taiwan

let's remind everyone

I spoke with AMB Smith about 90 minutes ago and he is ready for tomorrow night. He is especially keen to engage with folks so he is consciously leaving more than the average amount of time for your questions. Hope you can join us from 5-6 pm eastern at the link below to hear about Saudi Arabia.

I am an educator; it’s the thing I know best It’s what gets me up in the morning because it brings together so many facets of our world. While I formally surrendered all my courses by close of 2022, I thrive on the opportunities to hear people’s questions so I take advantage of lecture opportunities whenever they arise.

It’s the questions, always the questions.

I spoke with aspiring national security high school students yesterday afternoon at the University of Maryland. First time in 7 years I have participated there with women as the four speakers; too often panels are still primarily our male colleagues. I confess to enthusiasm that youngsters of all backgrounds and genders seek careers in this field as I have found int so rewarding, if frantic at times.

I also spoke with mid-career reservists yesterday about where China seems headed. I provided them some grist for their post-lecture seminars but must confess I mostly hope I clarified some things.

One of those aspects that seems repeatedly to need reinforcement is invariably about that wee island 100 miles off to the east of the mainland: Taiwan. We talk about it yet we don’t seem to focus on one aspect that I suspect many folks across this wonderful land just don’t understand.

The United States does not have diplomatic relations with Taiwan.

We have not had diplomatic relations with Taiwan since 31 December 1978.

President Nixon and his National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger would have accelerated that process, according to subsequently declassified documents, but Nixon and Kissinger appreciated it was not possible in the U.S. domestic environment.

President Carter shifted diplomatic relations from Taiwan’s capital Taibei to the People’s Republic of China’s capital, Beijing. Doing so, he formally severed the 1954 Mutual Defense Treaty as well.

No subsequent U.S. president returned diplomatic relations between our country and Taiwan. Not Ronald Reagan thought so important for the end of the Cold War. Not George H.W. Bush who served as Nixon’s envoy to the mainland. Not Bill Clinton who sent two carrier battlegroups to the area surrounding Taiwan to deter further Chinese shenanigans in the lead up to Taiwan’s 1996 presidential election. Nor George W. Bush who Taiwanese were certain would reverse Carter’s action; instead, he warned Chen Sui-bian, the island’s leader, not to upset the status quo in 2003 when the Chinese premier was in the Rose Garden on a visit. Not Barack Obama who talked about rebalancing to the Pacific. Not Donald Trump who took a pre-inauguration phone call from the current Taiwan head of state in 2016 to Beijing’s fury. Finally, not Joe Biden who is breaking recent norms by aligning U.S. military support for the island without commensurate diplomatic ties.

Wait, wait. Are you sure, Cynthia? How could this be?

We have social, economic, and military links to Taiwan, some much more formal than others. Congress responded to Carter’s actions in 1979 by passing the Taiwan Relations Act which mandates we will treat Taiwan as a de facto diplomatic partner but that is not the same as having diplomatic links. We have a representative in Taibei who acts much like an ambassador; the Taiwan Economic and Cultural Relations Office (TECRO) has an representative who acts in similarly in the U.S. capital. We have a consular-type office in Kaoshiung for the southern part of the island while they have a dozen TECO (no relations part of the title outside of Washington, D.C.) offices in Honolulu, Houston, Guam (yes, that is the United States), Denver, Seattle, Chicago, Atlanta, Los Angeles, Atlanta, San Francisco, Boston, and Miami which function as consular offices for citizen services.

We negotiate trade agreements, as do other countries, with Taiwan just as we do with the mainland. U.S. citizens work, study, and travel to the island which is a underrated tourist destination. I particularly find the southern part of the island comparable to Southeast Asia years ago with its flora and fauna. Taiwan similarly has many students who study here and businesses keen to enter the U.S. market. A significant number of the Taiwan elite own homes here.

So what don’t we do if we don’t have diplomatic relations with Taiwan?

We have no formal ambassador to the Republic of China or Taiwan. As noted above, Taiwan has no ambassador who provides her (current representative is a woman, Hsiao Bi-khim) credentials on behalf of the head of state. There are simply some events where she does not receive an invitation.

Our Foreign Service Officers, one of the most elite positions within the U.S. Government, resign their diplomatic positions for parallel, unofficial positions while serving at the American Institute in Taiwan, our unofficial embassy. Upon completing their tours on the ground, they return to the FSO positions for other posts around the globe.

Taiwan military officials who come to the United States do not wear military insignia if they attend professional military education, although they do wear their uniforms without that insignia if desired (doesn’t happen much in my experience). We do not have a formal military alliance with Taiwan as we did between 1954 and 31 December 1978 as noted.

From here the military ties become a bit murkier. We have had overt military officers rather than retired military on the ground in Taiwan providing advice for about fifteen years. We educate Taiwanese students at all levels of our military education except CAPSTONE which is a general officer course. To my knowledge, the Chairman and the heads of the services have never traveled to Taiwan nor do we co-host military exercises with Taiwan armed forces on the island. We sell arms to Taiwan but that is considered a commercial activity as much as anything else rather than military.

Speaker Pelosi went to Taiwan nearly 12 months ago as she is keenly anti-mainland. She sought to show support for President Tsai Ing-wen as did Speaker Kevin McCarthy who met her in Washington, D.C. To my knowledge, no president of the United States, vice-president, or Secretary of State or Defense has stepped foot on the island since 1978.

Why the kabuki? Because diplomatic relations are the gold standard indicating the priorities of any country. Every single U.S. administration back to Jimmy Carter, regardless of their frustration, anger, aspirations, or anything else, has deemed and continues deeming the overall bulk of our relationship with the 1.3 billion Chinese as more important than 23 million Taiwanese.

Beijing will not allow us or any other country in the world to have diplomatic relations with both governments.

Beijing fears—unquestionably fear-based reasoning—allowing states to have formal diplomatic links to both the People’s Republic of China and the Republic of China would result in Taiwan declaring independence. After that, their fear continues, the billions of folks under the thumb of the CCP on the mainland would see the regime as weak, thus potentially empowering dissent in a myriad of ways at home.

I don’t think it’s much overstatement to say the CCP views Taiwan independence as an existential challenges it does not want to confront. Operating from fear makes governments do odd things. One with a market of 1.3 billion folks who up until recently were seeing their incomes rise steadily made it feel pretty powerful about its demands.

I have heard for two decades from Taiwan citizens that they are not interested in reunifying with a CCP-ruled nation but would consider reuniting with a non-communist regime.

Taiwan has now been released from Beijing’s control since the Qing dynasty lost it to Japan in provisions of the Treaty of Simonseki in 1895. Literally no one today alive ever lived when Beijing governed this island. The years of separation continue acculumating.

However, as more Taiwan citizens think in terms of separation and self-governance, I see little indication that similar appreciation of trends is at work across the Strait. In relative terms, I have met few people of the 1.3 billion in my trips to China with various delegations. I can’t claim to know even a fraction of a representative sample but I have yet to meet a single one who sees this state of affairs as sustainable indefinitely. Not one.

Instead, many on the mainland increasingly ask why the China they are told is gaining respect around the world, as a result of Xi Jinping’s actions, is denied the logic of reunification with Chinese Taiwan. The younger the voice, the less likely that person knows the convoluted history of the island, especially in the twentieth century. Most of the young in China have seen forty-five years of successes dating to the Four Modernisations of ~1978; recognising that Taiwan is separate from what they have been told would be a problem in an era of heightened nationalism.

We have decided that our relationship, fraught as it is, with the people of the mainland outranks that of ties with the island; all but thirteen other entities around the world made the same choice. None of our closest allies—not Japan, Australia, Korea, the United Kingdom, or Israel—differed from the calculation we made so they too have TECRO or TECO offices rather than formal diplomatic links.

I sometimes see the choice phrased as a fear on our part rather than a calculation of national interests. Because Taiwan has had an amazing democracy since the late 1980s, this is an especially painful reality. However, no one should assume that Beijing would roll on the issue of formal ties should any U.S. government decide to announce its desire to open diplomatic relations with the Republic of China. It would be a monumental step with good and bad consequences.

But we ought not approach it with any naïveté about those consequences being insignificant. They could result in war which would affect U.S., Taiwanese, and Chinese citizens if not those of other parts of Asia. Two nuclear armed states have yet to fight a war but nuclear weapons could be used in this conflict should it break out.

We have diplomatic ties, to Vladimir Putin’s chagrin, with Ukraine. We are providing much assistance to that embattled country in its war with Russia. President Biden disappointed and infuriated President Zelenskyy with our preference to delay an invitation for Ukraine to join NATO.

There is no NATO-like structure nor is one likely for ages, if ever, in Asia. We are providing Taiwan with much support, hoping their capacity will increase substantially after decades of abject neglect. But we should recall that we have made choices so far that hem in our options.

We just aren’t particularly good about explaining the differences in the situations. Over the years, I have come to believe the single worst use of our tools of statecraft is almost invariably communications.

Still hot in the Chesapeake and we have ample evidence the Canadian wildfires continue apace.

FIN

Cynthia Watson is inviting you to a scheduled Zoom meeting.

Topic: Timely Topic: AMB James Smith on Saudi Arabia

Time: Jul 19, 2023 05:00 PM Eastern Time (US and Canada)

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