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Iran in Latin America: Threat or Axis of Annoyance?
Senior Fellow Douglas Farah's analysis of the debate over the level of threat posed by Iran's expanding diplomatic, trade and military presence in Latin America, and its stated ambition to continue to broaden these ties.
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Back to Basics: Washington Reiterates China Policy
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Few pieces of American foreign policy are more cloudy, and intentionally so, than that with respect to Taiwan and China-but periodically the clouds are forced to open, as has happened in the last week, in response to some misguided remarks by Colin Powell, the American secretary of state.
In two interviews in Beijing on 24 October Secretary Powell seemed to indicate that Washington expected Taiwan to become part of China sooner or later. Speaking to CNN Powell stated that: "We want to see both sides not take unilateral action that would prejudice an eventual outcome, a reunification that all parties are seeking,".
Then, speaking to Hong Kong’s Phoenix TV, he repeated the words about "reunification" while elaborating on Taiwan’s current status: "There is only `one China.' Taiwan is not independent. It does not enjoy sovereignty as a nation, and that remains our policy, our firm policy."
These remarks-disquieting and totally unexpected--blindsided the Taiwanese government, which has been on the receiving end of countless strong warnings from the United States any "surprises" from its side, ever since Chen Shuibian’s first election as president more than four years ago.
Some commentators believed Powell was warning Taiwan, or signaling a shift in Washington’s hitherto neutral stance as to the future, which has insisted only on "peaceful means," not unification.
But in fact nothing had changed. It turns out that, like nearly everyone else in the world, the American secretary of state has difficulty putting into words a policy that has always relied more on winks, nods, weasel words, and meaningful silences.
In a matter of a few days, Powell had corrected himself, dropping any reference to "reunification" stating instead that what Washington sought was "really to have a peaceful resolution of the problem" between Taiwan and China. Some say that "peaceful resolution" is a term of art for "reunification"-but the words are what they are, and there is a huge difference between "resolution" and "reunification."
Other officials, in the White House and State Department further smoothed things out. US policy "had not changed."-and that included the issue of sovereignty (Washington has never recognized Chinese sovereignty over Taiwan, even when it recognized, as the government of China, the Nationalist government in Taipei).
Net effect of the opening of the clouds, then: a clear, official restatement of the long-standing American policy that any resolution of issues across the Taiwan Strait must be peaceful, and reiteration of the U.S. position that the sovereignty of Taiwan under international law remains to be determined-though, somewhat strangely, Washington does not recognize the sovereignty of Taiwan’s elected government over Taiwan either.
Add to this the two primary messages that Powell delivered in Beijing, but which was overshadowed by his verbal slips. First, the US maintained its insistence on peaceful means only and was very troubled by China’s continuing military build up against Taiwan. Second, Beijing should talk to Taipei directly, particularly now that Chen Shuibian has offered talks on the basis of the talks already held, with substantial success, in Singapore eleven years ago.
Thus did Washington skillfully defuse a potentially dangerous verbal error-for China could conceivably have misread Powell’s words as an opening to use coercion.
Getting the words right is of course fundamental in diplomacy, but as this case shows, words are not realities. This is particularly true in this case.
For Powell is a long-time Washington insider, who will have been aware of the near consensus, in the 1970s, that Taiwan would collapse and quickly come to terms with Beijing, once it lost Washington’s official support, in the process begun by President Nixon and concluded, as he imagined, by President Carter, in 1979.
Taiwan’s failure to implode, not to mention its democratization and hence legitimization of its government, has been the big surprise since those days-and, frankly, no one in policy circles quite knows what to do about it.
As Taiwan’s prime minister recently noted, that there are two countries, one on each side of the Taiwan Strait, is impossible to debate empirically. Nothing in reality supports China’s claims to Taiwan, which has its own government, and one that, being elected, has a rock solid claim to legitimacy (unlike China’s).
Within Taiwan, the two major parties debate whether this country should be called "Taiwan" or "the Republic of China" (the second reflecting the origins in China of the present government) but only a handful of people would think of Taiwan as part of the People’s Republic of China.
Nor is this situation likely to change. Having failed to collapse in 1979, a very dark time, it is unlikely to do so now that things are so much better. Nor is it likely to accept, as so many foreigners have urged, the "One Country, Two Systems" policy that China has applied to Hong Kong-with less than complete success. Meanwhile in Taiwan people are beginning more and more to think of themselves as Taiwanese rather than Chinese, not least because Beijing has proved so resistant to the idea that one could be Chinese and yet not be her subject. Profound change, no less than a shift in national consciousness and sense of identity, is under way.
Meanwhile, China finds herself impotent either to persuade Taiwan, or to intimidate her, yet for reasons of her internal politics, unable to adopt a policy of realism and pragmatism. The United States predicament is similar.
Having miscalculated in the 1970s, Washington is now faced with a situation in which its declared policy, while in many ways positive, is far from adequate to the evolving reality.
Hence the questions: how long can this peculiar and potentially dangerous situation endure? And if it is to change, how will that happen? Sadly, so much time is spent simply keeping things calm today-as we saw in the speedy corrections by the secretary of state and others-that few people have time to think about the real future.
