There was one piece of news last week in Taipei that was widely overlooked. Scholar-turned-Vice Minister of Foreign Affairs Michael Kau (
The new "strength-to-strength" policy would use democracy and human rights, economic development and peace and security as the three pillars of future diplomatic work to meet the challenge of globalization as well as the new international environment in which regional cooperation is becoming ever more important. It would also seek to counter China's policy of "denationalizing" Taiwan diplomatically. Kau said that Taiwan has impressive prowess and advantages in the three above-mentioned areas -- enough to serve as a powerful foundation for expanding Taiwan's diplomacy. The shift in thinking is innovative and is a proposal worthy of implementation.
Once implementation of this new "strength-to-strength" diplomatic thinking begins, Taiwan will only need to maintain a certain symbolic number of diplomatic allies to stress its status as an independent sovereign state. Taiwan will no longer be trapped in worries about its number of diplomatic allies, nor will any minor breakthrough lead to complacency. At the same time, Taiwan will no longer need to waste precious diplomatic resources buying off some "kid-class" states, much less allow those states to engage in diplomatic blackmail on both sides of the Taiwan Strait.
For 40 years, Taiwan insisted on the "Gentlemen won't stand together with thieves" (漢賊不兩立) policy vis-a-vis China, much in the spirit of West Germany's Holstein Principle against East Germany. This policy caused the number of Taiwan's diplomatic allies to fall to 21 at one point. Taiwan later adopted "flexible diplomacy," but then critics sounded the death knell for the policy when they called it "unprincipled." Taiwan at one point also considered the "dual recognition" policy, but the Beijing authorities would not allow such "diplomatic coexistence" to emerge. As a result, for more than a decade Taiwan has only been able to seek solace in "pragmatic diplomacy."
Two years after the historic transition of political power, the DPP government has not made any major diplomatic breakthrough. Instead, it has lost one ally -- Macedonia. (Of course, the breakoff has saved Taiwan a considerable sum of aid money.)
Obviously, realism is the emphasis in international politics. Taiwan must accept the reality of its diplomatic isolation, but it cannot simply sit back and do nothing. Nor can Taiwan allow the evil empire that is China to easily annex it as a province or a "special administrative region."
Some believe that, of the three pillars of the new policy, "democracy and human rights" and "peace and security" are too abstract and difficult to translate into action. But democracy and human rights are the best indicators of the huge difference between Taiwan and China. Peace and security, meanwhile, are the life-line for Taiwan's survival. Besides, Taiwan can certainly play a more aggressive and constructive role.
The "strength-to-strength" idea is not bad, but one weak point is that the phrase can hardly become a sleek diplomatic slogan, much less fully understood by society at large. Perhaps phrases like "Little Giant diplomacy," "diplomacy for peace and love," or "Mass-participatory diplomacy" can be more powerful. The real foundation of diplomatic work is public opinion. What the diplomatic authorities need is a consensus on the objectives of "diplomacy by all the people."
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