I first visited Taiwan in 1963 as a young naval officer. Taiwan was not a democracy, which I could quickly see. There were policemen and soldiers on every street corner and many signs calling for a "return" to the Chinese mainland.
At that time I did not know that in 1949 then-US president Harry Truman had decided the US would not take special measures to protect Chiang Kai-shek's Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) government in exile, a decision that Truman partially reversed in 1950 at the outbreak of the Korean War. At that time Truman ordered the US Seventh Fleet to protect Tai-wan against a military takeover by communist China but warned Chiang Kai-shek that the US would not support a KMT-led offensive against the Chinese mainland.
In 1969 I studied Japanese politics at Harvard University under Edwin Reischauer, who had recently returned from Tokyo where he had served as ambassador, having been appointed by his former student, the late president John Kennedy. In his course, Reischauer offered his opinion that Taiwan deserved to be an independent country because the overwhelming majority of its population were descendents of Chinese people who came to Tai-wan more than 200 years before and had developed their own
culture.
Although US presidents since Truman have continued the order to the Seventh Fleet to protect Taiwan from a communist invasion, president Jimmy Carter in 1979 and president Bill Clinton in 1998 wavered. In switching US recognition of China to the PRC in 1979, Carter essentially assumed Taiwan would be absorbed by the PRC, a judgment which was disputed by bipartisan majorities in the US Congress which passed the Taiwan Relations Act.
Unlike Carter, the US Congress was not willing to see Taiwan incorporated against the will of its people into the PRC. More important, the people of Taiwan showed their unwillingness to consider any fundamental change in the status quo; persevering to maintain a separation from the PRC which, despite its strawman argument that Taiwan is a rogue province of China, has never exercised even one day's sovereignty over Taiwan. Moreover, when a native Taiwan-ese succeeded to the presidency of the Republic of China, he proceeded to set in motion a democratic election system that alarmed Bei-jing, which maintains that democracy is not an Asian value.
In 1998 Clinton defied the US' strategic national interest by casting doubt in a statement in Shang-hai that the US would maintain the Truman commitment to prevent a Chinese attempt to incorporate Taiwan by force; but the US Congress, by even bigger bipartisan majorities than in 1979, immediately reacted by reaffirming the Taiwan Relations Act. With Taiwan having demonstrated dramatic development of a viable democratic government in the 1990s, Congress was even less willing to lessen America's commitment to Taiwan's security in 1998.
In 2001 I visited Taiwan for the first time in 22 years. The contrast was remarkable. The police officers and soldiers on the street corners were gone as well as the signs calling for a return to China.
In 2002 I had the honor to meet former president Lee Teng-hui (李登輝). Listening to Lee, I became very excited. His words, his man-ner and his character reminded me of two of my lifetime heroes: former British prime minister Margaret Thatcher and former US president Ronald Reagan. Taiwan under Lee and President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) has become a vibrant free market democracy. Taiwan is not a perfect democracy (neither is the US) but its progress has been remarkable.
Unlike Tibet, which deserves to be independent, and Hong Kong, which was promised to be able to have considerable autonomy in 1999, Taiwan is fortunate. I say fortunate even though Tibet gets lots of attention and sympathy all over the world, even from famous movie actors and, by comparison, Taiwan is ignored by many countries.
But since Taiwan is a strategically important island which never fell into communist hands, it is easier for it to defend itself and the US has a strategically important reason to prevent Taiwan from falling to communist aggression. Tibet has virtually no capability to break away from China; and for the US to assist Tibet would require a land war with China. The same would apply to Hong Kong. The US does not desire to fight China over Taiwan either, but I am firmly convinced the US would fight to prevent the PRC from taking Taiwan by force.
On March 20, the Taiwanese people have the opportunity to decide whether to allow Chen to continue as president or to allow the KMT to return to power. At the same time people will be asked if the government should buy new anti-missile systems to counter the growing buildup of ballistic missiles Beijing has deployed along its coast opposite Taiwan.
During my first visits to Taiwan in the 1960s and 1970s, its people were never asked who they wanted as leaders, nor what kind of defense they wanted. In fact, Taiwan's military forces today are not organized properly to defend an island nation against an invasion or from a missile attack from across the Taiwan Strait. Lee and Chen have made great progress but the Ministry of National Defense is still not ideally organized to deal with the threats the country faces.
Until now Taiwanese have never been asked if the present military is the kind of force appropriate to defend the nation. Never before have the people been asked what kind of a military they want. As citizens of a democracy, Taiwanese have the opportunity as well as the obligation to decide what kind of military forces they want and need.
Notice also that I mentioned that the Taiwanese people will be asked on March 20 if they should try to develop defensive equipment to try to protect themselves against an offensive attack rather than attempting to build offensive missiles to attack the PRC. Tai-wanese fathers, would you fail to protect your wife or your children if they were threatened by a burglar or by a deranged person who broke into your home or attacked one of your family on the street?
Taiwan cannot protect itself perfectly from a Chinese missile attack; however, an effective missile defense system would complicate Chinese military planning. Complicating an aggressor's planning is the essence of deterrence. An effective missile defense system reinforced by the commitment of the US to prevent a military takeover of Taiwan against the will of the people would constitute a strong deterrent.
If I were were able to vote, I would vote for a missile defense system and I would vote for Chen on March 20. I know Chen is committed to the continuation and maturation of the nation's democracy. Lien might be an honorable man, but I really don't understand if the KMT would continue to maintain and strengthen Taiwan's democracy and the ability to defend against a missile attack. Can you afford to take a chance? Your American friends hope and encourage you chose to continue your democracy on March 20.
James Auer is a research professor at the Vanderbilt School of Engineering. He served as the special assistant for Japan in the Office of the Secretary of Defense for 10 years .
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
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