Commentary
Rep. Claudia Tenney (R-N.Y.), a member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, became the first elected official to say that the United States should abandon its policy of strategic ambiguity and declare it will defend Taiwan from Chinese invasion. The statement came on Fox News’ “Sunday Morning Futures” on May 29.
“If we are projecting weakness and we are not taking action to defend our allies and defend strategic assets, we are projecting weakness and inviting provocation and inviting, eventually, war,” Tenney said.
Tenney’s proposal comes amid others. Richard Haass, the president of the Council on Foreign Relations, and David Sacks, a research fellow there, made the case for strategic certainty in September 2020 and reiterated it in December 2021. Writing in 2020, the two speculated:…