US and Canadian warships sail through Taiwan Strait after Biden vows to defend island

US and Canadian warships sailed through the Taiwan Strait on Tuesday following weekend remarks from President Joe Biden that the US would defend Taiwan in the event it is attacked by China.

A US Navy ship, the Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyer USS Higgins, conducted a “routine Taiwan Strait transit” on Tuesday, US Navy spokesperson Lt. Mark Langford said in a statement.

The US ship conducted the transit “in cooperation with Royal Canadian Navy Halifax-class frigate HMCS Vancouver,” Langford said.

The two ships “transited through a corridor in the Strait that is beyond the territorial sea of any coastal State,” Lt. Langford said. The transit “demonstrates the commitment of the United States and our allies and partners to a free and open Indo-Pacific,” Lt. Langford added.

Tuesday’s transit marked the second time in just over three weeks that a US Navy warship had made the voyage. The guided-missile cruisers USS Antietam and USS Chancellorsville did so on August 28.

Since US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan in early August, the US has witnessed a dramatic increase in the number of Chinese military ships and submarines around Taiwan, a US defense official told CNN.

Though the US called the transit “routine,” it comes after Biden added fuel to tensions between Washington and Beijing over Taiwan, telling CBS’s “60 Minutes” that he would use US troops to defend the island if China tried to invade.

The strait is a 110-mile (180-kilometer) stretch of water that separates the democratic self-ruled island of Taiwan from mainland China.

Beijing claims sovereignty over Taiwan – an island of 23 million people – despite China’s ruling Communist Party never having controlled it. Beijing also claims sovereignty, sovereign rights and jurisdiction over the waters of the Taiwan Strait under Chinese law and its interpretation of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS).

The US Navy, however, says most of the strait is in international waters, citing a UNCLOS definition of territorial waters as extending 12 nautical miles (22.2 kilometers) from a country’s coastline. The US regularly sends its warships through the strait, making dozens of such transits in recent years.

In the CBS interview, Biden was asked whether “US forces, US men and women, would defend Taiwan in the event of a Chinese invasion.”