dwindling friends

Taiwan in a harsh world

The U.S. policy on Taiwan has increasingly been the proverbial ‘having our cake and eating it, too’, a condition appealing to all but generally a lot of wishful thinking. The Biden administration, following Carter’s, Reagan’s, Bush’s, Clinton’s, younger Bush’s, Obama’s, and Trump’s, has formal diplomatic relations with the People’s Republic of China through its Chinese Communist Party-ruling government in Beijing while we have no diplomatic recognition of the regime in Taibei known as the Republic of China (ROC). We have discussed here that the ROC was the ‘China’ with whom we had diplomatic formalities from its founding in 1912 (though its physical location shifted to the island off the coast known as Formosa or Taiwan in 1949) through 1979.

The reason our ‘cake’ comes up is that neither Beijing nor Taibei has sought ‘dual’ recognition from a state, forcing a zero-sum formality of ties with either Taiwan or the PRC. To repeat myself deliberately, the United States has no formal ties with Taiwan though the Congress, with President Carter’s acquiescense, kludged together the Taiwan Relations Act of 1979. It is ‘An act to help maintain peace, security, and stability in the Western Pacific and to promote the foreign policy of the United States by authorizing the continuation of commercial, cultural, and other relations between the people of the United States and the people on Taiwan, and for other purposes.’

The TRA has a lot of legalese and political statements but there are 2 key aspects. A non-governmental entity called the American Institute on Taiwan (with offices in Taibei and Arlington, Virginia) serves our actual but not de jure diplomatic functions (because we technically don’t have any) such as negotiating, representational functions for U.S. citizens and visa versa for Taiwans, and the like. The AIT employs U.S. diplomats, among others, who technically resign their coveted Diplomatic Service positions to work for this non-governmental entity for their Taiwan tour before retaking their oaths as Foreign Service Officers. This may not sound important but for the arcane art of diplomacy, this was a truly novel idea which illustrated the ends to which we thought it necessary to satisfy our new diplomatic partners in Beijing while trying to continue a semblance of government-to-somethingorother relations in 1979.

Better known is the TRA ‘Declares it to be the policy of the United States to preserve and promote extensive, close, and friendly commercial, cultural, and other relations between the people of the United States and the people on Taiwan, as well as the people on the China mainland and all other people of the Western Pacific area. Declares that peace and stability in the area are in the political, security, and economic interests of the United States, and are matters of international concern. States that the United States decision to establish diplomatic relations with the People's Republic of China rests upon the expectation that the future of Taiwan will be determined by peaceful means and that any effort to determine the future of Taiwan by other than peaceful means, including by boycotts or embargoes is considered a threat to the peace and security of the Western Pacific area and of grave concern to the United States. States that the United States shall provide Taiwan with arms of a defensive character and shall maintain the capacity of the United States to resist any resort to force or other forms of coercion that would jeopardize the security, or social or economic system, of the people of Taiwan.’ (emphases mine)

The TRA, in other words, cannot supplant diplomatic ties that existed from 1912-1979 but both augments and muddies them in some ways. Nor does the TRA obligate us to defend Taiwan but it does require us to provide arms ‘of a defensive character’ if we see the PRC coercing the island.

Except what exactly do we mean by coercing? A blockade of Taiwan’s ports? Attacks on its economy? Shelling of Taiwan-governed islands (Mazu and Kinmen) just meters off the mainland? Poaching the remaining states which do recognise Taiwan as the government of China as Beijing did this weekend when Honduras abandoned the ROC for the PRC? In brilliant obsfucation, Congress tossed out a phrase with no clear meaning whatsoever. And, thus, neither Beijing nor Taibei has any true insight on that meaning.

Having spent several decades teaching about China and Taiwan, I still craft my own words extremely carefully because the tendentious aspect of this Act is hard to overstate. Similarly hard to overstate is people’s—including most in Congress—assumption they know what it says without apparently have studied its complexity. Taiwan-U.S. ties are thus fraught and not for the faint-hearted or rushed among us yet they seem to take on more importance daily as Taiwan looks more isolated, the United States more worried, and the CCP more confident about its role around the world.

I highly recommend anyone and everyone read the go-to publication on this—the Congressional Research Service’s utterly non-partisan primer, Susan Lawrence and Caitlin Campbell, ‘Taiwan: Political and Security Issues in Focus’, CRS Reports, 17 February 2023.¹

The problem is that the TRA and our relations with the islanders 100 miles off the coast are only one leg of a triangle that constitutes U.S.-Taiwan-PRC ties. The U.S.-PRC relations build not only on the Carter ‘normalisation communique’ of diplomatic relations with Deng Xiaoping and China on 1 January 1979 but two other communiques, in 1972 and 1982.

Richard Nixon and Mao Zedong issued a joint communique at the end of February 1972 memorialising what the two governments discussed during the historic visit. The most controversial phrase in that communique is ‘The U.S. side declared: The United States acknowledges that all Chinese on either side of the Taiwan Strait maintain there is but one China and that Taiwan is a part of China. The United States Government does not challenge that position. It reaffirms its interest in a peaceful settlement of the Taiwan question by the Chinese themselves. With this prospect in mind, it affirms the ultimate objective of the withdrawal of all U.S. forces and military installations from Taiwan.’² Again, in the arcane world of diplomacy, the joint statement evidences collaboration in deciding how to characterise the discussions but actually does not mean the same thing to China as it does to Washington. Huh?

Mandarin is a tough language but it also has multiple characters for words we use. Fluent Mandarin translators of long-standing point to using the word ‘acknowledge’ as merely recording Nixon’s understanding of China’s position without accepting it. The PRC, of course, has maintained for five plus decades that Nixon’s ‘acknowledgement’ was accepting China’s position of one China with Taiwan part of it.

The two forms of government in our countries become critical on diplomatic communiques. Mao, even in his final years, could authorise Zhou Enlai to negotiate with full confidence on all aspects of the visit. A highly hierarchical Leninist Party with proclaimed leadership in the Standing Committee of the Politburo meant that Zhou knew what Mao would tolerate as the leader of China. The half a dozen other men on the Standing Committee, at that stage in China’s history, knew the limits in dissenting against Mao. Merely two years earlier, Mao’s one-time successor Lin Biao died under mysterious circumstances as he allegedly fled to Moscow. Lin had by 1970 become critical of the Mao’s Great Proletariat People’s Revolution (1966-1976), thus as a traitor, his differences were intolerable to the Great Helmsman. China issued the 1972 Communique, as it is known, to show Washington’s agreement and box out Chiang Kai-shek on Taiwan on reunification of Taiwan, among several other things.

The problem is that Richard Nixon, as became clear months later, could not make international agreements without the U.S. Senate ratifying them; no president can unilaterally make major policy changes without consulting Congress. The Constitution tempers the power of the President under our ‘checks and balances’ system of three branches of government. It’s an incredibly complicated seven articles but the Constitution is clear on foreign policy responsibilities: Presidents execute it but the House initiates paying for it and the Senate gets to vote on diplomatic accords called treaties. Communiques do not equal treaties, punto final.

China’s government may have been naive about Nixon’s unilateral powers as Mao’s counterpart. Nixon may have desired unimpeded foreign policy decision-making but the Senate, after the Vietnam war, was not going to surrender that to him. And there was also a 1954 mutual defense treaty in place between the United States and the Republic of China which Nixon confronted in any attempt to normalise relations with the PRC. He never had the chance to do so, although we now know from declassified records that both Nixon and his National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger assured Beijing privately that this probably would be a matter of assuaging Taiwan’s U.S. domestic supporters. Beijing has chosen for the past 51 years to ignore this fundamental difference between our two governments in demanding Washington uphold that 1972 communique.

With all of this backdrop, the U.S. anxieties about Taiwan appear higher today as the island has formal diplomatic ties with merely 13 nations, the largest of which is Paraguay or Guatemala. Under President Tsai Ing-wen’s two terms as president, nine countries rebuffed Taiwan in favour of Beijing as the government of China. The United States, to reiterate, is not one of the 13 remaining formal partners. Honduras likely won’t be the last, either.

All of this returns us to the reality of significant and mounting fear in the United States regarding Taiwan’s status. Many support Taiwan because it is a full bore multi-party, thriving democracy. Others worry that Taiwan under China will expand Beijing’s military reach into the western Pacific as the island sits along the ‘first island chain’ a hundred miles off the mainland coast. Still others emphasise the credibility of the TRA and the fears of coercion against the nearly 25 million living on the island, reminding us of the damage to U.S. credibility around the world as a reliant partner. And yet others simply hate the Marxist government Xi Jinping runs, preferring ties with the Taiwans as the legitimate government for Chinese people.

For all of the concerns and advocacy for Taiwan, few acknowledge that reestablishing diplomatic relations with the island’s government would undoubtedly mean breaking them with the mainland. The PRC would not tolerate the United States having ties with both governments of ‘China’. Taiwan remains the final unsolved issue of the Chinese civil war between ~1928 and 1949; the PRC has spent decades stoking nationalism to remind its citizens the Communist Party alone has ‘ended the humiliation plaguing the country for 100 years’. The Civil War is unfinished, in this narrative, because the United States intervenes to keep the natural Taiwan reunification from occurring, thus continuing humiliation. Beijing simply would not allow Washington to reestablish ties without punishing the action and the public would on the mainland would overwhelmingly support their government actions, leading to war.

Fewer conversations revolve around Taiwan’s stated position it would not tolerate Washington trying to have ties with both governments. Taiwan demands treatment as a sovereign entity recognised in the international system. That has created a painful reality that the overwhelming majority of the world does not prioritise Taiwan anywhere nearly as high as China. States see ample evidence the CCP will engage in reprisals, thus these states remain deterred. Many government leaders go so far to advise publicly against support for Taiwan for fear it can disrupt their engagements with Beijing, links often providing much needed investment and trade.

The closest U.S. allies such as Canada, Britain, Australia, and Israel keep silent as Washington stresses the importance of Taiwan yet scholars and pundits within these states quietly remind Washington they are highly unlikely to support Taiwan in a crisis. Only today South Korea, an iron clad ally of seventy years, noted it would not anticipate supporting Taibei in a conflict. Australians just last week noted the same. These countries do not want to see conflict, especially over an island with whom they have trade but not formal ties.

Washington often argues publicly for the world Taiwan but is it being straight with our own public about the dangers of this policy? Would the U.S. taxpayer want to send her daughters and sons to fight in the western Pacific over the Taiwan?

This all appears a bit more urgent daily as the dangers across the board escalate.FIN

1. Susan Lawrence and Caitlin Campbell, ‘Taiwan: Political and Security Issues in Focus’, version 69, Congressional Research Service Reports IF10275, 17 February 2023, retrieved at https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/IF/IF10275/69 . The InFocus piece is an executive summary of a much longer report the Library of Congress has been producing for the Members of Congress for decades. I highly recommend everyone read the 1972 Communique, the 1979 ‘Normalisation’ Communique, the 1982 Reagan Communique, and the 1979 Taiwan Relations Act which is law. These are easily available through simple google searches.

2. ‘Joint Communique of the United States of America and People’s Republic of China’, 28 February 1972, retrieved at http://www.taiwandocuments.org/communique01.htm