The Taiwanese Public Debates Security: Political Polarization and Deterrence

Over the past decade, mounting tensions in Cross-Strait relations have forced a reassessment, both in Taipei and Washington, of the deterrent effect of a calculated policy of ‘strategic ambiguity.” While that policy has arguably helped sustain a fragile status quo up to this point, a goal broadly endorsed by the Taiwan public, increasingly the merits of a shift to ‘strategic clarity’ have gained ground in policy circles. Drawing on polling data regarding public perceptions of threat, propensity to fight, and support for ‘ambiguity’ versus ‘clarity, Professor Iain Johnson will address the current state of public opinion on Taiwan’s defense posture and cleavages in policy preferences shaped by partisan alignment and identity.

 

 

Alastair Iain Johnston (PhD University of Michigan, 1993) is the Gov. James Albert Noe and Linda Noe Laine Professor of China in World Affairs in the Government Department at Harvard University. He has written on strategic culture, socialization theory, and identity and foreign policy, mostly with application to the study of East Asian international relations and China's international relations. Recently he has been working on how perceptions of identity difference and racialization may drive security dilemmas. Johnston is the author of Cultural Realism: Strategic Culture and Grand Strategy in Chinese History (Princeton 1995) and Social States: China in International Institutions, 1980-2000 (Princeton University Press, 2008), and is co-editor of Engaging China: The Management of an Emerging Power (Routledge 1999), New Directions in the Study of China’s Foreign Policy (Stanford 2006), Crafting Cooperation: Regional Institutions in Comparative Perspective (Cambridge 2007), Measuring Identity: A Guide for Social Scientists (Cambridge 2009), and Perception and Misperception in American and Chinese Views of the Other (Carnegie Endowment for International Peace 2015). He has published in International Security, International Studies Quarterly, International Organization, The Journal of Conflict Resolution, Perspectives on Politics, The Cambridge Review of International Affairs, The China Quarterly, among other journals and edited volumes. From 2007-2024 he was a member of the National Academy of Sciences Committee on International Security and Arms Control.

 

 

Victor C. Falkenheim is Professor Emeritus of Political Science and East Asian Studies at the University of Toronto where he has taught since 1972. Educated at Princeton (B.A) and Columbia (MA & Ph.D) Professor Falkenheim has previously served twice as Chair of the Department of East Asian Studies as well as Director of the Joint Centre for Modern East Asia. His research interests and publications center on local politics and political reform in China. He has lectured widely in China and has worked on a number of CIDA and World Bank projects in China over the past two decades. His current research focuses on issues dealing with migration and urbanization.