The U.S. and Taiwan: Creative Divorce
Gregor, A. James
A. James Gregor The U.S. and Taiwan: Creative Divorce De facto recognition, investment guarantees, and arms shipments are essential for Taiwan's survival and American integrity. The Carter...
...Such a desperate consequence might well be the cost of abrogating a defense treaty with a friendly power and of "de-recognizing' ' a friendly nation for the first time in our history...
...While the Soviet Union has been building up its naval strength in the western Pacific, the U.S...
...James Killen, Australia's defense minister, discreetly reminded Mondale that, since the Soviet Union was accelerating its development of offensive capabilities in the Indian Ocean, it hardly seemed politic for the U.S...
...In his judgment, the United States "bullies," "plunders," and "subverts" all the peaceful nations of the world...
...In playing the "China card," the Carter administration has gambled that Communist China's current policy is strategic, rather than tactical...
...The United States itself has had direct dealings with "unrecognized" regimes since at least the Spanish Civil War...
...Combined with a commitment to "human rights," truth, and beauty, this adds up merely to a petulant insistence (voiced by former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff George S. Brown) that the United States intends to "remain a Pacific power...
...But in fact, the Communist Chinese clearly see the rapprochement with the United States as a tactical maneuver.* They conceive of the United States as nothing more than a temporary counter to "social imperialism" (i.e., the Soviet Union), and so long as it serves their interest, they are prepared to "normalize" their relations with us...
...their friendship treaty with the PRC a clause stating that the treaty's " anti-hegemony "clause was not directed against any "third power" (i.e., the Soviet Union...
...The Carter administration's decision to recognize the People's Republic of China (PRC) at the expense of Taiwan should hardly have come as a surprise...
...Such actions might even convince some of the nations of the far Pacific that we are a serious political and military power with strategic policy interests in the region...
...But perhaps no one, at this stage, would expect the United States to be in as strong a bargaining position as either Japan or Libya...
...It is the latest in a series of apparently aimless foreign-policy moves that began with our clumsy abandonment of our obligations to South Vietnam...
...On August 9, 1978, the PRC and Libya entered into full diplomatic relations...
...Both enactments would give some substance to die bromide voiced by the Carter administration that the United States is con-cerned with the future of the Taiwanese people...
...More significantly, legislators should begin to husband legislation through Congress that would allow the Taiwanese to purchase whatever military ordnance is critical to their defense...
...we have abandoned millions of human beings to a government identified for three decades with every known violation of human rights...
...Congressional enactments clearly acknowledge the existence of de facto governments -Section 4 of the Foreign Relations Law of the United States defines such a government as "an entity that has a defined territory and population under [its] control and that engages in foreign relations," conditions fully satisfied by the ROC...
...Because foreign investments are essential to the continued development, political stability, and the defense capability of the ROC, and because the guarantees against war, expropriation, and non-convertibility for American investments in Taiwan are threatened by the withdrawal of diplomatic recognition, Congress should move immediately to insure that American holdings in Taiwan will be protected...
...policies in Asia...
...President Carter, more inarticulate than either of his predecessors, has accomplished even less...
...In June 1978, the director of Japan's Defense Agency was reportedly "profoundly disturbed" about America's reliability as his nation's principal defense partner...
...Even though we enjoyed every conceivable advantage in our negotiations with the Communist Chinese-they need our technology and wish to employ our real or fancied international weight as a counter to Soviet pressure-we apparently acceded to their every demand, no matter how outrageous...
...The United States not only acquiesced in these humiliations, but also agreed to China's demand that it resist any attempt at "hegemony" in the region-a demand that the Japanese were able to refuse...
...It is an interesting question whether, in the event of a confrontation, the United States will support a friendly Philippines, a formerly friendly Taiwan, the PRC, or the Soviet Union...
...has now reduced its leverage in the far Pacific and Southeast Asia to a point where it is little more than negligible...
...Every agreement entered into by the United States, according to Teng, is characterized by "deception...
...To complicate matters, both the Vietnamese and the Taiwanese have garrisoned troops on the Spratleys-Vietnam having entered the lists as a surrogate of the Soviet Union/The Spratleys straddle some important east-west sea lanes in the South China Sea and Communist China may decide that these lanes are vital to its security...
...What the Carter administration will leave to its successors is the task of salvaging something from this diplomatic and defense disaster...
...Subsequently, neither Nixon nor Gerald Ford succeeded in defining any specific U.S...
...we have undermined our defense capabilities and increased the likelihood of nuclear conflict simply because we appear no longer able or willing to contain any limited conflict on our periphery...
...A long time ago John Foster Dulles suggested that the defense of Taiwan was critical to American credibility and American security...
...Moreover, the Philippines may soon find itself contending with the PRC over the small islands scattered about the South China Sea, the Spratley Group, which possess a major offshore oil deposit...
...and we have provided compelling evidence of our unreliability as an ally to every nation that has trusted its future in our support...
...In doing so, libya neither proclaimed the PRC to be the "sole legitimate government of China," nor was it compelled to break diplomatic ties with the ROC...
...He suggested that the alternative was to "make our defense in California...
...In 197.1, Richard Nixon served notice that the allied nations in Asia would have to assume primary responsibility for their defense against external threats...
...Since de facto recognition requires neither executive nor legislative action, and since de jure governments enjoy few advantages over de facto regimes, neither Congress nor any administration that follows Jimmy Carter's need undertake the hopeless enterprise of "de-recognizing" the PRC...
...We have fractured a defense perimeter that stretched from South Korea and Japan through Okinawa, Taiwan, Indonesia, and the Philippines, thereby divesting our armed forces of critical staging areas necessary to protect the vital sea lanes of the western Pacific from either the Soviet Union or a Communist China now only beginning to develop offensive naval capabilities We have even committed ourselves to assisting Communist China in developing such capabilities, not only with Coca-Cola, but with computers, technological assistance, and the scientific training of its industrial and administrative personnel...
...At about the same time, government leaders in Manila and Jakarta expressed their irritation with Walter Mondale's insistent emphasis on their violations of "human rights...
...to alienate all of its former or current Asian allies...
...Since at least the eighteenth century, international law has afforded such recognition, and there is no way in which it could be denied the government of Taiwan...
...To purchase that we have forsaken a long-time ally, committed to us by the necessities of its circumstances...
...The fact is that since 1969 the United States has opted for a "less ambitious and less expensive" role in Southeast Asia and the Pacific region generally...
...Instead, we ceded to them the legal and moral right to use violence to subdue an unruly "province," a "province" which for 30 years we had recognized as our ally...
...We have not merely given evidence of a singular incapacity to bargain effectively...
...For example, we will have to renegotiate periodically our military bases at Subic Bay and Clark Field with the government of the Philippines, which now has every reason to be suspicious about American intentions...
...Eventhe Libyans were not required to meet such conditions...
...So long, he went on, as "imperialism" (read: the United States) exists, "there definitely will be no tran-quility in the world...
...To resist such moves, President Carter would be compelled to invoke his veto powers, a response not well calculated to win him public favor...
...In anticipation of just such an eventuality, South Korea seems to be undertaking preemptive moves, moves that would eliminate the anchor of what had been our defense perimeter...
...could not adequately protect Japan's critical sea lanes, and that the Soviet Union posed a direct threat to Japan's security...
...Since we have no discernible policy at this point, the risk of conflict in the area, as in so many others, is enhanced, not reduced...
...Rather, Congress must insure that the ROC receives every advantage de facto recognition of a friendly power might afford...
...In July, just before Japan signed its friendship pact with the PRC, the Defense Agency's vice-minister remarked that the U.S...
...has reduced the Seventh Fleet from three carriers and 29 combat vessels to two carriers and 18 surface ships...
...Every argument used to justify our abandonment of Taiwan could be marshalled to vindicate a similar abandonment of Israel or West Germany or South Korea...
...It may be that he was right...
...In the interim, there remain some realistic options that might serve to restore some semblance of credibility to our Asian policy...
...In order to achieve "normalization," we not only abandoned Taiwan, but offended the Soviet Union in a fashion required of neither the Japanese nor the Libyans...
...Out of fear of offending the Soviet Union, the Japanese insisted on including in * In a speech on April 10, 1974, before the United Nations, Teng Hsiao-ping spoke of the United States as being one of the "biggest international exploiters and oppressors of today...
...First, the United States must proceed to a de facto recognition of Taiwan...
...We might at least have obtained from them an assurance that they would not forcibly "reunite" Taiwan with the mainland...
...Understandably, the lack of any coherent American policy in Asia has become a source of increasing anxiety for the governments of Japan, Indonesia, and the Philippines...
...At best we have the circumlocutions of Cyrus Vance, who in June 1977 informed us that American Pacific policy was predicated on "peace and stability" and on a disposition to improve the "human conditions of the A. James Gregor is professor of political science at the University of California, Berkeley...
...people of Asia...
Vol. 12 • March 1979 • No. 3
