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...
...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...
...we have abandoned millions of human beings to a government identified for three decades with every known violation of human rights...
...He suggested that the alternative was to "make our defense in California...
...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...
...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 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...
...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...
...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...
...In July, just before Japan signed its friendship pact with the PRC, the Defense Agency's vice-minister remarked that the U.S...
...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...
...While the Soviet Union has been building up its naval strength in the western Pacific, the U.S...
...policies in Asia...
...Rather, Congress must insure that the ROC receives every advantage de facto recognition of a friendly power might afford...
...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...
...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...
...Eventhe Libyans were not required to meet such conditions...
...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...
...The United States itself has had direct dealings with "unrecognized" regimes since at least the Spanish Civil War...
...In playing the "China card," the Carter administration has gambled that Communist China's current policy is strategic, rather than tactical...
...We have not merely given evidence of a singular incapacity to bargain effectively...
...In the interim, there remain some realistic options that might serve to restore some semblance of credibility to our Asian policy...
...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...
...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...
...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...
...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...
...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...
...President Carter, more inarticulate than either of his predecessors, has accomplished even less...
...In his judgment, the United States "bullies," "plunders," and "subverts" all the peaceful nations of the world...
...To purchase that we have forsaken a long-time ally, committed to us by the necessities of its circumstances...
...Subsequently, neither Nixon nor Gerald Ford succeeded in defining any specific U.S...
...It may be that he was right...
...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...
...A long time ago John Foster Dulles suggested that the defense of Taiwan was critical to American credibility and American security...
...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...
...First, the United States must proceed to a de facto recognition of Taiwan...
...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...
...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...
...We might at least have obtained from them an assurance that they would not forcibly "reunite" Taiwan with the mainland...
...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...
...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...
...has reduced the Seventh Fleet from three carriers and 29 combat vessels to two carriers and 18 surface ships...
...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...
...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...
...people of Asia...
...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...
...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...
...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...
...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...
...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...
...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...
...and we have provided compelling evidence of our unreliability as an ally to every nation that has trusted its future in our support...
...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...
...So long, he went on, as "imperialism" (read: the United States) exists, "there definitely will be no tran-quility in the world...
...Every agreement entered into by the United States, according to Teng, is characterized by "deception...
...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...
...to alienate all of its former or current Asian allies...
...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...
...On August 9, 1978, the PRC and Libya entered into full diplomatic relations...
...has now reduced its leverage in the far Pacific and Southeast Asia to a point where it is little more than negligible...
...To resist such moves, President Carter would be compelled to invoke his veto powers, a response not well calculated to win him public favor...
...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...
...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...
...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...
...What the Carter administration will leave to its successors is the task of salvaging something from this diplomatic and defense disaster...
...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...
...could not adequately protect Japan's critical sea lanes, and that the Soviet Union posed a direct threat to Japan's security...
Vol. 12 • March 1979 • No. 3
