Two former US government officials shared a report in Taipei yesterday on the state of the US-Taiwan relationship. The continual drift in the relationship will harm US interests in Asia, and the state of understanding of the Taiwan issue on Capitol Hill is not well placed in Taiwan's favor, they said.
Randall Schriver, the former deputy assistant secretary of state for East Asia and Pacific under the current Bush Administration, and Dan Blumenthal, who served as the senior director for China, Taiwan and Mongolia in the Secretary of Defense Office of International Affairs under George H.W. Bush, strongly advocated that a robust US-Taiwan relation is in Washington's best interest.
Schriver is a founding partner of Armitage International consulting firm and Blumenthal works as a resident fellow in US-based conservative think tank American Enterprise Institute (AEI).
Both men are known for strongly supporting Taiwan in the US.
Their report, Strengthening Freedom in Asia: A Twenty-First Century Agenda for the US-Taiwan Partnership, suggests that Washington should not view Taiwan as a subset of US-China relations because such thinking denigrates the Taiwan issue as a mere "management problem." Issues surrounding US-Taiwan relations should have a separate agenda, the report said.
Blumenthal said yesterday the US should also see Taiwan as a responsible global citizen with potential to make further contributions to the international community, and that Washington should do more to link Taiwan to worldwide development efforts.
Even though the pundits agreed that Taiwan deserves to become a member of various world bodies, such as the WHO, they also suggested that Taiwan should seek wider international space in a "prioritized" and not "haphazard" manner.
The two also suggested that Taiwan take better advantage of its "soft power" diplomacy instead of resorting to a cash race with Beijing in wooing support from the international community.
Blumenthal recommended that Taiwan boost its bilateral relations with non-allied countries by offering training in areas such as emergency response systems, infectious disease prevention, and earthquake and disaster relief.
The report also called for the US to bolster its trade relations making the signing of a free trade agreement (FTA) with Taiwan a priority.
When asked why Washington has been hesitant to sign an FTA with Taiwan, Blumenthal said the delay is caused by a Congress that is not friendly to trade, and it should not be interpreted as a lack of interest in forging commercial ties with Taiwan.
He said that Taiwan could prove its economic readiness to become one of the US' FTA partners by unilaterally matching the conditions that South Korea has offered.
A US-South Korea FTA was signed in June of last year but has yet to become effective.
A full text of the study can be found on the AEI's Web site.
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