CEP0003 [08/26/99 14:09:12] CP5K6003.CEP
08-26-99
US MUST MAKE POLICY TOWARD TAIWAN CLEAR: EDITORIAL
Washington, Aug. 25 (CNA) It is a lesson and warning from
the Ronald Reagan years that Washington needs to make it clear to
Beijing that any violence against Taiwan would be met not with
diplomatic indulgence, but military force, a leading American
newspaper said editorially Wednesday.
"When it comes to preserving peace, grave concern is no
substitute for the Seventh Fleet," said the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
in its editorial titled "Chinese Puzzle: What would Ronald Reagan
do?"
It said that uncertain about what to do about the two Chinas
except to keep insisting on the fiction that there is only one, the
United States' diplomatic establishment is in its usual dither. That
is, it's following Secretary of State Madeleine Albright's wobbly
lead, and she is giving off conflicting signals like a traffic light
stuck on red, yellow and green.
Not since Dean Acheson put South Korea outside the American
"defensive perimeter" has the State Department given a potential
aggressor so clear an invitation. And the Pentagon has done its part
by calling off a military mission to Taiwan. It, too, seems resolved
to be irresolute. Various other American officials, civil and
military, have joined the confused chorus, attacking Taiwan's leaders
on and off the record as if they were the ones fomenting war. No
wonder the Communists on the mainland talk openly of using military
force against "the last redoubt of Chinese freedom," noted the
newspaper.
The editorial said that Washington's policy is to have no policy,
hoping that the generous amounts of verbal fog will keep the peace.
Here is today's equivocation: The United States would clearly view an
attack on Taiwan as a matter of "grave concern," while Washington
just as clearly disapproves of Taiwan's acting like a free country
or, far worse, talking like one. Which is what Taiwan's president has
been doing, and the Clinton administration is not about to forgive
him for it.
Trade replaced freedom as the lodestar of American foreign policy
in Asia sometime during the Bush administration. But not until now
has an American administration begun to "treat any talk of freedom
and independence from the other China, our old ally, as grounds for
abandonment," the newspaper pointed out.
The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette continued that it's not so much
that Washington's policy invites war, rather its lack of a policy
does. No one is quite sure what Washington would do if China fired a
few missiles over Taiwan as it has done before, or blockaded the
island's ports, or just occupied a smaller island or Quemoy and
Matsu. Once upon a time in the 1950s, such overt acts of aggression
would have been recognized for what they were. Now they might merit
only a polite protest. Which may be why Beijing is tempted to bite
off what it can.
Back in 1980, the newspaper said, it wasn't the president of
Taiwan who was asking that his island nation be treated as a state of
its own, but an American presidential candidate with a way of putting
things plain. Ronald Reagan's statements may have deterred the
aggressor, but they disturbed the kind of politicians who make a
career of ambiguity. So it was only natural for Mr. Reagan to mention
in his offhand way that, in his administration, Taiwan would have an
official relationship with the United States.
Immediately, his running mate, the experienced and sophisticated
George Bush, stepped in to explain that of course Mr. Reagan hadn't
meant what he'd said. "But of course he had, and Beijing got the
message. Or at least it behaved itself once Ronald Reagan became the
next president of the United States," according to the editorial.
The newspaper said that there is much to be said for giving
aggressors clear notice that they will be treated as aggressors,
rather than poor, misunderstood nations who only want to take over
their immediate neighbors. "Calling aggression by its right name may
prevent it. Going wobbly may only encourage it," stressed the
editorial.
(By Nelson Chung)
ENDITEM/rm
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