers” — creating the “circumstances” that would dissuade the United States from seriously considering any direct defense of Taiwan. To Beijing, U.S. ambiguity is U.S. ambivalence. 

The Biden administration (or any successor national security team) must dispel the United States’s official vagueness if it is to avoid a tragic strategic miscalculation by China. Washington must intensify the flow and upgrade the quality of weapons systems to Taiwan and publicly convince Beijing that overt military aggression against Taiwan, including a blockade or embargo, will immediately trigger direct U.S. and allied intervention — as well as U.S. recognition of Taiwan independence. 

The defense of Taiwan must go beyond the reactive, U.S.-touted “porcupine strategy,” which assumes a successful Chinese invasion and a prolonged rear-guard action behind passive measures like anti-tank trenches and mines. It must include arms that can destroy the attacking Chinese forces long before they reach Taiwan, and a strategy to accomplish it.  

With a population little more than half of Ukraine’s and a geography that invites encirclement and economic strangulation, Taiwan cannot afford to engage in a prolonged war of attrition that imposes only those costs on China that it is prepared to accept. To avoid what Ukraine has already endured, and the further weakening of Western will and endurance, an announced doctrine of non-nuclear “escalation to de-escate” is the only effective deterrent against China.  

Beijing must understand that war with the United States will bring dire consequences to China itself and existentially jeopardize the Chinese Communist Party’s hold on power. Sending a carrier battle group through the Taiwan Strait now, for the first time in 17 years and only the second time since 1995, will reinforce the message. 

As for the Philippines, the U.S. intervention commitment was already explicit and official under the Mutual Defense Treaty of 1951, which declared their formal intention to “maintain and develop their individual and collective capacity to resist armed attack.” Major U.S. naval forces stationed at Subic Bay Naval Base after the end of World War II, along with substantial air forces operated out of Clark Air Force Base, played important supporting roles in the Korean and Vietnam wars.  

But in 1992, they were turned over to the Philippines Armed Forces. With the U.S. presence thus reduced, China intensified its territorial demands on Philippine possessions in the Spratly Islands.  

The Clinton administration negotiated a settlement in 1999 by which both countries would leave the disputed Second Thomas Shoal. The Philippines left but China refused to honor the U.S.-brokered deal. By 2012, China’s pressures in the region encouraged Manila to invite the U.S. to begin utilizing Clark again.  

China’s wild claim to virtually the entire South China Sea alerted the region to the growing threat. In 2013, the Philippines brought the issue before the United Nations Arbitral Tribunal on the Law of the Sea. Its 2016 unanimous decision upheld the Philippines position and judged China’s sweeping sovereignty claims as entirely without legal or historical merit. Beijing has rejected the decision. 

In light of China’s mounting aggressiveness, Washington has repeatedly announced since 2019 that the mutual defense treaty would apply to any attack on Philippines territory “anywhere in the South China Sea.”  

President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. has courageously defended Philippines sovereignty against China’s aggressive demands. The missing ingredient in the prescription for strengthened bilateral cooperation against the common China threat is the return of the U.S. Navy to Subic Bay. The Seventh Fleet’s presence at Subic, especially with aircraft carriers fitted with the full range of advanced weaponry, would exponentially enhance the joint defense in-country as well as bolster U.S. capabilities to preserve stability in the region as a whole. It would also send a powerful deterrent message: that China’s aggressive behavior is uniting the Free World against it, just as Russia’s invasions of Ukraine have produced NATO’s solidarity and resolve to help Ukraine resist.  

Joseph Bosco served as China country director for the secretary of Defense from 2005 to 2006 and as Asia-Pacific director of humanitarian assistance and disaster relief from 2009 to 2010. He is a nonresident fellow at the Institute for Corean-American Studies and a member of the advisory board of the Global Taiwan Institute.