When a former US State Department official was arrested last month on suspicion of passing secrets to Taiwan, it stirred a tempest of speculation in local media about spies and agent provocateurs, clandestine rendezvous in far-away lands and envelopes passed at posh restaurants. For a moment, Taiwan became the stuff of a Tom Clancy novel.
That official, Donald Keyser, will have his day in court this week and the US Federal Bureau of Investigations, which has thus far only charged him with failing to declare a trip he took to Taiwan last year, has held out the possibility of leveling further charges.
Meanwhile, a Sept. 18 report in the New York Times contained a one-liner which the press has barely given a sniff, a quote from a former State Department official expressing incredulity at Keyser's arrest: "I don't know of any senior officials who are pro-Taiwan."
The article continued: "He and others said foreign service officers largely view some Taiwan officials' struggle to stay separate from China as a distraction, when the truly important relationship for the United States is China."
And so, although the Republic of China celebrates its Double Ten National Day today, its US friends won't be joining the party. Perhaps they're still hung over from China's bash 10 days go.
POLITICAL PALS
Taiwan's friendship with America has helped the nation stay afloat. But that friendship has also been subject to the whims of successive US presidents.
Harry Truman's decision in January of 1950 not to intervene against a Communist Chinese attack on Taiwan seemed at first to doom Chiang Kai-shek (
That changed starting in September of 1977, when then assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific affairs Richard Holbrooke, summoned Harvey Feldman to his office. Feldman was the US charge d'affaires in Bulgaria at the time, but was being reassigned as director of the Office of Republic of China Affairs. The job came with a caveat, Holbrooke told him his task was to devise a system whereby all US ties with Taiwan could be maintained, but in the absence of an official office. He was neither to consult nor inform anyone and ordered to report back in six weeks. Then-US president Jimmy Carter wanted to finalize a deal that was begun under the Richard Nixon administration of switching official recognition to Beijing.
Feldman spoke about his assignment at a 1998 forum sponsored by the International Interchange Foundation. The US administration, he recalled, "was [not] particularly concerned about Taiwan and its fate. When they thought about it at all, it seems they assumed that, following the switch in relations, the ROC government would have no choice but to agree to reunification on the PRC's terms. In their view, Taiwan's only significance was as an obstacle to the close relationship with Beijing which they considered a primary foreign policy interest."
After that switch was made on Jan. 1, 1979, Feldman's efforts were written into law as the Taiwan Relations Act (TRA). Twenty-five years later, it is still the foundation of relations between Taiwan and the US and a cornerstone of US policy in East Asia and the Pacific region.
RSS