that is incredibly notable because as brianna was saying, it s been this long-standing practice of strategic ambiguity. basically, that means that the white house will say, china, don t do this. we don t want to see you do this, but they wouldn t exactly spell out what would happen if china were to do that. and the president, of course, did that today, saying the u.s. military would be involved in this. so, yes, afterward, you did see some of the president s aides try to walk this back saying he wasn t articulating any kind of change in his policy, but it is a policy difference for him to come out and say explicitly they would do that. not just that they would provide arms to ukraine or arms to taiwan and weapons to taiwan like they are doing with ukraine, but saying they would go one step further, john. of course, it s a statement the president has come close to saying before. he articulated it very bluntly with no clarifications, no caveats. you can have aides walk it bac
officially declared taiwan and china but under a one china policy. his answer to the question didn t say that. his answer to the question in the context of ukraine said, you did not intervene military in ukraine, put u.s. boots on the ground. would you intervene militarily in taiwan and his answer very definitively is, yes. one, it s relating it to ukraine, which would establish a difference to how the u.s. responded in ukraine and taiwan, and also he answered the question as yes. is this biden wanting to be deliberately not clear, in other words, to leave some ambiguity so china doesn t know for sure which the u.s. would do? by the way, which some had called for for ukraine. they criticized biden for being so definitively to dismiss the possibility of u.s. military intervention there. that said, as kaitlan said, he has a history of making statements here that seem to be ahead of what the policy is.
end of the day, the president is making very clear his position on this. it s being welcome by china hawks, including republican mike mccall, ranking member on the foreign affairs committee who joined us a short time ago. he said personally he approves that message and he thinks it sends china a much needed message. kaitlan collins live in tokyo, thank you. for more now on president biden s comments on taiwan, let s bring in cnn anchor and chief national security correspondent, jim sciutto. i wonder what you think just about what was happening there, if this was just the president s propensity for trying to answer a question very directly or what? well, listen, the administration, his spokes people are trying to hide behind the taiwan relations act, which set it s governed u.s. policy with taiwan since 1979, saying that the u.s. will give taiwan the means to defend itself. not that the u.s. will enter militarily, sending aircraft to the strait of taiwan, but give it weapons to