Taiwan's representative to the US, Chen Chien-jen (
He is the most fortunate, but also the most unfortunate, representative to the US since the two countries severed diplomatic ties. He is fortunate because US President George W. Bush's ideology has created the best Taiwan-US relations. But he is unfortunate because President Chen Shui-bian's (
Standing on the front lines of diplomacy, Chen Chien-jen has a clear understanding of the cold wind blowing in Washington.
He is a career diplomat with an excellent educational and professional background. He is a man of good character and has a good way with people and a wide personal network. Add to this that he has many talents, and even though he might not be called the renaissance man of diplomacy, he can without feeling ashamed call himself half a renaissance man.
He is, however, no George Yeh (
Though Chen Chien-jen cannot compare to his two predecessors, he is not one to do whatever he is told.
But he has run into a president who likes to shoot his mouth off on impulse. As soon as Taipei starts a fire, he has to work hard in Washington to extinguish it.
Although Chen Chien-jen's contacts in Washington are quite good, he does not have the access to the White House that Yeh or Hu had, access that allowed them to immediately clarify misunderstandings or resolve crises.
His Washington friends may be sympathetic as they see his constant efforts at putting out fires, but his credibility suffers.
Anyone involved in diplomacy has heard the following metaphor: A president's relationship with the diplomatic system is like that of a conductor with his symphony orchestra. No matter how well the conductor plays the violin, he cannot play first chair violin or he will not hear the other instruments. As a result, the whole orchestra will lose its rhythm and direction.
The reason that Taiwan's diplomacy is a mess is that the conductor is playing first violin.
There is one almost religious rule in diplomacy -- politics must come to a halt at the water's edge of diplomacy.
But the president has tied foreign policy closely to domestic politics, and politics has therefore muddied the diplomatic waters.
A diplomat's worst nightmare is the nation's leader personalizing and politicizing diplomacy, placing it in the realm of ideology. This is what has now happened to Taiwan's diplomacy.
A diplomat's nightmare among nightmares is having the president go so far in his ideology that his reasons for doing things become unrelated to diplomatic reality, set foreign policy according to this ideology and let short-term political interests (particularly electoral interests) decide diplomatic activities.
This shows just how unfortunate Chen Chien-jen really is.
Taiwan's diplomacy is now a matter for domestic officials and not for diplomats. Foreign affairs officials such as Chen Chien-jen, and even foreign minister Eugene Chien (簡又新), no longer make up the core of decisionmakers.
Instead, the officials in the Presidential Office participate in decisionmaking at an earlier stage in the process, and to a greater extent.
The president and his associates cannot avoid responsibility for the sharp deterioration of the Taiwan-US relationship, and they have only complicated the difficult job that Chen Chien-jen and other diplomats must do.
Wang Chien-chuang is the president of The Journalist.
Translated by Perry Svensson
Taiwan stands at the epicenter of a seismic shift that will determine the Indo-Pacific’s future security architecture. Whether deterrence prevails or collapses will reverberate far beyond the Taiwan Strait, fundamentally reshaping global power dynamics. The stakes could not be higher. Today, Taipei confronts an unprecedented convergence of threats from an increasingly muscular China that has intensified its multidimensional pressure campaign. Beijing’s strategy is comprehensive: military intimidation, diplomatic isolation, economic coercion, and sophisticated influence operations designed to fracture Taiwan’s democratic society from within. This challenge is magnified by Taiwan’s internal political divisions, which extend to fundamental questions about the island’s identity and future
The narrative surrounding Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s attendance at last week’s Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) summit — where he held hands with Russian President Vladimir Putin and chatted amiably with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) — was widely framed as a signal of Modi distancing himself from the US and edging closer to regional autocrats. It was depicted as Modi reacting to the levying of high US tariffs, burying the hatchet over border disputes with China, and heralding less engagement with the Quadrilateral Security dialogue (Quad) composed of the US, India, Japan and Australia. With Modi in China for the
The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) has postponed its chairperson candidate registration for two weeks, and so far, nine people have announced their intention to run for chairperson, the most on record, with more expected to announce their campaign in the final days. On the evening of Aug. 23, shortly after seven KMT lawmakers survived recall votes, KMT Chairman Eric Chu (朱立倫) announced he would step down and urged Taichung Mayor Lu Shiow-yen (盧秀燕) to step in and lead the party back to power. Lu immediately ruled herself out the following day, leaving the subject in question. In the days that followed, several
The Jamestown Foundation last week published an article exposing Beijing’s oil rigs and other potential dual-use platforms in waters near Pratas Island (Dongsha Island, 東沙島). China’s activities there resembled what they did in the East China Sea, inside the exclusive economic zones of Japan and South Korea, as well as with other South China Sea claimants. However, the most surprising element of the report was that the authors’ government contacts and Jamestown’s own evinced little awareness of China’s activities. That Beijing’s testing of Taiwanese (and its allies) situational awareness seemingly went unnoticed strongly suggests the need for more intelligence. Taiwan’s naval
RSS