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Editorial: Time for US to lay out its reasoning

Just what is it about the proposed defensive referendum the US government does not understand? The press briefing for reporters by US State Department spokesman Adam Ereli reported in this newspaper yesterday, coming as it does after Washington envoy Chen Chien-jen's (程建人) comment last week, leaves us deeply puzzled.

Let us take two basic premises on which both Taipei and Washington agree: The Bush administration is opposed to any referendum that would unilaterally change the status quo. It is not however opposed to the idea of referendums per se.

Add to this the premise that the administration of US President George W. Bush appears opposed to the referendum proposed by President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) and what conclusions can we reach? That the US sees the defensive referendum as an attempt to change the cross-strait status quo. Why? How?

So far the Bush administration refuses to say. We glean from what various officials have said since the defensive referendum was announced that Washington sees a difference between referendums dealing with independence and unification, which it opposes, and referendums dealing with internal political matters and national security issues, which are apparently OK.

So can we assume that the defensive referendum is seen as being about independence or unification? Why on earth would that be? The question of whether Taiwanese like China's missiles pointed at them or not has nothing to do with unification or independence whatsoever. It is plainly a security issue.

And, let us be frank, it is not even a very serious security issue. Instead, "Should Taiwan have its own nuclear strike capability?" is a serious security issue, or perhaps a question about whether people are prepared to pay more tax to see the professionalization of the armed forces.

So why is the Bush administration so opposed to the planned referendum? We think that it should say. Not only that, but it should say so clearly and openly -- no secret notes from secret visitors to Taipei -- so that its reasons for opposing Taiwan's exercise of popular democracy might be judged against its zeal for spreading democracy elsewhere.

How can we take US reservations into account if we know not what they are? How can we judge how well-founded they may be?

How might they not be well-founded?

Well, Washington may simply be not well-informed. Since the world's media, profoundly ignorant of Taiwan's affairs as it usually is, mistakenly thinks that any referendum in Taiwan must be about independence, it would be no surprise to find that Washington bureaucrats are similarly mistaken. And we note that Ereli said that he thought Taipei's idea of what the referendum would be was in a state of flux. This is simply false.

The government's ideas on the referendum have been fixed since the first week of last month. So either Ereli was being duplicitous -- not wanting to acknowledge what the referendum was so he wouldn't have to answer the harder questions about it -- such as what was wrong with it -- or there is still a lack of understanding of this issue in Washington.

Or the Bush administration might be being deliberately misinformed by China and its allies -- the pan-blue camp here in Taiwan and the so called Red Team of pro-China foreign policy mavens in the US itself.

Or it is even possible that China has issued threats to Taiwan -- it is, after all, desperately important to Beijing that Taiwan's referendum not take place and there is no knowing how high the stakes have -- in private -- been raised. US coyness might be a way to avoid the appearance of having caved in to China.

So we need to know. Tell us what your reservations are. Let us see that they are well-founded. Until that happens it is hard to know what more can be expected of Taiwan.
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