[1] This is typically a way to avoid direct conflict while maintaining a masked more assertive or threatening position on a subject (broadly, a geopolitical risk aversion strategy).
[citation needed] However, with the onset of the Syrian Civil War (and Israel's involvement against Iran and Hezbollah), exceptions to its policy became more prominent.
In early April 2015, an editorial in the British newspaper The Times, with a reference to semi-official sources within the Russian military and intelligence establishment, opined that Russia's warnings of its alleged preparedness for a nuclear response to certain non-nuclear acts on the part of NATO, were to be construed as "an attempt to create strategic uncertainty" to undermine Western concerted security policy.
This policy was intended to discourage both a unilateral declaration of independence by ROC leaders and an invasion of Taiwan by the PRC.
[12] President Joe Biden has also seemingly abandoned strategic ambiguity, having said on several occasions that the United States would defend Taiwan if it was attacked.
[13] As an example, in October 2021, President Biden announced a commitment that the United States would defend Taiwan if attacked by the People's Republic of China.
[16] Another historic use of this policy is whether the United States would retaliate to a chemical or biological attack with nuclear weapons; specifically, during the Persian Gulf War.
President Barack Obama had used the phrase "red line"[17] in reference to the use of chemical weapons on August 20, just one day prior.
Specifically, Obama said: "We have been very clear to the Assad regime, but also to other players on the ground, that a red line for us is we start seeing a whole bunch of chemical weapons moving around or being utilized.
New Zealand has not banned civilian nuclear energy, but it is no longer used there and the public is quite opposed, thereby making it a de facto nuclear-free country.
That created a deliberately ambiguous policy that reconciled the demand by the rest of the world for West Germany to acknowledge the existence of East Germany and the desire by the vast majority of West German politicians to avoid recognizing German partition as permanent.