It is good that former US president Bill Clinton had an opportunity to visit Taiwan. The democratic nation’s political isolation has led to the peculiar phenomenon that only future and past US presidents — and secretaries of state or defense for that matter — can visit it.
But the matter raises an important question: Why can’t a current US president visit? The obvious reason is, of course, that China would strenuously object. Still, if our purpose is to support democracy in East Asia, it behooves the US to move toward normalization of relations with Taiwan.
US President Barack Obama just completed a tour through Asia in which he rightly emphasized strengthening ties with democracies in the region, such as India, Indonesia, South Korea and Japan. He broke new ground by advocating a seat in the UN Security Council for India, the world’s most populous democracy.
That kind of out-of-the-box thinking is also required in US policies toward Taiwan. The US is presently stuck in a “one China” policy mantra tracing its root to the 1970s, when we had a situation in which two regimes both claimed to be the legitimate government of China. That was resolved by normalizing ties with China and establishing diplomatic relations with Beijing as the government of China. However, we did not define Taiwan’s status, except to say that its future needed to be determined by peaceful means.
Now we have a totally different situation: Taiwan has transformed itself into a fully free and democratic nation, and if we want it to maintain its democracy, we need to do more to pull it into the circle of democratic nations in Asia.
In this regard, Clinton could have helped. During his visit, he could have lauded the fact that the Taiwanese engineered a momentous transition to democracy under former presidents Lee Teng-hui (李登輝) and Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁). Sustaining this democracy is important, particularly in view of Taiwan’s current drift in China’s direction.
Clinton should also have ensured that his visit was truly bipartisan, from Taiwan’s perspective that is. Taiwan is in the middle of a heated election campaign for the five special municipalities. Statements favoring particular policies, such as the recently concluded Economic Cooperation Framework Agreement (ECFA) with China, should have been avoided, as that represented taking sides in a controversial domestic issue.
Clinton could have also helped by emphasizing that a democratic Taiwan fully deserves a place at the table in international organizations such as the UN and the WHO. Its exclusion from these organizations is an outdated artifact from the past. The great majority of Taiwanese want to see Taiwan become an active member in the international community.
Finally, Clinton could have helped by nudging Taiwan in the right direction when it comes to judicial reforms. Freedom House has documented cases of infringement on individual rights and lack of due process by police organizations and the judiciary, while international academics have pointed to flaws and bias in legal proceedings against Chen and other former Democratic Progressive Party officials. Indeed, Clinton could have echoed calls for judicial reforms made by New York law professor Jerome Cohen.
The US often says that it wants to stay true to its democratic principles and give meaning to the human rights that officials say are universal. The confluence of Obama’s trip to Asia with Clinton’s trip to Taiwan presented a historic opportunity to emphasize US determination to move Taiwan out of the political isolation imposed on it by an unfortunate twist of history, and bring it into the mainstream of the international community of nations.
Nat Bellocchi is a former chairman of the American Institute in Taiwan and a special adviser to the Liberty Times Group. The views expressed in this article are his own.
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