National Review Online
Tuesday, December 06, 2016
Last week, Donald Trump took a phone call with Taiwanese
president Tsai Ing-wen. Cross-strait relations being what they are (fragile),
and Donald Trump’s foreign-policy vision being what it is (opaque), the
prevailing reaction was one of horror. Senator Chris Murphy (D., Conn.), taking
a break from scaremongering about the NRA, tweeted that Trump’s “radical
temporary deviation” from precedent — no American and Taiwanese head of state
have spoken since 1979 — was “how wars start,” studiously ignoring that Donald
Trump is not as of yet commander-in-chief. But such details were largely beside
the point. Indeed, one would have been hard-pressed not to detect a bit of glee
among Trump’s left-wing critics, excited to see governance-by-tweet apparently
proven calamitous so quickly.
But rumors of apocalypse were overstated. Beijing’s
response, besides requesting that the U.S. not let President Tsai pass through
the U.S. in January on her way to Guatemala, has been muted. That is to be
expected. China has more to lose than to gain from an overreaction. For Donald
Trump’s domestic critics, though, the opposite tends to be true.
It is a telling comment on America’s political Left that
they have reacted more strongly to Donald Trump’s potentially “undiplomatic”
phone call to the head of a vibrant democracy than to the regime in Beijing
trying to crush that democracy. Visitors to Taiwan will find a fairly elected
president, a vigorous legislature, an open press, religious freedom, the
fifth-largest economy in Asia, and a unique culture that straddles East and
West. A little over 100 miles to the west, visitors will find a one-party
dictatorship, directly descended from the terrors of Chairman Mao, that
“disappears” political dissidents and harvests the organs of Falun Gong
adherents.
But the latter claims sovereignty over the former.
According to the government in Beijing, Taiwan does not have a “president” or a
“legislature.” China has never recognized Taiwan’s independence, and still
harbors hopes of bringing the island back under Beijing’s rule, under the
auspices of its specious “One China” philosophy (to which we have long been
opposed; historically, the PRC ought to be considered a province of Taiwan,
whose government predates the Communists by nearly four decades). To this end,
China exercises significant economic pressure to keep Taiwan dependent on
Chinese markets; it exercises diplomatic pressure to keep Taiwan from participation
in international bodies such as the United Nations (where even the Palestinian
Liberation Organization has observer status); and, if worse comes to worst, it
is prepared to deploy the 1,500 short-range ballistic missiles currently
pointed at Taiwan. It turns out that, the week before Trump’s phone call, two
nuclear-capable Chinese bombers encircled Taiwan during a long-range
surveillance mission.
In 1979, the United States cut off Taiwan, opting to
recognize the Communists in Beijing as the sole legitimate rulers of China.
Taiwan was muscled out of the international community, and reduced to
engagement under the banner of political fictions such as “Chinese Taipei.”
Poking at this artificial consensus hardly qualifies as an egregious faux pas.
Far more scandalous is clinging to the foreign-policy decisions of prior
administrations simply because they are precedent.
American involvement in cross-strait relations should be
handled delicately, and with a clear end in mind. There is no room for needless
or thoughtless provocation, and conservatives should demand that needling our
foes be part of a larger, coherent policy. It remains unclear whether that’s
the case here. Nonetheless, it is obvious that a free Taiwan — and, ultimately,
a free mainland China — are in America’s best interests, and if followed up
with care, Donald Trump’s phone call could be an opportunity to modestly
advance those goals.
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