As Taiwan appeared 16 times in its index and "China" 36 times, I purchased a copy of The Reagan Diaries. The references to China and Taiwan are still relevant and illuminating a quarter century later.
I was on the US State Department's Taiwan Coordination Staff in January 1982 and closely followed the administration of US president Ronald Reagan's decision to deny Taiwan the FX fighter, or Intermediate Fighter for Export. Beijing had complained about the FX, and the State Department came up with a tendentious rationale that selling the fighter to Taiwan would cause trouble with China.
This, of course, violated the spirit -- and perhaps the letter -- of the Taiwan Relations Act (TRA), which stipulates that the US government "shall determine the nature and quantity of such defense articles and services based solely upon their judgment of the needs of Taiwan" and not at all on Beijing's complaints.
Writing in his diary in January 1982, Reagan commented that: "A team is off to Peking [Beijing] to tell them at 1st hand we're going to sell F-5Es & some F-104's to Taiwan. We're softening things a little, Taiwan really wants the more advanced F-5Gs -- they'll have to come later."
Reagan then wrote something rather startling: "I've learned there is a China Lobby and it has its moles in the State Dept. The [Washington] Post had a story on why we should cling to the P.R.C. & never mind Taiwan."
The president was stunned by the leaks to the Washington Post because "no word has been spoken about plans & I've told no one what my decision will be." At that point, a decision on overall China policy had not yet been prepared for Reagan and he was most unhappy with the State Department indirectly pressuring him through newspapers.
But he did not yield.
The following day, Reagan wrote: "Press running wild with talk that I reversed myself on Taiwan because we're only selling them F-5E's and F-104's ... I think the China Lobby in the State Dept. is selling this line to appease the P.R.C. which doesn't want us to sell them [Taiwan] anything."
Reagan explained his decision as follows: "The planes we're offering are better than anything the P.R.C. has ... Later on, if more sophistication is needed we'll upgrade & sell them F-5G's."
Reagan admitted he was at odds with then secretary of state Alexander Haig who, he said, wanted to "betray our pledge to Taiwan."
On March 29, 1982, Reagan objected to Haig's advice to send "papers" to Beijing in a "note of almost apology." Reagan wrote: "I'm convinced that the Chinese will respect us more if we politely tell them we have an obligation to the people and Taiwan and no one is going to keep us from meeting it. We didn't send the papers."
On May 12, Reagan lunched with then vice president George H.W. Bush and told him that although "the P.R.C. is really obsessed with our continuing to be friends with Taiwan ... there isn't going to be any change on our part."
On June 18, senator Barry Goldwater visited Reagan "upset by rumors [of an impending `Third Communique'] that I'm going to dump Taiwan," Reagan wrote. "I convinced him there is no way I'll ever do that."
In 1984, Reagan approved the transfer of aviation technology, enabling Taiwan to manufacture its own high-performance fighter aircraft -- known as the "indigenous defense fighter" (IDF) -- a version, if you will, of the FX.
I suppose I may have been part of the so-called "China Lobby" in the State Department that so bedeviled Reagan. Although the "Taiwan Desk" in those days often found itself at odds with the "China Desk," I remember the valiant efforts of State Department Taiwan affairs directors, like Don Ferguson, Mark Pratt and American Institute in Taiwan (AIT) officers like Jim Lilley and Bill Thomas, to restrain Haig's pro-China enthusiasm.
Strains with the president over China and Taiwan, among others, soon forced Haig to resign. His replacement, George Shultz, agreed with Reagan that the "Chinese will respect us more" if we firmly rebuffed their Taiwan complaints. Indeed, US relations with Taiwan (and China, for that matter) were never better than in the second Reagan administration (1985 to 1989) as Reagan focused on Japan -- not China -- as Washington's key ally in Asia.
The State Department "China Lobby," however, may be nothing more than an artifact of the foreign service bureaucracy, which judges a diplomat's success in improving relations with the country he or she is dealing with. When I was in the State Department, the only exception to this rule was officers who dealt with the Soviet Union and Eastern Bloc countries. Building China as a counterweight to Moscow was then a major US strategic objective.
Unfortunately, this mindset persists in the foreign policy bureaucracy, and in academia for that matter. Even today, US diplomats are judged more on how well they smooth Washington's ties with Beijing than on their careful examinations of what US interests are in China.
Former Pentagon China specialist Michael Pillsbury called the recent report on the Chinese military the "most blunt warning in any US document in history to China of the really bad things that will happen if they attack Taiwan." More importantly, for the first time, the report described China's new Jin-class nuclear ballistic missile submarine, which carries 12 new Julang-2 missiles with a range of over 8,000km.
The report did not say how many Jin submarines the Pentagon believes China to possess, but Jane's Defence Weekly claims that five such subs are in Chinese yards at present.
This would mean 60 new nuclear-tipped intercontinental ballistic missiles -- targets unknown. Furthermore, each Julang-2 missile has at least three, and possibly as much as eight, but as many as eight multiple, independently targetable reentry vehicles. This translates into 180 to 480 nuclear warheads.
The Pentagon report also warns that the military balance in the Taiwan Strait is "continuing to shift in the mainland's favor." At the end of last year, there were "roughly 900" short range ballistic missiles aimed at Taiwan -- last year's report listed "710 to 790."
China's naval, air and amphibious forces are also modernizing. Reagan's diaries send a clear message from 25 years ago to Washington and Taipei: Now, as "more sophistication is needed, we'll upgrade" Taiwan's defense equipment.
Reagan's instincts were right. The administrations in Taipei and Washington should ignore the "China Lobbies" in their respective bureaucracies and do what needs to be done to defend Taiwan and the US.
China is more likely to respect the US if Washington sticks to its obligations and defends its interests -- economic and strategic. And it would be more likely to respect Taipei if the latter shows its determination to defend itself.
John Tkacik is a senior research fellow at the Heritage Foundation.
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