Taiwan should not to "push too hard" in capitalizing on the current good relations with the US government, a US scholar said yesterday.
"Do not push too hard. Don't take advantage of the fact that you've had the friendliest friend in Washington," said Ralph Cossa, president of the Pacific Forum, an affiliate of the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS).
PHOTO: CHIANG YING-YING, TAIPEI TIMES
"If Taiwan, by raising the cross-strait issue, is seen as distracting the US from the war on terror, it is not in Taiwan's interest."
Cossa made the remarks during a talk on "President Bush's Asia-Pacific and cross-strait policy" to a group of newly recruited Taiwanese diplomats yesterday morning.
The former US Air Force colonel also said the George W. Bush administration's cross-strait policy was full of "strategic confusion" as a result of an ongoing debate in Washington on whether the US should stick to "strategic ambiguity" or "strategic clarity."
Those in favor of so-called "strategic clarity" argued that the US should tell Taipei it does not support Taiwan's independence and Beijing that an unprovoked attack on Taiwan would be unacceptable, Cossa said.
But the analyst said "strategic clarity" in his view was "not a good idea."
If the US sticks to strategic clarity and spells out what the "red lines" are, then "things not spelt out as the `red lines' would be perceived as `green lines,'" Cossa said.
The real world, however, does not operate in a state of dichotomy, as many gray areas still exist between the red and green zones, he said.
Although the Bush administration had envisioned developing "cooperative, constructive and candid" relations with China, some have argued that Washington actually had two China policies, with one led by the US State Department and the other orchestrated by the Pentagon, home of the US Defense Department,Cossa said.
While the two government agencies see the world through different lenses, US Defense Sec-retary Donald Rumsfeld's decision to greet Vice President Hu Jintao (胡錦濤) at the Pentagon during Hu's recent visit to the US indicated that even the Pentagon felt the need to mend ties with China, Cossa said.
Although it's unlikely that the People's Liberation Army and the Pentagon will develop a loving relationship, he said, Washington and Beijing are moving toward resuming military dialogue that had been frozen following the EP-3 collision.
Cossa also said the priority for Chinese President Jiang Zemin (
"Jiang's top priority is get his name signed on the guest book in Bush's Crawford Farm in Texas" as part of the outgoing Chinese leader's ambition to maintain his "international prestige," Cossa said.
Jiang is scheduled to hand over the leadership of the party to Hu during the 16th party congress in autumn, and Hu is slated to succeed Jiang as the president next year.
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