Editorial: A visit from Typhoon Bill

Former US president Bill Clinton will visit Taiwan in mid-September at the invitation of a local media group, stirring up more publicity than a small typhoon even before he whirls through Taipei. Just a few months out of office, Clinton has been quick to jump on the lecture circuit -- and for some very, very big bucks. Like former US president George Bush and former British prime minister Margaret Thatcher, Clinton looks likely to spend years as a rent-a-speaker, vigorously defending his time in office and pontificating on both foreign and domestic affairs.

Clinton's presidency polarized the US and people around the world. His endless stream of scandals left him morally bankrupt and will serve to exclude him from the list of the greatest US presidents. However, his two terms coincided with the development of the "new economy" that brought the US and global economies into a period of speedy growth and low inflation. That was also why he remained popular among the US electorate despite the spate of scandals.

For Taiwan, his eight years in the White House brought a complex mix of blessings and doom -- not unlike a sauna bath in which one alternates between plunges of hot and cold water. Clinton visited Taiwan four times while he was Arkansas governor -- which gave him a familiarity with Taiwan rare among US officials. During his visits as governor, Clinton met with Taiwan's political leaders and gained a first-hand experience of its economic development. He reportedly even developed a fondness for Taiwan's "bottoms-up" drinking culture. After becoming president, Clinton made public remarks about how he liked his visits to Taiwan.

Clinton was also quick to respond during the 1996 missile crisis, when Beijing was trying to influence Taiwan's first direct presidential election. He deployed two aircraft carriers to the seas near Taiwan -- a move that deterred further expansion of the Chinese military exercises and prevented an irreversible development in the Taiwan Strait. The people of Taiwan owe him one for that.

But Clinton ended up causing the most serious damage to Taiwan since the US severed relations in 1979. Despite his personal feelings of fondness toward Taiwan, Clinton announced his "three no's" policy during a visit to Shanghai in 1998 -- no independence for Taiwan; no "one Taiwan, one China;" and no membership for Taiwan in organizations that require statehood. The announcement ended years of US ambiguity toward the Taiwan sovereignty issue. It helped block Taiwan's diplomatic potential and soundly tipped US policy in favor of Beijing.

Clinton's "three no's" left former president Lee Teng-hui (李登輝) with no choice but to announce his "special state-to-state relations" dictum, in order to prevent US policy from leaning any further toward China and pressuring Taiwan to accept the "one China" principle. Clinton's appeasement policy allowed China to expand its influence both in the US and the Asia-Pacific region and become a regional security threat. That was why President George W. Bush, soon after taking office, changed the US' strategic definition of China in an effort to correct what he saw as Clinton's policy mistakes.

Clinton's four visits to Taiwan came while this nation was still an authoritarian state. His presidency coincided with Taiwan's transformation into a democracy and its improvements in human rights policy. Per-haps his fifth visit will help fill in what is missing from his understanding of Taiwan and its democratic, economic and social development. It is never too late for Clinton to get a new understanding of Taiwan and for Taiwan to get a new understanding of him.