Kurt Campbell, an Asia scholar with a strong record on Taiwan, has been nominated US assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific affairs.
The position is a high-profile job of enormous importance to Taipei. If he is confirmed by the Senate, Campbell will become a major figure in the administration of US President Barack Obama, proposing and structuring policies that directly affect Taiwan.
Campbell is believed to favor the launching of a new Taiwan Policy Review that may get under way this spring.
He is close to US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and was her chief adviser on Asian affairs during her campaign for the presidency last year.
She has been pushing for his nomination since January, but it was held up by what White House sources have described as “a few hiccups” in the exhaustive vetting process and by the reservations of a presidential political adviser, who wanted someone who supported Obama during the Democratic primaries.
In an article he wrote for the Taipei Times in October 2007, Campbell appeared to support the sale of F-16 fighter aircraft to Taiwan.
Referring to the administration of former president George W. Bush, he said: “There is the possibility that the US has quietly decided not to risk China's ire with a decision to sell the fighter planes that Taiwan so clearly needs for its defense, given the manifest increase in the Chinese military's capabilities.”
“By delaying this decision at the outset rather than simply treating it as a normal and perfectly reasonable request, the Bush team may have inadvertently created the context for a much bigger deal than they bargained for. In the face of China's unrelenting military buildup, and even with attention focused more on Iraq than Asia, the Bush team must soon make clear its ultimate intentions of defending Taiwan, given the growing concerns,” he wrote.
Testifying before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee last year, Campbell said: “Beijing remains uncertain about how best to manage the still-powerful independence movement in Taiwan. The issue presents an acute dilemma for China's leaders, whose individual and collective legitimacy could be undermined either by the loss of Taiwan or by the problems that would ensue from a military conflict over the island.”
“Chinese authorities perceive a realization of its fears in US efforts to promote a cooperative network of regional ballistic missile defense programs, which Beijing fears could lead to a de facto US-Australia-Japan-ROK-Taiwan collective defense alliance. This is a strategic competition that the US can only engage in effectively with an appropriate balance of renewing our soft-power efforts and rebalancing our military commitments to reassure our friends and allies and dissuade potential adversaries from taking provocative actions,” he said.
“In order for China to be compelled to act as a responsible stakeholder, it will prove increasingly important for policymakers to devise a strategy that is capable of ensuring the maintenance of American power and influence in the Asia-Pacific for the foreseeable future,” he said.
Campbell suggested that the US clarify its position on Taiwan and continue to build strong bilateral relations with Australia, India, Japan, South Korea, Indonesia and Taiwan.
“China's rise to a sustained great power status in the global arena is not preordained, nor is it necessary that the US and China will find themselves at loggerheads over Taiwan, increasing trade frictions, regional rivalry in Asia or human rights matters. The US and China are currently working together surprisingly well on a wide array of issues,” he said.
“However, so long as China's intentions and growing capabilities remain unclear, the US and other nations in the region remain wary,” he said.
A Washington-based Taiwan expert who spoke with Campbell after his nomination was announced told the Taipei Times that Campbell was very well-informed on Taiwan and had talked “in depth” with Taiwanese leaders.
He said Campbell was in favor of greater direct contact between the US and the Taiwan militaries.
Other sources said that Campbell was from the “hawkish” wing of the Democratic Party and that he would work hard to deepen the US-Japanese alliance.
Campbell is the CEO and co-founder of the Center for a New American Security and is a director of the Aspen Strategy Group. Prior to that, he was a senior vice president at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
During the administration of former US president Bill Clinton, he was deputy assistant secretary of defense for Asia and the Pacific in the Pentagon, a director on the National Security Council and White House fellow at the Treasury.
The CIA has a message for Chinese government officials worried about their place in Chinese President Xi Jinping’s (習近平) government: Come work with us. The agency released two Mandarin-language videos on social media on Thursday inviting disgruntled officials to contact the CIA. The recruitment videos posted on YouTube and X racked up more than 5 million views combined in their first day. The outreach comes as CIA Director John Ratcliffe has vowed to boost the agency’s use of intelligence from human sources and its focus on China, which has recently targeted US officials with its own espionage operations. The videos are “aimed at
STEADFAST FRIEND: The bills encourage increased Taiwan-US engagement and address China’s distortion of UN Resolution 2758 to isolate Taiwan internationally The Presidential Office yesterday thanked the US House of Representatives for unanimously passing two Taiwan-related bills highlighting its solid support for Taiwan’s democracy and global participation, and for deepening bilateral relations. One of the bills, the Taiwan Assurance Implementation Act, requires the US Department of State to periodically review its guidelines for engagement with Taiwan, and report to the US Congress on the guidelines and plans to lift self-imposed limitations on US-Taiwan engagement. The other bill is the Taiwan International Solidarity Act, which clarifies that UN Resolution 2758 does not address the issue of the representation of Taiwan or its people in
US Indo-Pacific Commander Admiral Samuel Paparo on Friday expressed concern over the rate at which China is diversifying its military exercises, the Financial Times (FT) reported on Saturday. “The rates of change on the depth and breadth of their exercises is the one non-linear effect that I’ve seen in the last year that wakes me up at night or keeps me up at night,” Paparo was quoted by FT as saying while attending the annual Sedona Forum at the McCain Institute in Arizona. Paparo also expressed concern over the speed with which China was expanding its military. While the US
SHIFT: Taiwan’s better-than-expected first-quarter GDP and signs of weakness in the US have driven global capital back to emerging markets, the central bank head said The central bank yesterday blamed market speculation for the steep rise in the local currency, and urged exporters and financial institutions to stay calm and stop panic sell-offs to avoid hurting their own profitability. The nation’s top monetary policymaker said that it would step in, if necessary, to maintain order and stability in the foreign exchange market. The remarks came as the NT dollar yesterday closed up NT$0.919 to NT$30.145 against the US dollar in Taipei trading, after rising as high as NT$29.59 in intraday trading. The local currency has surged 5.85 percent against the greenback over the past two sessions, central
RSS