Secretary of State Colin Powell astonished observers in both East Asia and the United States last week with extraordinarily candid comments on the Taiwan issue. His statements moved U.S. policy closer than ever before to Beijing's position that Taiwan must reunify with the mainland - an especially surprising step coming from a conservative Republican administration.
In an interview on CNN International during his trip to East Asia, Powell explicitly embraced the goal of eventual reunification, which, he said, "all parties are seeking." His statement ignores the wishes of millions of Taiwanese who have no interest in reunification and regard the island as a separate society and independent state. Moreover, never before had Washington taken a public stand on the reunification issue.
Powell offered even more startlingly pro-Beijing comments in an interview with Hong Kong's Phoenix Television. He stressed that Washington had made it clear to all parties "that the United States does not support independence for Taiwan. It would be inconsistent with our One China Policy." He then made that point even more explicit, "There is only one China. Taiwan is not independent. It does not enjoy sovereignty as a nation." Lest anyone still miss the point, he added, "Independence movements or those who speak out for independence movements in Taiwan will find no support from the United States."
Predictably, the People's Republic of China is quite pleased with Powell's rejection of any possible outcome other than reunification. Just as predictably, the Taiwanese government regards his comments as a betrayal.
It is breathtaking how far the Bush administration has moved from its early stance on the Taiwan issue. During the 2000 presidential campaign, George W. Bush and his advisers criticized the Clinton administration for being too favorable to mainland China's position. Then, in a television interview on April 25, 2001, President Bush appeared to discard the nuances and caveats about protecting Taiwan that previous administrations had adopted. When asked by ABC News reporter Charles Gibson if the United States had an obligation to defend Taiwan, the president replied, "Yes, we do, and the Chinese must understand that." Would the United States respond "with the full force of the American military?" Gibson pressed. "Whatever it took to help Taiwan defend herself," Bush replied. A few weeks after that statement, Bush approved the largest arms sales package to Taiwan since his father's controversial sale of F-16 fighters in 1992.
It wasn't just the firmness of the commitment to defend Taiwan that marked the administration's policy, however. In marked contrast to the attitude of the Clinton administration, "stopover" visits by Taiwanese President Chen Shui-bian and other officials were welcomed. Such stopovers often included public appearances and meetings with Washington's apparent blessing, even as Beijing seethed. At one point in 2002, Taiwan's defense minister met "informally" with Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz during a security conference put on by a think tank in Florida. That was the highest-level meeting between U.S. and Taiwanese officials in more than two decades.
But then came a shift in the administration's attitude - a change that presaged Powell's even more emphatic actions. A crucial episode occurred during a visit by Chinese Prime Minister Wen Jiabao in December 2003. With Wen at his side, President Bush stated that the United States opposed "any unilateral decision by either China or Taiwan to change the status quo." Making it clear that his warning was directed primarily against Taipei rather than Beijing, he added that "the comments and actions made by the leader of Taiwan indicate that he may be willing to make decisions unilaterally, to change the status quo, which we oppose."
What accounts for the dramatic change in the Bush administration's policy? It appears that the administration believes that the United States needs China's help on an array of important issues. The desire for Beijing's assistance against Islamic radical groups is one significant area. But the need for China's cooperation on the North Korean nuclear issue is probably the most important factor. U.S. leaders believe that China may be the only power that can induce Kim Jong-il's erratic regime to give up its quest for nuclear weapons. Washington knows that Beijing's help will notcome for free, and that a change in U.S. policy on Taiwan appears to be the price that Chinese officials are demanding. The Bush administration apparently is ready to pay that price.
Washington's new, pro-Beijing tilt - especially Powell's comments - could lead to some unfortunate results. Not only will the U.S. attitude demoralize the Taiwanese, it also could send dangerous signals to the mainland. China has already deployed more than 600 missiles across the strait from Taiwan, and has engaged in saber rattling on more than a few occasions in recent years. Chinese officials may now believe that they have a green light from the United States to ratchet up the pressure on Taiwan for early talks on reunification.
That might not be so dangerous if the shift in U.S. policy included an elimination of the commitment to defend Taiwan from attack. But for all the recent changes in Washington's position, that ultimate move in the name of realpolitik has not been taken. The result is a muddled policy that creates the perfect environment for potentially lethal miscalculations. Powell's comments were morally dubious and strategically unwise.
Ted Galen Carpenter, vice president for defense and foreign policy studies at the Cato Institute, is the author or editor of 16 books on international affairs. His latest book, "The Coming War with China over Taiwan: Inevitable or Avoidable?" is forthcoming from Palgrave/Macmillan. - Ed.
Bush’s reelection means a major confrontation with China, Asia.
"Both history and practices of 'the myth of empires' have demonstrated that the pre-emptive strategy will bring the Bush administration an outcome that it is most unwilling to see, that is, absolute insecurity of the 'American Empire' and its demise because of expansion it cannot cope with," Qian said.
Damn politics, let's dance By Pepe Escobar
November 4, 2004
Forget Ohio. Forget the mathematics. Forget all the lawyers. By any measure, in terms of direct - not indirect, Electoral College democracy - George W Bush has won this referendum. A president who was never above a 50% approval rate in the past few months, who lost all three debates with challenger Senator John Kerry, but now has a majority of almost 4 million in the popular vote, has in fact won the referendum on himself.
Fasten your seat belts: it's going to be a bumpy ride. Control of the presidency, Senate, House. A popular mandate. Four more years. Possibly four more wars. In a nutshell, chief strategist Karl Rove got the evangelicals out in force. According to a series of Gallup polls, 42% of Americans declare themselves evangelicals or born-again Christians. Bush always had a head start of 42%.
The widely sung-and-danced-to youth vote never materialized. The 18-to-29 generation voted in exactly the same numbers as in 2000: first-time voters - a pro-Kerry majority, worried about the economy and the war on Iraq - were only 10% of the electorate. The 30-to-44 group was even more scarce. So much for great expectations. An army of Democrats, an army of pollsters and even a few Republicans made fools of themselves. The youth vote meant, in essence, "damn politics, let's dance".
The exit polls were all horribly wrong. The blogosphere was basically calling a Kerry victory as soon as the polls closed. A Harris poll was also predicting Kerry. The exits had Kerry leading Bush among men by 51%-49%, and among women by 53%-47%. The final exits for Ohio had Kerry winning 52%-48%. Blogger Kevin Drum was saying that "in a way it's the ultimate in navel gazing. The bloggers all read the media and the media call bloggers to find out what they're reading."
Then the blogosphere went dead for an hour, an hour and a half, two hours - as if the virtual world was trying to absorb the avalanche of red states and the news from Florida and the nail-biting Ohio crawl. There was widespread talk that the Republicans were trying everything to steal the election in the courts, trying to get the courts to stop voting while people were already in line when the polls closed, trying for a ruling against provisional ballots.
Desperate Democrats started spinning that provisional ballots in Ohio would decide everything. It would take at least 11 days, according to the Ohio state secretary. All this while Bush's lead in Ohio was increasing.
PNAC's program The United States may have gone to the polls as a divided, uncertain, paralyzed-by-fear nation. Today it's still a divided, uncertain, paralyzed-by-fear nation, but now with a clear mandate for the state really to rock the geopolitical boat.
The "most important election of a lifetime" has sent a clear message to the whole world: the face of America in the next four years - barring a Richard Nixon-style impeachment - will be of unilateralism, the "war on terror" possibly progressively escalating into a clash of civilizations. And pay attention to the "axis of evil" hit list - the official and the bootleg. Bush II will attack what it defines as "state terrorism" - Iran, Syria - instead of the global jihadi network. It will continue to rely on Pakistan to "decapitate" the odd "high-value al-Qaeda". It won't engage in diplomacy to address the political causes of terrorism. It won't engage in a cultural and ideological effort to try to counteract the global jihad - especially now that Osama bin Laden and his deputy Ayman al-Zawahiri have changed the rules of the asymmetrical game from a religious clash to a political struggle against imperialism.
Total concentration of right-wing power - legitimized by the popular vote: this is the new neo-conservative dream turned reality. So the road ahead is to flatten the Sunni stronghold of Fallujah in Iraq, bomb Iran because of its supposed nuclear aspirations, depose President Hafez Assad in Syria, crush the Palestinian resistance, and remodel the Middle East by "precision strike" democracy.
There will be serious blowback. A new pan-Islamic nationalism, for example, featuring Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani's Shi'ite masses allied with the Sunni triangle to kick out the Americans from Iraq, eventually supported by both Iran and Saudi Arabia. Iraq crisscrossed by guerrillas and Iran penetrated by US intelligence, both leading - plus Shi'ite eastern Saudi Arabia, where the oil is - to a new, catastrophic oil shock.
And then the neo-conservative Project for the New American Century (PNAC) - which virtually took over the US government - will create a major confrontation with China. Asia, beware.
The faith-based, apocalyptic evangelicals have won this battle against the "reality community". Bush won despite Tora Bora, Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib. The crusade continues. In God we trust - and also in Osama bin Laden. He got exactly what he wanted.
(Copyright 2004 Asia Times Online Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact content@atimes.com for information on our sales and syndication policies.)
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