So in the end the Bush administration decided it was not going to approve the sale to Taiwan of the much-touted AEGIS system and their state-of-the-art missile tracking system.
The deciding reason was political, although there is plenty of evidence they wouldn't have done Taiwan that much good in the military arena either. They wouldn't be delivered for another seven or eight years and by then China could have deployed enough missiles to easily overwhelm their capabilities.
Simply put, they would be nothing more than a political provocation -- a hint of other defensive systems to come -- the anti-ballistic missile shield around America and theater missile defense around Japan and Taiwan. All of which in the end will be similarly self-defeating, as China builds more nuclear-tipped rockets to overwhelm them. Along the way the political relationship would deteriorate from "strategic partner" (Clinton) to "strategic competitor" (Bush) to "enemy" (future).
Self-evidently, there is neither logic nor good reason in this game and it makes much more sense to look at the underlying causes of what brought all this boil and how to return to the situation before the Taiwan Strait confrontation of 1995-96 pushed what had seemed a sensible accommodation off the deep end.
In retrospect, it is more than clear that the origins of this confrontation -- which appeared to begin with China firing missiles near Taiwan and former President Bill Clinton ordering the deployment of US battle carrier groups in the Taiwan Strait -- lay in Taiwanese lobbying of the US Congress and subsequent Congressional pressure on the president. US policy towards Taiwan had been allowed to drift and Taiwan, under former President Lee Teng-hui (李登輝), had been able, effectively unchallenged, to build up a head of steam in its quest for independence. The White House foolishly succumbed to the pressure to give Lee a visa to enter the US, thus departing from its understanding with Beijing on US-Taiwan relations. It seemed to suggest to Beijing that Washington might well be on the way to abandoning its one-China policy and the firing of the missiles did in fact bring Clinton to his senses. The 1997 and 1998 summits quickly followed, with Clinton saying in Shanghai that the US did not support Taiwanese independence.
Although pretty clear at the time, it is now little disputed that Lee was not responding to Taiwanese public opinion but trying to lead it. Indeed, Chen Shui-bian (
The main trouble with years of unproductive jousting is that it has obscured the essentials. The issue that now presents itself is the same one that was one table before Lee temporarily up-ended it: how to turn Taiwan's autonomy from a negative into a positive factor. It could be made all the easier if diplomacy could deliver a pledge from China not to use force in return for Taiwan pledging not to declare independence.
Then it would be possible to conceive of Taiwan agreeing in the not too distant future to negotiations over confederation with China. (If the US stops continuously provoking China with new arms sales to Taiwan that, in a communique signed by former President Ronald Reagan, it promised not to, then that in itself would make a turn in Chinese policy rather easier.)
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