Posted on: Tuesday, December 11, 2001

Editorial
Young democracies get Bush's attention

To varying degrees and for various reasons, American foreign policy finds itself beginning to pay closer attention to some of the world's newer democracies.

From the Cold War to the new war against terrorism, Washington has often found alliances with unsavory regimes so important that support for neighboring young democracies went wanting. Take for example Taiwan, India and — most recently — Israel.

From its creation in 1948, Israel enjoyed more U.S. support than almost any other country. But that began to slip in recent years. With the end of the Cold War and with Israel's archenemies Egypt, Syria and Jordan no longer Soviet client states, regional stability replaced denial of regional influence to Moscow as the U.S. imperative.

Then with the Gulf War and the war on terrorism, the United States found a great need for Arab allies. Pleasing states such as Saudi Arabia caused Washington to force Israel to submit to a "peace process" that was too often one-sided.

The recent rash of suicide bombings in Israel, however, has forced President Bush to recognize that there is no future in weakening the region's only democracy from a sense of narrow expediency.

Another convenient ally has been Pakistan, first as a key to the Soviet defeat in Afghanistan, and then as eyes and ears in the hunt for Osama bin Laden and his Taliban hosts there. Alliance with Pakistan is one reason for decades of tepid relations with India — even though it's the world's largest democracy.

Serious rapprochement with India is long overdue — yet one can't help worrying that the impetus for Bush has more to do with forming a strategic counterweight to China — much as Nixon used China against the Soviet Union — but that he hasn't fully thought out the complications of simultaneous alliance with both Pakistan and India, even as they threaten each other with nuclear arms.

Finally, with the recent parliamentary elections in Taiwan, the Bush administration may be forced to recognize, even at the cost of great gnashing of teeth in China, that the 23 million Taiwanese want no part of political unification with China.

The longtime power in Taiwan, the Kuomintang Party, suffered a crushing defeat because its strategy — that of branding the party of President Chen Shui-bian as recklessly unaccommodating to China — was soundly rejected.

Although Chen has been careful not to bait China by declaring independence from China, neither has he acknowledged the "one China" formulation demanded by Beijing. If the new breakaway party of former president Lee Teng-hui forms a coalition government with Chen's party, Bush may be forced to recognize what already exists.

Bush may have to abandon 30 years of "strategic ambiguity" about Washington's intention to defend Taiwan, instead acknowledging Taiwan's place in the sun. After all, the United States has never had a more ardent ally, nor has any nation more enthusiastically embraced our democratic example than Taiwan.