On May 18 last year, President Chen Shui-bian (
On March 4, Chen made another of his periodic comments on Taiwan's status quo, this time saying that Taiwan's only problem was its national identity. The following day in Washington, US State Department spokesman Sean McCormack was asked, "Can you make the link in one sentence saying that President Chen's comments are unhelpful or can you not say that?"
To which McCormack responded with the non sequitur, "I don't have anything to add to the statement that I have read." The statement he had just read had nothing to do with the validity of what Chen had said, but simply noted that "[US] President [George W.] Bush has repeatedly underscored his opposition to unilateral changes to the status quo by either Taipei or Beijing because these threaten regional peace and stability."
Chen's observations on Taiwan's status quo are indeed "provocative" to Beijing's leaders, but they at least have the advantage of being true and consequently need not be provocative in Washington. This is because Washington presumably has an interest in maintaining the status quo in the Taiwan Strait -- the status quo that Chen describes.
On Dec. 9, 2003, Bush chastised "Taiwan's leader?" -- Chen -- for making comments that "indicate that he may be willing to make decisions unilaterally that change the status quo, which we oppose." Bush was apparently referring to the "Taiwanese leader's" comments about a democratic referendum on Taiwan that would express Taiwanese indignation at being the target, at the time, of 350 Chinese short-range ballistic missiles.
Yet, far from threatening a unilateral change by Taipei in the status quo, the Taiwanese referendum was meant to protest Beijing's military moves to change the status quo.
The Bush administration has since tried to rearticulate a somewhat conditioned position which insists that the US is committed to "our `one China' policy" and "opposes" any move by China or Taiwan to "change unilaterally" the "status quo as we define it."
On April 21, 2004, a glimmering of this position came in a public statement by then US assistant secretary of state for East Asia and Pacific Affairs James Kelly, who enumerated for the House International Relations Committee "core principles" of US policy in the Taiwan Strait:
* "The United States remains committed to our one-China policy based on the three Joint Communiques and the Taiwan Relations Act;
* "The US does not support independence for Taiwan or unilateral moves that would change the status quo as we define it;
* "For Beijing, this means no use of force or threat to use force against Taiwan. For Taipei, it means exercising prudence in managing all aspects of cross-strait relations. For both sides, it means no statements or actions that would unilaterally alter Taiwan's status."
Beyond that third point, Kelly had to admit he was "not sure" he "very easily could define ... `our' one China policy." Nonetheless he continued, "I can tell you what it is not." It is not the "one China" principle that Beijing suggests, and it may not be the definition that some would have in Taiwan. Alas, that is as close as a State Department official has ever come to defining "our one China policy" in private or in public. Nor, as it happens, has any US official ever "defined" the "status quo as we define it."
Which raises two core questions for US policy: First, what are the "use of force" and the "threat of force" and what, exactly, is Taiwan's status, as far as the US is concerned? And second, what is the US going to do if either side does something the US "does not support?"
The fact is that Washington has no answers to these core questions -- either publicly or in confidential policy documents circulated among decisionmakers. Hence, Washington's political leaders should not be surprised when Washington's Delphic pronouncements are interpreted arbitrarily in both Beijing and Taipei.
Actually, Beijing just ignores Washington. In 2003, the Chinese People's Liberation Army deployed 350 ballistic missiles targeted on Taiwan, and by February last year there were more than 700. In March 2005, Beijing's "legislature" passed a law giving the Central Military Commission the authority to launch a military strike against Taiwan whenever it feels like it. And there was little or no public comment from Washington.
On Feb. 27 last year, US State Department spokesman Adam Ereli was asked, apropos of something Chen had said a day earlier, "Do you think Chen Shui-bian's move is a change of the status quo, and what is the US definition of the status quo?" Ereli tried to turn the question around: "President Chen has said that he is committed to the status quo and that he is committed to the pledges in his inaugural speech." But the questions persisted: "I just want to get this right. So you don't consider this as a change of status quo?" To which the cornered Ereli could only admit: "You know, I'm not going to define it further than I already have." Needless to say, he hadn't defined it at all. Chen himself might therefore be excused if he doesn't quite have a clear picture of the status quo -- as Washington defines it.
The US Defense Department is a bit clearer on the concept. On March 16 last year, US Assistant Secretary of Defense Peter Rodman observed that, in his opinion, "When there are zero ballistic missiles opposite the Taiwan Strait, and a few years later there are 700, that's a change in the status quo." But the Pentagon doesn't make Taiwan policy, the State Department does, and therein lies the rub.
Rather than being reactive to changes in the status quo in the Taiwan Strait, Washington needs a proactive policy that pre-empts such "changes" or sanctions them when the changes become too extreme. This is far more important in managing Chinese attacks on what might be called the "real status quo" than Taiwan's desperate efforts to articulate the state that actually exists. It would therefore be a useful exercise, before trying to react to some change in the status quo, for Bush's National Security Council to actually define "the status quo as we define it," -- even in a classified document if that is really needed.
What follows are some specific pre-emptive countermeasures that would signal our increasing pressure on China and Taiwan:
The White House should clearly state that the 1,000-plus missiles facing Taiwan are provocative. Imagine that these missiles were arrayed by Iran against Israel or North Korea against Japan -- 1,000 Chinese missiles aimed at Taiwan should be no less alarming. Washington must not allow itself to be a hostage to these weapons.
If Washington cannot convince China to dismantle these missiles, which have indeed changed the status quo and are not of a defensive nature, then the US administration should consider adopting late US president Ronald Reagan's "Zero Option" response to the Soviet "intermediate nuclear force" in Europe. Reagan and then British prime minister Margaret Thatcher gained support for the deployment of Pershing II missiles in West Germany as a strategic response to Soviet deployments of SS-20 missiles in Eastern Europe.
This would mean supporting Taiwan's development of ballistic or cruise missiles capable of hitting Chinese targets in an effort to augment the negligible deterrent value (despite their significant defensive value) of Taiwan's anti-ballistic missile defense systems.
The White House should also reaffirm Reagan's so-called "six assurances" of July 14, 1982, that the US would neither seek to mediate between the People's Republic of China (PRC) and Taiwan, nor "exert pressure on Taiwan to come to the bargaining table." Of course, the US is also committed to make available defensive arms and defensive services to Taipei to help Taiwan meet its self-defense needs. The US does, after all, "believe a secure and self-confident Taiwan is a Taiwan that is more capable of engaging in political interaction and dialogue with the PRC."
It is vital that the US administration, and particularly Bush and his successors, sympathize with the existential challenge facing Taiwan, rather than harangue the nation's leaders about Washington's precious, yet undefined "status quo."
The one thing that Taiwan's democratically elected leaders at either end of the political blue-green spectrum simply cannot, and will not, do is to compromise the legitimacy of the Republic of China's governance. Sovereignty over Taiwan, they insist, belongs solely to the people of Taiwan, and in no way to the "sole legal government of China" in Beijing.
The US government must also understand that so long as Taiwan refuses to accept Beijing's sovereignty, Beijing's long-term strategy will be to isolate Taiwan in the international community to the most extreme extent possible.
Thus, when China gets obstreperous on the Taiwan issue, White House and Cabinet spokespersons should publicly articulate the common-sense stance that "the United States does not recognize or accept that China has any right whatsoever under international law to use or threaten the use of force against democratic Taiwan." (This has the advantage of actually being US policy, but it has never been stated in public.)
In background to journalists and reporters, US "senior officials" could explain that even a Taiwanese declaration of independence would just be "words on paper" and would not change any country's behavior or affect China's security posture? This wording would make it clear that the US does not now recognize, and never has recognized, China's territorial claims to Taiwan.
Finally, a diplomatic deal might be struck with the "elected leaders of Taiwan" that they would refrain from verbal challenges to the so-called status quo in the Strait in return for authoritative US expressions of support like those described above.
Without a formal and detailed definition of "the status quo as we define it," Washington simply cedes the terms of the debate to Beijing and Taipei while US diplomats are left to flounder around reactively as tensions heighten. That is a recipe for a catastrophe.
The term status quo means "the state in which [anything is]"; existing conditions; unchanged position. (Harper Dictionary of Foreign Terms, Third Edition.)
John Tkacik, Jr. is senior research fellow of the Heritage Foundation.
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