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The Honolulu Advertiser
Posted on: Thursday, April 26, 2001



President stumbles on Taiwan policy

China is swiftly developing as the top foreign policy challenge for the new Bush administration. But a flurry of apparent misstatements by the president yesterday underscored his unfamiliarity with the nuances of China policy, his delay in recruiting an able Asia policy team and the importance of getting up to speed at once.

Bush had hoped to let formulation of an Asia policy wait until his first Asia visit next fall. Circumstances now deny him that luxury.

None too soon, Jim Kelly, an experienced Asia-watcher and Honolulu think-tank veteran, goes before Senate hearings this morning on his nomination as assistant secretary of state for the Far East.

How we got along

The key to more than two decades of profitable coexistence between the United States and Taiwan and China has been a series of creative diplomatic ambiguities between the parties.

The first, crafted by Henry Kissinger to enable U.S. rapprochement with China in the early '70s, was the so-called "one China" policy. It was possible in those days because both the communist government in Beijing and the Kuomintang government in Taipei claimed to govern all of China, mainland and Taiwan alike.

Thus Kissinger was able to agree with Chinese on both sides of the Taiwan Strait who believed there was but "one China."

That declaration has become really tricky to maintain since Taiwan gave up its claim to the mainland and diverted its energy to becoming a rich democracy. Taipei more recently has flirted with expressions of independence calculated to fall barely short of provoking Beijing into doing what it has vowed to do in the event of a clear Taiwanese declaration of independence — launch a war.

Balancing act

The American position of ambiguity on this question was intended both to keep Beijing guessing about Washington's possible reaction to an attack on Taiwan and to keep Taiwan from inviting an attack by getting too cocky. No American policy could be more intricately nuanced. Bush's father, a former ambassador to Beijing, understood this well. Not so Bush the younger.

Bush yesterday said the United States would do "whatever it took to help Taiwan defend itself," that direct U.S. military support "was certainly an option" — and later insisted U.S. policy hasn't changed.

He can't have it both ways.

Although it will further anger Beijing so soon after the EP-3 incident and the Taiwan arms announcement, this gaffe is not irredeemable. President Clinton stumbled as badly and still launched China toward World Trade Organization membership.

Arms sales

Another of the useful ambiguities in the U.S.-China relationship is the seeming contradiction between the 1979 law that requires the United States to defend Taiwan against attack by China and the 1982 agreement with China by which Washington undertook to limit arms sales to Taiwan.

China's interpretation is that Taiwan should never receive another American weapon, not even a billy club; Washington's view is that it is committed to limiting arms sales as long as the cross-Strait balance of power isn't upset.

What Bush has chosen to offer Taiwan this year is an arms bonanza, even without the Aegis-equipped Burke-class destroyers Taipei requested. Many of the systems made available this week are extremely potent — to the point that some may actually be too advanced for successful integration into Taiwan's armed forces.

The right move

Although Bush never had any intention of giving Taiwan the Aegis system, he wisely suggested it could be granted next year if conditions warrant. His meaning is to invite China to deactivate enough of the 300 medium-range missiles it has pointed at Taiwan to make the defensive system unnecessary.

But Aegis aside, Bush has offered Taiwan a huge weapons upgrade. The danger, no less to Washington than to Beijing, is that such weaponry will make Taipei less cautious about how it describes its relationship with China. China has stridently protested the arms being made available to Taiwan.

Where are we going?

What's far from clear is where Bush is headed with his China policy.

Is it a captive of the ideological struggle between Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Secretary of State Colin Powell? Or just a work in progress?

For this kind of on-the-job training, the stakes are awfully high.