How to Milk Strategic Ambiguity

If Biden lost it, the Wrap rediscovered it. Here’s how we can now abuse it!

Strategic ambiguity in the news

Earlier this week, in response to a reporter’s hypothetical question, President Biden stated the U.S. would help defend the island of Taiwan were China to invade it. His statement touched off a small firestorm, with analysts saying Biden’s off- the-cuff remarks represented a major shift from our nation’s historic policy towards Taiwan called “strategic ambiguity.”

Now whether the President’s quote represents a major shift in U.S. policy or not, the question of what the U.S. would or wouldn’t do were China to invade Taiwan is of less interest to us than this intriguing concept called “strategic ambiguity.”

Now that’s what we call Wrap gold.

Double speak at its finest

In diplomatic, geopolitical terms, “strategic ambiguity” is a tactic wherein a major power intentionally does not state clearly what it would or wouldn’t do in a particular situation, like say if China invaded Taiwan. The purpose of this “ambiguity” is to obfuscate that major power’s likely reaction, and in so doing, deter other powers from acting because they don’t know how the first power might respond.

By the way, we like the word obfuscate. Not many words with that BFU combo. Plus, try saying it three times fast.

When two opposite words are stuck together, we call that an oxymoron and for morons like us, this creates comic possibility. Strategic ambiguity is right up there with terms like constructive criticism, deconstructive creativity, obfuscatory clarity, straight-forward deviation and viable impossibility. You get the idea, right?

Here at the Wrap, all we crave is an idea. Hot damn. Thanks Joe!

How to make strategic ambiguity work for you

If the objective of strategic ambiguity is to prevent others from guessing what your next move might be, we see endlessly useful applications. Consider these possible strategically ambiguous responses to questions our cracked, rapt Wrap editorial team might field in the near future:

Wife: “So when are you going to reorganize the outdoor sheds like you promised?”

Response: “We have a very solid plan that can be acted on almost any time, maybe between Memorial Day and some future as yet undetermined date, after which to delay further would be detrimental to the timely enactment of our plan.”

Huh?

Boss at work: “So Jeff, you’ve been talking for like five years now about your team lobbying Congress to enact “Independent Purchase,” to allow people to buy dental on its own, without having to purchase medical on the federally-run public health exchanges. How’s that going?”

Response: “We’ve made some great headway boss! Congressional staff are signaling their willingness to entertain the idea of legislation that would encourage the Center for Medicaid Services to implement Independent Purchase, providing they think that it’s a good idea. You know. If they want to. Will keep you posted. Hey, got to run!”

Dobby, our 35-pound brindle Pit Bull-Dachshund mix: “Jeff. Hungry. Feed me.”

Response begins in cute, sarcastic doggy speak tone, slowly gains volume, then graduates into loud, heated and supreme annoyance: “Aw, is little Dobby-Dob feeling a teeny weeny bit hungry now? Does little wittle Dob Dob want Jeff to stop everything he’s doing, open the special, all-natural, non GMO gluten-free dog food that mommy makes just for you, and spend the next ten full minutes it takes to mix it up with all the other special oils, vitamins and treats your mommy insists go into your itty bitty food bowl? Tell you what! As soon as I finish drafting this Wrap on strategic ambiguity, WHENEVER I FUCKING FEEL LIKE IT, I’D BE OVERJOYED TO FEED HIS MAJESTY! AND TELL YOU WHAT. SHOULD YOU EVER WANT TO FEED YOUR GODDAMN SELF, WE INVITE YOU TO GROW YOUR OWN OPPOSABLE THUMB AND DO IT YOURSELF! DUMB SHIT!”

Editorial note: Whew, ok, calm down there boy, calm down. We got a little heated there. We get testy when the dogs come around to bug us as feeding time draws closer - which is pretty much right after Happy Hour when the dogs get rambunctious. Can we all just pretend that bit of ugliness never happened?

How Taiwan and China participate in a triangle of ambiguity

Speaking of pretending ugliness isn’t happening, how about those Chinese and Taiwanese governments? Turns out that strategic ambiguity isn’t just a U.S. strategy played out in isolation. Taiwan and China are every bit as ambitiously ambiguous as the U.S.

China has what’s called a “one-China policy,” which the Economist describes as “a carefully worded fudge that means very little but accomplishes a lot.” Now something that means very little but accomplishes a lot seems pretty ambiguous, but it’s ambiguity with a purpose.

China states categorically, declaratively, unapologetically and quite ambiguously that Taiwan belongs to the People’s Republic of China (PRC). Taiwan, with its own laws, armed forces and democratically-elected president, believes itself to be an entirely separate country which leads it to have its own foreign relations.

But being hyper-aware of the PRC’s so-called one-China policy, not to mention being aware of all the troops, naval forces and nuclear weapons at China’s command, Taiwan is ambiguously careful not to declare itself “independent.” To do so would antagonize the Chinese government and quite possibly prompt China to end the current ambiguous state of affairs and orchestrate a take over of the island. And trust us, that takeover would not look like Russia’s ill-fated attempt to conquer Ukraine.

Owing to Taiwan’s ambiguity with regard to its independence and China’s ambiguity about what a one-China policy means, and because no one know for sure what the ambiguous U.S. would do were China to invade the island, China has deliberately and ambiguously refrained from imposing its own governance and laws on the island’s 24 million citizens.

Thus far.

Meanwhile, other countries are all over the map (both literally and figuratively) when it comes to the state of their relations with Taiwan. Let’s just call their relations with Taiwan to be just as ambiguous as that of China, Taiwan and the U.S. with each other.

If Taiwan were a declared and recognized independent country (which they are not), most other countries would want to establish formal diplomatic relations, name an ambassador and open an embassy on the island. But China fervently doesn’t want other countries to do this and many of those countries don’t want to rankle the world’s second largest military power and largest trading partner.

For all these reasons, Taiwan today has full diplomatic relations with only 13 of the 193 United Nations member states, plus the Holy See (Vatican City). And because Taiwan represents a significant economy, industrial base and financial center, it is too big to ignore. This is why Taiwan maintains ambiguously “unofficial” diplomatic relations with another 58 UN member states, one self-declared state (Somaliland), three territories (Guam, Hong Kong, and Macau), and the European Union via an assortment of representative offices and consulates, all under the one-China principle.

Wow. What a mess, right? An entire world pretending to honor the one-China policy, yet conducting separate, independent, unofficial relations with an island that refuses to claim independent status despite being independent in every other respect.

Crazy man! What dude is running this shit show from behind the curtains?

The big Wrap up

Look. The Wrap takes on “crazy” in some form or another every edition. That we see crazy in so many places and ways reflects the state of crazy, the country of crazy and the world of crazy where we all live during this shared lifetime together.

So to Wrap it up, let’s be consistent with the crazy thing we selected for today’s Wrap. Let’s end this thing with a little strategic ambiguity.

To this end, we do not say goodbye, or “that’s your Wrap” as we typically wrap a Wrap. Instead, we posit the question: when does any Wrap really end and the next one begin? If a man is in the woods, and his wife is not there to hear him, is he still wrong? These are questions for the ages, ones we leave open, because, well, life is mysterious and we are cool with that.

On that note, we do not say so long, farewell, auf Wiedersehen, goodbye or “that’s your Wrap.”

We simply stop writing.