The “senior official” in Washington who tried to undermine Democratic Progressive Party Chairperson Tsai Ing-wen’s (蔡英文) presidential campaign last week was almost certainly from the White House and not the US Department of State, analysts in the US say.
The official called the Financial Times to claim that Tsai had left US President Barack Obama’s administration with “distinct concerns” about her ability to maintain stability in the Taiwan Strait.
The resulting story has been seen as particularly damaging to Tsai and a clear attempt to influence Taiwan’s Jan. 14 presidential election in favor of President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九).
It is not considered to be coincidental that China strongly favors the pro-Beijing policies of Ma over Tsai’s more independence-minded views.
During a three-day visit to Washington, Tsai met with both State Department and US National Security Council (NSC) officials.
Some analysts now believe the unsolicited call to the newspaper, aimed at crippling Tsai’s campaign, may have been unprecedented as a calculated and virtually open political attack.
The newspaper described the caller, who was well known to reporters, as a “senior administration official.” The official’s message was clear: The Obama administration did not trust Tsai to keep the peace and it would be better to re-elect Ma.
Tsai’s aides and entourage were shocked because there had been no trace of such sentiments in their meetings.
At the State Department, she had met with US Deputy Secretary of State Thomas Nides and Assistant Secretary of State for East Asia Kurt Campbell and their response to her views and policies had appeared to be positive, Tsai’s aides said.
US Senator James Inhofe, the Republican who is co-chair of the US Senate Taiwan Caucus, immediately asked the State Department for an explanation.
“The ‘official’ mentioned in this [Financial Times] article is totally unknown to us and certainly does not speak for the Obama administration,” the State Department replied.
To reinforce this position, Campbell has since told other political figures on Capitol Hill that the State Department was not involved and that the views expressed to the Financial Times did not reflect State Department thinking.
This leaves the NSC, where Tsai met NSC Senior Director for Asia Danny Russel and China Director Evan Medeiros.
Washington experts who specialize in China are now speculating that Russel and Medeiros reported their own views on Tsai — those contained in the Financial Times article — to a more senior White House figure close to the Oval Office. And this figure, identity unknown, either authorized someone within the council to call the Financial Times or authorized another White House senior official or made the call himself.
Whichever, the call was made without the knowledge and without the support of the State Department.
According to one diplomatic source, US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton has since been briefed on the situation and was “not pleased” at what had happened.
Behind all of this lies a long-running disagreement — some insiders call it a feud — between the State Department and the NSC.
Chris Nelson, a well-regarded Asia analyst, has written in his privately distributed Nelson Report newsletter that there is a “highly personal, often bitter animosity between senior White House officials and senior Asia players at State.”
He now wonders if that animosity will have a “deleterious effect” on foreign policy formulation because the senior administration official’s decision to call the Financial Times has raised the dispute to a new level.
Walter Lohman, director of the Asian Studies Center at the Heritage Foundation, has written that Tsai has “assiduously sought to project reasonableness and responsibility.”
“The White House comments [in the story] reflect an all-too-well-trained instinct for carrying China’s water on cross-Straits issues. It is the PRC [People’s Republic of China] that is dictating the terms of the ‘stability’ the US is concerned with maintaining. It is the PRC that declares any deviation from the trend in the direction of unification ‘destabilizing’ and threatens to resort to force to preclude any movement counter to this trend — as it alone perceives it,” he wrote.
“And judging by the White House response to its encounter with Tsai this [last] week, the PRC’s perception is the only one it cares about,” Lohman wrote.
US President Donald Trump said "it’s up to" Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) what China does on Taiwan, but that he would be "very unhappy" with a change in the "status quo," the New York Times said in an interview published yesterday. Xi "considers it to be a part of China, and that’s up to him what he’s going to be doing," Trump told the newspaper on Wednesday. "But I’ve expressed to him that I would be very unhappy if he did that, and I don’t think he’ll do that," he added. "I hope he doesn’t do that." Trump made the comments in
NOT AN OPENING: Trump’s violation of international law does not affect China’s consideration in attacking Taiwan; Beijing lacks capability, not precedent, an official said Taiwanese officials see the US’ capture of the president of Venezuela as a powerful deterrent to Beijing’s aggression and a timely reminder of the US’ ability to defeat militaries equipped with Chinese-made weapons. The strikes that toppled Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro signaled to authoritarian leaders, including Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平), US President Donald Trump’s willingness to use military might for international affairs core to US interests, one senior official in Taipei’s security circle said. That reassured Taiwan, the person said. Taipei has also dismissed the idea that Trump’s apparent violation of international law could embolden Beijing, said the official, who was not
A cold surge advisory was today issued for 18 cities and counties across Taiwan, with temperatures of below 10°C forecast during the day and into tonight, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. New Taipei City, Taipei, Taoyuan and Hsinchu, Miaoli and Yilan counties are expected to experience sustained temperatures of 10°C or lower, the CWA said. Temperatures are likely to temporarily drop below 10°C in most other areas, except Taitung, Pingtung, Penghu and Lienchiang (Matsu) counties, CWA data showed. The cold weather is being caused by a strong continental cold air mass, combined with radiative cooling, a process in which heat escapes from
Snow this morning fell on Alishan for the first time in seven years, as a strong continental cold air mass sent temperatures plunging across Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. The Alishan weather station, located at an elevation of about 2,200m in central Taiwan, recorded snowfall from 8:55am to 9:15am, when the temperature dropped to about 1°C, the CWA said. With increased moisture and low temperatures in the high-altitude Alishan area, the conditions were favorable for snow, CWA forecaster Tsai Yi-chi (蔡伊其) said. The last time snow fell at the Alishan weather station was on Jan. 10, 2018, while graupel fell there
RSS