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.
Kenting National Park service technician Yang Jien-fon (楊政峰) won a silver award in World Grand Prix Photography Awards Spring Season for his photograph of two male rat snakes intertwined in combat. Yang’s colleagues at Kenting National Park said he is a master of nature photography who has been held back by his job in civil service. The awards accept entries in all four seasons across six categories: architectural and urban photography, black-and-white and fine art photography, commercial and fashion photography, documentary and people photography, nature and experimental photography, and mobile photography. Awards are ranked according to scores and divided into platinum, gold and
The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) caucus yesterday said it opposes the introduction of migrant workers from India until a mechanism is in place to prevent workers from absconding. Minister of Labor Hung Sun-han (洪申翰) on Thursday told the Legislative Yuan that the first group of migrant workers from India could be introduced as early as this year, as part of a government program. The caucus’ opposition to the policy is based on the assessment that “the risk is too high,” KMT caucus secretary-general Lin Pei-hsiang (林沛祥) said. Taiwan has a serious and long-standing problem of migrant workers absconding from their contracts, indicating that
SPACE VETERAN: Kjell N. Lindgren, who helps lead NASA’s human spaceflight missions, has been on two expeditions on the ISS and has spent 311 days in space Taiwan-born US astronaut Kjell N. Lindgren is to visit Taiwan to promote technological partnerships through one of the programs organized by the US for its 250th national anniversary. Lindgren would be in Taiwan from Tuesday to Saturday next week as part of the US Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs’ US Speaker Program, organized to celebrate the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, the American Institute in Taiwan (AIT) said in a statement yesterday. Lindgren plans to engage with key leaders across the nation “to advance cutting-edge technological partnerships and inspire the next generation of scientists and engineers,”
TRADE-OFF: Beijing seeks to trade a bowl of tempura for a Chinese delicacy, an official said, while another said its promises were attempts to interfere in the polls The government must carefully consider the national security implications of building a bridge connecting Kinmen County and Xiamen, China, the Public Construction Commission (PCC) said yesterday. PCC Commissioner Derek Chen (陳金德), who is also a minister without portfolio, made the remarks in a meeting of the legislature’s Transportation Committee, after Democratic Progressive Party Legislator Hsu Fu-kuei (徐富癸) asked about China’s proposal of new infrastructure projects to further connect Kinmen and Lienchiang (Matsu) counties with Xiamen. China unveiled the bridge plan, along with nine other policies for Taiwan, on Sunday, the last day of Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairwoman Cheng Li-wun’s (鄭麗文) visit
RSS