Q: Will President Bush's stance on Taiwan undermine democracy in East Asia? No: Bush rightly rebuked Taiwan for recklessly tilting toward independence

0 Comments | Insight on the News, Jan 19, 2004

Byline: Alan D. Romberg, SPECIAL TO INSIGHT

One might wish he hadn't done it with the Chinese premier at his side. But President George W. Bush's public rebuke of Taiwan's president, Chen Shui-bian, was the product of Chen's failure to consult ahead of time or respond afterward to quiet efforts to cool his rhetoric and actions that threatened to raise tensions in the Taiwan Strait, endangering not only U.S. strategic national interests but democracy and prosperity in Taiwan and throughout the region.

The United States has sacrificed a great deal to promote democracy and freedom in Asia. Americans attach great importance to the right of people, including the people of Taiwan, to determine their own future. But democracy is not a license for reckless behavior, and self-determination is not automatically defined as formal independence.

The spread of democratic systems and market economies throughout Asia has depended on the U.S. role in preserving peace and stability, importantly aided since 1972 by the dramatic improvement in U.S.-People's Republic of China (PRC) relations. Normalization of those relations helped provide the political space to transform Taiwan from a repressive, authoritarian society into the open and dynamic place so widely admired today.

Since the 1970s the United States has "acknowledged," but not accepted, the PRC's claim that there is "one China" of which Taiwan is a part and agreed to forgo steps challenging that proposition. But it also has insisted on Beijing's continued peaceful approach to resolving cross-Taiwan Strait issues. And for most of this period, tensions have been low as Taiwan has blossomed.

It only is when Taiwan's leaders have pressed the envelope toward separatism that Beijing has raised the specter of deadlines and use of force. China's principal objective today is to prevent ineluctable movement toward formal independence, not to force near-term reunification. But independence is where it sees Chen heading, and China believes it may be forced to act unless the United States is able to stop this trend.

During the 2000 presidential campaign, though attempting to distance himself from Bill Clinton's policies, Bush was an outspoken proponent of the "one-China" policy, publicly calling on Taipei to understand its benefits for Taiwan's 23 million people. And during the first year of his administration, as he sought to develop more constructive relations with Beijing following a rocky start, Bush increasingly inveighed against provocation from either side across the Taiwan Strait.

Now, in a tight struggle for re-election next March, Chen has seized on various "referenda" proposals to burnish his democratic and "Taiwanese" credentials while claiming not to provoke the mainland over Taiwan's status. The United States has backed his democratic right to conduct referenda but questioned his judgment about what constitutes provocation. Beyond Chen's get-out-the-vote proposal for a referendum on election day on "observer" status for Taiwan in the World Health Assembly (a quest if not a referendum the United States supports), he has proposed an entirely new constitution to be approved not through existing amendment procedures but also through a referendum. Although there is ample reason significantly to revise a document designed in a vastly different context (in China in 1947), this comes across to many as a blatant ploy through omission rather than commission to put in place a new basic law defining Taiwan as a sovereign independent entity unconnected to China by omitting the current constitution's reference to the mainland.

Any move that would formally sever that connection would be against the long-standing U.S. policy to oppose unilateral attempts by either side of the Strait to change the status quo. (The United States would not oppose "Taiwan independence" in principle if consensually agreed to between the two sides. But because the United States might join any cross-Strait military conflict, potentially entering combat against another nuclear power for the first time in history, Americans feel that they have standing to oppose unilateral, provocative steps to alter the status quo that could precipitate such conflict.)

When Taiwan's legislature, controlled by Chen's political opponents, recently passed a "referendum law" depriving the president of the right to initiate referenda thus eviscerating Chen's proposed referendum plan it left a loophole. The president could call a referendum if "a change in national sovereignty" were threatened from abroad. Chen seized on this to call for a "defensive referendum" to allow the people of Taiwan to express their opposition to the PRC's deployment of nearly 500 missiles opposite Taiwan.

Posing such a question does not readily suggest a bold bid to change Taiwan's current status. And there is no question the missiles are designed to constrain Taiwan's options. Moreover, Beijing needs to do more not just to reduce the sense of threat to the island but to demonstrate flexibility on Taiwan's appropriate international role short of that of a sovereign state.