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status since 1949. China believes that Taiwan is a renegade Chinese province, that Taiwan’s
reunification with the Mainland is a domestic issue, and that the force may be legitimately used to
compel reunification. There is widespread agreement that China prefers to reunite
with Taiwan,
forcefully if necessary, but at the present time prefers the status quo to fighting the US for Taiwan.
Taiwan refuses to acknowledge the People’s Republic of China as the legitimate representative
government for all of China, and seeks increased international autonomy. It is also commonly
believed that Taiwan prefers to be de jure independent from the PRC regime but prefers its de facto
political independent status to fighting China without US assistance. Most agree that the US
prefers the maintenance of the status quo to all other feasible outcomes. The US faces a standard
dual deterrence dilemma: under-commitment risks creating an incentive for China to attack
Taiwan, and over-commitment risks emboldening Taiwan to move recklessly toward
independence. The US policy response has been to be strategically ambiguous about the conditions
under which it will defend Taiwan. Specifically, the policy of strategic ambiguity, which derives
mostly from the Taiwan Relations Act, acknowledges that there is only one China, that Taiwan is
part of China, that the PRC is the governing power of China, that resolution of the Taiwan issue is
a domestic matter, but regards any security threat to Taiwan as a “grave concern” to the US. This
seemingly contradictory policy has the effect of signaling that the US has a definite stake in the
outcome of the conflict but prefers to abdicate the action to either China or Taiwan. Uncertain
about how the US will respond, neither China nor Taiwan has dared to take decisive provocative
actions. As long as the US enjoys an asymmetrical power advantage over both China and Taiwan,
strategic ambiguity offers a better shot at peace and stability than strategic clarity. Indeed, further
support for the findings of the model come from the fact that several presidential administrations
have endorsed strategic ambiguity as a policy to manage the Taiwan Strait dispute.
Are there alternatives to strategic ambiguity commitments to deal with dual deterrence
dilemmas? After all, strategic ambiguity policies are not failsafe. The game model shows that
although ambiguity outperforms typical firm and transparent commitments, it can, as many
Convention