[If the Biden administration opts to deliver Taiwan and
its 24 million free people to China then the US is finished as an Asian power]
But they’ve also got a keen sense
of danger and that’s not surprising since for the last 70 years the Chinese
communists – only 90 miles away across the Taiwan Strait – have threatened to
seize the self-governing island. And now the People’s Liberation Army just
might be able to do it.
Last year this writer was in
Taipei and puzzling over a street map outside a subway station. A young
Taiwanese woman asked if she could help. Since my destination wasn’t far she
offered to take me there. After setting off, the woman asked where I was
from?
“America.” Her reply:
“Please don’t let us become part of China.”
I mumbled that we would do our
best. But I didn’t have the heart to tell her that US officials of all stripes
had been trying to deliver Taiwan unto the PRC for many years. And only
Donald Trump’s surprise election in 2016 – and the presence of some key
advisors who understood Taiwan’s value – put the brakes on the handoff.
Remove Trump and bring back the
former crowd and support for Taiwan becomes far less certain. That’s not
unthinkable under President-elect Joe Biden.
In 2019, a small group of
American “thought leaders” and China experts reflecting pre-Trump status quo
thinking came through Taipei. They addressed a group of Taiwanese officials and
analysts at a government-affiliated defense think tank. The subject: Taiwan-China
relations.
One of the visitors noted without
any apparent sense of irony said that: ‘The PRC treats Taiwan better when the
US and China are getting along well.” In other words, when America is
accommodating or appeasing Beijing, the Chinese relax their grip on Taiwan.
Whether it is better to be
strangled slowly or quickly is perhaps open for debate. Another key takeaway:
“China is big, so Taiwan should cut the best deal it can.”
As for the notion that support
for Taiwan has overwhelming bipartisan support in the US House of
Representatives and Senate, the visitors pointed out that congressional calls
for more support for Taiwan – such as bilateral training as stated in National
Defense Authorization Acts since at least 2016 – are just the “sense of the
Congress.”
In other words, the State
Department, the Defense Department and even the White House are not required to
actually do anything. So pay no attention to those starry-eyed people on
Capitol Hill. They don’t understand nuanced “realpolitik” and how to
manage the PRC.
As for you, Taiwan, don’t get
your hopes up when Congress speaks. Judging from the audience’s muted reaction,
the Taiwanese are not only the world’s most cheerful people, they are also the
world’s most polite people.
At another earlier think
tank meeting with a different group of Asian affairs luminaries, mainly Democrats’
displaced by Donald Trump’s surprise victory, this writer asked what more the
US should do to bolster Taiwan, beyond what the Barack Obama administration had
done? The reply: a somewhat dumfounded “things are fine as they are.”
On that trend line Taiwan was
finished, and the audience knew it.
Biden and his team’s Taiwan
policy is uncertain. That’s not so surprising. When any new administration is
in the wings, the clipped foreign policy statements on any number of topics
don’t reveal much.
Figuring them out is sort of like
divining meaning from a Hallmark greeting card message. So far they
neither encourage the Taiwanese nor discourage the Chinese.
But most of the candidates for
Biden’s foreign, defense and Asia policy positions do have track records, and
some have held government positions before. It is difficult to ascertain who on
the roster frightens Beijing.
When the Chinese start
howling, threatening and pounding on the table it takes a certain type of
person to handle it.
And such people are
rare in any administration – Democrat or Republican. The instinctive
response is to give the Chinese concessions just to calm them down. That never
works, as the process inevitably repeats itself.
A semester abroad in Paris and an
MA (or even a PhD) in international relations, or having been a deputy
assistant of such-and-such by itself means little.
One experienced veteran of US
government Asian affairs battles commented after reviewing the candidate list:
“If we have these people’s
number, so too, do the Chinese. Putting them out against a team led by Yang
Jiechi [China’s highest-ranking diplomat] is like putting a middle school
basketball team on the court against the Lakers.”
It is easy to be pessimistic, but
one should be hopeful. No administration or political party has ever cornered
the market on good people. Nor cornered the market on boneheaded people.
There are good people around if
Biden is smart enough to employ them. And sometimes those who have not
previously produced much of note will perform better in different
circumstances. Of course, sometimes they just fail once again.
But ultimately it is the guy at
the top – the President – who sets the direction. If his inclinations and
priorities call for a softer approach towards the PRC, or if he prefers or is
forced to prioritize domestic matters, then that is what US foreign policy will
be.
If that’s the case, it doesn’t
matter how many secretaries, assistant secretaries, deputy assistant
secretaries, representatives and senators want to stand up for Taiwan or claim
to be able to sink all Chinese ships in the South China Sea in 72 hours.
The Taiwanese pretty much knew
where President Trump stood. And they appreciated it. They won’t say it
now, but they worry a Biden administration may once again consider Taiwan as
the dispensable irritant in the larger US-China relationship.
Biden has the chance to prove
them wrong. And the stakes are high. Let Taiwan and its 24 million free people
go under and the US is finished as an Asian power.
So what would I tell the young
woman who helped me out in Taipei should I run into her again? “Little sister,
I’m sorry, we’ll know before long. We did at least try.”
Grant Newsham, a retired US
Marine Corps officer and former US diplomat, currently is a senior research
fellow at the Japan Forum for Strategic Studies and the Center for
Security Policy.
