How to enhance the international space for Taiwan is a complex issue that needs to be addressed by the international community. Unfortunately, it is not even on the current agenda as we are preoccupied with other issues deemed more critical to international safety and security and therefore of higher priority to policymakers.
However, it is essential that we elevate this issue to a higher level of attention and that we get it right. The main problem, of course, is that after Chiang Kai-shek (蔣介石) was expelled from China in the late 1940s and occupied Taiwan, the US continued to recognize his regime as the legal government of China, and referred to it under the “Republic of China” moniker.
In the 1960s, this position became untenable and in 1971 — with UN Resolution 2758 — the “representatives of Chiang Kai-shek” were expelled from the UN and the world body accepted the government of the People’s Republic of China in Beijing as representing China, with the US following suit in 1979.
These moves left Taiwan in limbo. However, the Taiwanese, who languished under harsh Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) rule during the decades following the end of World War II, started to push for freedom and human rights, culminating in a momentous transition to democracy in the 1990s.
Once Taiwan achieved democracy, its people increasingly started to strive for full membership in international organizations, based on such principles as self-determination, as embodied in the UN Charter.
Former president Lee Teng-hui (李登輝), in the midst of helping the transition to democracy in Taiwan, also started to push for more international recognition in international forums. Former president Chen Shui-bian’s (陳水扁) administration responded to such popular sentiment by applying for membership to organizations such as the WHO and the UN. The US Congress supported these moves and a group of some 20 smaller nations that maintain diplomatic ties with Taiwan actively spoke up in UN and WHO annual assemblies.
Now fast-forward to the present: A couple of weeks ago the US State Department sent a report to Congress supporting “meaningful participation” by Taiwan in the WHO, while just last week Representative Shelley Berkley introduced House Concurrent Resolution 266, “expressing the sense of the Congress that Taiwan should be accorded observer status in the International Civil Aviation Organization.”
While on the surface these initiatives appear laudable, the fundamental problem with this approach is that it negates — or is at best fuzzy about — Taiwan’s status as a sovereign nation and as such its right to be accepted as a full member in the international community.
This was not US policy as it unfolded from 1979 to 1998. During that period the US took no position on Taiwan’s future status. The confusion on this point started in June 1998, when then-US president Bill Clinton visited China and pronounced his controversial “Three Noes,” including a statement that there was “no support for membership in international organizations that require statehood.”
Why is this new language detrimental to Taiwan’s international position and not in keeping with US basic principles? Because it permanently consigns Taiwan to second-class “non-state” status.
The State Department WHO report reiterates the peculiar line that the US “does not support membership for Taiwan in the United Nations or its specialized agencies, including the WHO, for which statehood is a requirement for membership,” while the Berkley resolution refers to the outmoded 1994 Policy Review, which incorporated similar language.
It also violates the “neutral” position the US has traditionally taken on Taiwan’s status, which must be based on a peaceful resolution of disputes and a fully democratic decision taken by the people of Taiwan, without coercion by China or any other nation. After all, the Taiwan Relations Act specifically states: “Nothing in this Act may be construed as a basis for supporting the exclusion or expulsion of Taiwan from continued membership in any international financial institution or any other international organization.”
The present approach thus seems to be based on expediency and not on the principles the US professes to hold dear. Perhaps Benjamin Franklin said it best when he stated in 1775: “Those who would sacrifice freedom for temporary security deserve neither.”
Nat Bellocchi is a former chairman of the American Institute in Taiwan and a special adviser to the Liberty Times Group. The views expressed in this article are his own.
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