This article originally appeared in Asia Wall Street Journal.
January 18, 2016
The U.S. Can Play a ‘Taiwan Card’
If China won’t back down in East Asia, Washington has options that would compel Beijing’s
attention.
By John Bolton
Taiwan’s elections have returned the Democratic Progressive Party to power. Rolling over
the incumbent Kuomintang (KMT) nationalists, the DPP won both the presidency and a
legislative majority, giving it controls of both elective branches for the first time.
President-elect Tsai Ing-wen didn’t center her campaign on attacking the KMT policy of
closer relations with China, focusing instead on Taiwan’s lagging economy, but neither did
she reject the bedrock DPP platform of independence from China. Her rhetoric, including her
victory statement on Saturday, has been cautious. But her party’s base knows what it wants.
Inevitably, therefore, East Asia warning flags are up.
Of course, the U.S. will also have presidential elections in 2016, and most of the Republican
candidates are determined to replace the vacuum that exists where America’s China policy
should be. This may involve modifying or even jettisoning the ambiguous “one China” mantra,
along with even more far-reaching initiatives to counter Beijing’s rapidly accelerating political
and military aggressiveness in the South and East China seas.
Repeatedly met with passivity from Washington and impotence from the region, Beijing has
declared much of the South China Sea a Chinese province, designated a provincial capital,
and is creating not merely “facts on the ground” but the ground itself, in the form of artificial
islands on which it is constructing air and naval bases.
Predictably, China’s partisans in the West contend that Beijing’s current economic troubles
mean Xi Jinping won’t move first to provoke trouble with Ms. Tsai’s administration in Taipei.
But Beijing’s ongoing reckoning with economic reality doesn’t necessarily mean it will be less
assertive internationally. Authoritarian governments confronted with domestic problems have
historically sought to distract their citizens by rallying nationalistic support against foreign
adversaries. Who better to blame for China’s economic crash than the U.S. and pesky
Taiwan?
How Ms. Tsai would react to Mr. Xi’s provocations remains unknown. Of course China would
prefer for Taiwan to fall into its lap like a ripe fruit, with its economic infrastructure and
productivity intact, rather than to risk hostilities over the island. But in the period to come
Beijing must consider not merely a less pliant Taiwanese government, but also America’s
next president.
Beijing knows that the weak, inattentive President Barack Obama will be in office for only one
more year. Whereas even Bill Clinton ordered U.S. carrier battle groups to Taiwan’s aid in the
1996 cross-Strait crisis, few Americans today believe that Mr. Obama would do the same.
How could Beijing’s leadership not draw the same conclusion? Washington’s current
unwillingness to stand firm against Chinese belligerence in Asian waters only encourages
Beijing to act before Jan. 20, 2017, perhaps especially before Ms. Tsai is inaugurated in four
months. For now observers can only monitor East Asia’s geopolitical space, involving not just
Taiwan but also the South and East China seas, until America’s inauguration day, praying
that the Asian situation is not hopeless by then.
For a new U.S. president willing to act boldly, there are opportunities to halt and then reverse
China’s seemingly inexorable march toward hegemony in East Asia. Playing the “China card”
in the Nixon Administration made sense at the time, but the reflexive, near-addictive
adherence to pro-China policies since has become unwise and increasingly risky as Beijing’s
isolation and backwardness have diminished.
An alternative now would be to play the “Taiwan card” against China. America should insist
that China reverse its territorial acquisitiveness, including abandoning its South China Sea
bases and undoing the ecological damage its construction has caused. China is free to
continue asserting its territorial claims diplomatically, but until they are peacefully resolved
with its near neighbors, they and the U.S. are likewise free to ignore such claims in their
entirety.
If Beijing isn’t willing to back down, America has a diplomatic ladder of escalation that would
compel Beijing’s attention. The new U.S. administration could start with receiving Taiwanese
diplomats officially at the State Department; upgrading the status of U.S. representation in
Taipei from a private “institute” to an official diplomatic mission; inviting Taiwan’s president to
travel officially to America; allowing the most senior U.S. officials to visit Taiwan to transact
government business; and ultimately restoring full diplomatic recognition.
Beijing’s leaders would be appalled by this approach, as the U.S. is appalled by their
maritime territorial aggression. China must understand that creating so-called provinces risks
causing itself to lose control, perhaps forever, of another so-called province. Even were
China to act more responsibly in nearby waters, of course, Taiwan’s fate would still be for its
people to decide.
Too many foreigners continue echoing Beijing’s view that Taiwan is a problem only
resolvable by uniting the island and the mainland as “one China.” But Taiwan’s freedom isn’t
a problem. It is an inspiration. Let Beijing contemplate that fact on the ground.
Mr. Bolton, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, is the author of “Surrender Is
Not an Option: Defending America at the United Nations and Abroad” (Simon & Schuster,
2007).
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