US Deputy Secretary of State James Steinberg, a pro-China diplomat with little sympathy for Taiwan, has resigned and will return to academia.
He is to be replaced by William Burns, a Middle East expert who is currently undersecretary for political affairs and the department’s third-ranking official.
The move is unlikely to have an immediate impact on US-Taiwan relations at a time when Washington is preoccupied with developments in the Arab world.
Announcing Steinberg’s departure on Wednesday, US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said: “Jim has been particularly instrumental in shaping our renewed engagement in the Asia-Pacific.”
“From managing our expanding relationship with China, to reaffirming our historic alliance with Japan, to addressing challenges on the Korean Peninsula, Jim has been at the center of shaping our efforts,” she said.
Clinton said Steinberg had been a “fixture” at meetings with the National Security Council (NSC) and frequently represented the US State Department at the White House.
Insiders said Steinberg has been at least partly responsible for US President Barack Obama’s decision to put Taiwan’s request to buy advanced F-16 aircraft on the backburner. He is said to have argued in private that F-16 sales to Taiwan would not result in enough benefits to justify upsetting Beijing.
US-Taiwan Business Council president Rupert Hammond-Chambers said US decisions regarding Taiwan were made collectively through an interagency process, coordinated by the NSC.
“That said, Steinberg did have the power to say no. It was a power he exercised reflexively when it came to Taiwan,” he said.
“I believe his actions spoke volumes for his view of Taiwan and the issues he believed it created for the US-China relationship. We can only hope that his successor takes a more balanced view of American interests on Taiwan and injects some badly needed ambition into our goals for US-Taiwan relations,” he said.
“I’m hopeful that a reassessment of our Taiwan policy will accompany the change,” said Walter Lohman, director of Asian studies at the Washington-based Heritage Foundation.
“US-Taiwan relations right now are going nowhere. Steinberg was a well-known advocate for closer relations with China and I think that tendency was undermining movement in US-Taiwan relations,” Lohman said.
Steinberg is leaving the State Department to become dean of Syracuse University’s Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs in New York State. Prior to serving as deputy secretary of state, he was dean of the University of Texas’ Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs.
An article on the New York Times Web site said Steinberg’s departure had been rumored for some time and that he “never became close to Mrs Clinton, despite having served as deputy national security adviser to her husband.”
Burns, the highest-ranking career diplomat in the department, has been deeply involved in policies concerning Iran and its nuclear program and the upheaval in the Arab world.
“He will bring incomparable depth and experience to the job, as well as important continuity,” Clinton said.
Steinberg will be remembered for his “strategic reassurance” policies toward Beijing.
Analyzing these policies in the Wall Street Journal, Kelley Currie, a nonresident fellow at the Project 2049 Institute, wrote: “There is a chance that the US is starting a quiet but important strategic shift away from a policy that incorporates an understood, if often inchoate, desire to see China become a more liberal and democratic society, toward an acceptance of China as a permanent authoritarian state.”
Gerrit van der Wees, editor of the Washington-based Taiwan Communique, said Steinberg was “too soft on China.”
“On Taiwan, Steinberg regrettably clung too much to old ‘one China’ policy mantras and was not able to engage the US in more creative thinking and action in support of Taiwan’s democracy and international space. He also was overly cautious on US arms sales to Taiwan,” he said.
What happens next, Van der Wees told the Taipei Times, depends on how responsibilities are shifted within the State Department.
Van der Wees expects US Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs Kurt Campbell to take a more prominent role, “which is a good thing, because he has an excellent grasp of the policies needed to balance out China’s rise and retain US influence in East Asia.”
‘DENIAL DEFENSE’: The US would increase its military presence with uncrewed ships, and submarines, while boosting defense in the Indo-Pacific, a Pete Hegseth memo said The US is reorienting its military strategy to focus primarily on deterring a potential Chinese invasion of Taiwan, a memo signed by US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth showed. The memo also called on Taiwan to increase its defense spending. The document, known as the “Interim National Defense Strategic Guidance,” was distributed this month and detailed the national defense plans of US President Donald Trump’s administration, an article in the Washington Post said on Saturday. It outlines how the US can prepare for a potential war with China and defend itself from threats in the “near abroad,” including Greenland and the Panama
The High Prosecutors’ Office yesterday withdrew an appeal against the acquittal of a former bank manager 22 years after his death, marking Taiwan’s first instance of prosecutors rendering posthumous justice to a wrongfully convicted defendant. Chu Ching-en (諸慶恩) — formerly a manager at the Taipei branch of BNP Paribas — was in 1999 accused by Weng Mao-chung (翁茂鍾), then-president of Chia Her Industrial Co, of forging a request for a fixed deposit of US$10 million by I-Hwa Industrial Co, a subsidiary of Chia Her, which was used as collateral. Chu was ruled not guilty in the first trial, but was found guilty
A wild live dugong was found in Taiwan for the first time in 88 years, after it was accidentally caught by a fisher’s net on Tuesday in Yilan County’s Fenniaolin (粉鳥林). This is the first sighting of the species in Taiwan since 1937, having already been considered “extinct” in the country and considered as “vulnerable” by the International Union for Conservation of Nature. A fisher surnamed Chen (陳) went to Fenniaolin to collect the fish in his netting, but instead caught a 3m long, 500kg dugong. The fisher released the animal back into the wild, not realizing it was an endangered species at
DEADLOCK: As the commission is unable to forum a quorum to review license renewal applications, the channel operators are not at fault and can air past their license date The National Communications Commission (NCC) yesterday said that the Public Television Service (PTS) and 36 other television and radio broadcasters could continue airing, despite the commission’s inability to meet a quorum to review their license renewal applications. The licenses of PTS and the other channels are set to expire between this month and June. The National Communications Commission Organization Act (國家通訊傳播委員會組織法) stipulates that the commission must meet the mandated quorum of four to hold a valid meeting. The seven-member commission currently has only three commissioners. “We have informed the channel operators of the progress we have made in reviewing their license renewal applications, and
RSS