US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton has a big mouth, and she has put her foot in it many times over the years. She did it again last month when she dismissed the need to push Taiwan issues during her maiden voyage to Beijing as the US’ top diplomat.
Speaking to reporters in Seoul just before she flew to China, Clinton made it clear that Taiwan, along with Tibet and China’s human rights violations generally, would be lost in the shuffle as she and Chinese leaders talked about other things.
She would not press China on Taiwan and the other areas of disagreement between Washington and Beijing because “we pretty much know what they’re going to say,” she told the reporters traveling with her around East Asia.
“We know what they’re going to say because I’ve had those conversations for more than a decade with Chinese leaders, and we know what they’re going to say about Taiwan and military sales, and they know what we’re going to say,” she said.
Underscoring the point, she asserted that “pressing on those issues can’t interfere with” the other items on her agenda: the global financial crisis, environmental issues, Afghanistan, Pakistan and North Korea.
It is true that all of those other issues are make-or-break crises for the US, China and the rest of the world and deserve priority. No question about that.
But ask people in Taiwan whether they feel that their welfare, their future, their security and their health are matters that merely “interfere” with the US’ other concerns.
It may be true that Clinton has spoken with Chinese leaders over the past decade. But in what capacity? As a senator from New York? As a former first lady?
It is one thing to talk to them as a representative of Brooklyn and Buffalo, but it is quite another to speak as the top foreign policy representative of the US and its president.
Former secretaries of state Condoleezza Rice and Colin Powell also knew what China would say about Taiwan during their meetings, but they never dismissed Taiwan’s interests and security publicly because of that. To do so, they well knew, would be interpreted by the Chinese leaders as signals of backsliding on Taiwan, which could be used in Beijing’s propaganda against Taipei.
But Clinton does not have either of her predecessors’ experience or gravitas. She is, after all, a politician who is a novice at the international diplomacy game. She was chosen by US President Barack Obama as much for her political clout, especially among women’s groups, as for her global issues skills.
We are told by sources with insights into the State Department’s East Asia bureau that after she uttered her remarks and they were reported in the media, Clinton immediately realized that she screwed up, to borrow Obama’s expression. She did not mean to belittle Taiwan or leave Taiwan to the wolves, department officials have said to others.
She did not mean “Who cares?” about Taiwan, Tibet or human rights, they said. They added that her comments were parallel to her statements during the trip that economic sanctions against the repressive Myanmar regime have not worked and that a new approach is needed.
What such a new approach would mean in terms of Taiwan is not at all clear.
Nobody in Washington expected any new developments on the Taiwan issue during Clinton’s trip. So many Taiwan supporters in Washington were not particularly disheartened by Clinton’s offhand remarks on Taiwan.
“The US will always be there for Taiwan,” one of Taiwan’s leading supporters in Washington said this week.
Clinton’s trip neither “alleviated nor added to” the concerns over Taiwan policy in the Obama administration, he said.
Observers say there will be no return to the Taiwan policy of Clinton’s husband and former president, Bill, many of whose policies were distasteful to Taiwanese as he pushed to improve relations with China amid strained cross-strait relations.
But Obama’s administration is piled high with former Clinton administration Asia policy stalwarts, who presumably hold much the same ideas they did when they helped establish that earlier policy. One would hope that they have matured since then.
Taiwan and the world have yet to see what the current president, and the current State Department under Clinton, have on their plate as they decide on actions crucial to the fate of Taiwan and its people. Stay tuned.
Charles Snyder is the former Washington correspondent for the Taipei Times.
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