The devil is always in the details, be it contracts or legislation. Check the fine print of the bills wrapped in the Omnibus Bill signed into law by US President Bill Clinton on Nov. 29, however, and you will find some angels of interest to Taiwan.
Let's take them in order.
HR 3422, the Foreign Operations Appropriations Bill, has, buried in its bulk, Section 593: "Consultations on arms sales to Taiwan."
It states that the secretary of state, "consistent with the intent of Congress expressed in the Taiwan Relations Act (TRA,
Simply put, the Clinton administration has not been truly consulting with Congress, and Congress members are not happy campers.
"This is a very clear message to the administration," said a Democratic foreign relations committee staffer. "Congress expects the administration to consult. There is currently not any really adequate congressional input that meets the obligations laid out in the TRA."
This little item seeks to put some teeth into the process. "To give proper credit," said the staffer, "this section was prompted by an initiative of Senator Trent Lott, but the final language comes out of Senator Joseph Biden's efforts.
The section is a follow-up to Biden's remarks to Assistant Secretary of State Stanley Roth at the Aug. 4 hearing on the Taiwan Security Enhancement Act (TSEA).
At that time, Biden chastised the administration, telling Roth "to get smart, quick," and start implementing the TRA properly. "Or else," Biden said at the time, "the boss [pointing to foreign relations committee chair Senator Jesse Helms] will get his way" on the TSEA.
"At that time," the staffer continued, "Biden expressed his expectation that the administration would consult more clearly in advance on arms sales. This bill reflects Biden's desire for a more formal mechanism within which this consultation might take place."
The staffer said that this past year, there was "somewhat more satisfactory consulting than previous years. But it was not what the Congress would like. We are committed to making this work. We are hopeful the administration will come to us and say, `Here's how it is going to work. Is this satisfactory?'"
When the TRA was written, both the House of Representatives and the Senate clearly understood that Taiwan sales would go down differently than any other in the world.
First, Taiwan would make its request. Then, there would be some consultation and some items would be scratched off the list by the White House. Finally, there would be time for reasoning with the Congress.
At that point, Congress could at least ask: "Why was this not included?" There would then be negotiations between the administration and Congress and a final decision would be made.
A small clause was inserted in the TRA at the time of legal cleanup. Lawyers said this was needed to have the legislation comply with the federal code. The insert was: "this [legislation] will not have any effect on any other law."
The insert has been consistently interpreted to mean that the State Department only has to give notification to Congress of arms sales to Taiwan in the same way as other arms sales are reported, by what is known as 36b notification.
At the first hearing held after the TRA was made law, Senator Frank Church, chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, asked Richard Holbrooke: "Where's the list?" Holbrooke, then as now not very shy, replied: "You'll get it when Taiwan sees it."
Church, according to an aide present at the time, responded to this by saying, "Hell no!"
Church then turned and asked other members of the committee if their understanding was the same as Holbrooke's.
They said that it was not. Holbrooke then said he would provide a list to the committee. According to the same aide, this was the first and only time it was done.
The only notification the State Department gives now is when a deal is signed -- a 36b notification. The NSC has reportedly told Kurt Campbell, the Defense Department official in charge of overseeing sales to Taiwan, that this year such sales should be "particularly minimal."
Biden's "mechanism" for better consultation couldn't come at a better time as far as Taiwan is concerned.
The next angel in the Omnibus Bill is HR 3425, or the Emergency Supplemental Appropriations Bill.
Section 216 of this legislation calls for a Department of Defense report that gives "a review of the operational planning and other preparations of the US Department of Defense to implement the Taiwan Relations Act," as well as "a review of the evaluation of all gaps in relevant knowledge about the PRC's capabilities and intentions as they might affect the current and future military balance between Taiwan and China."
A Republican staffer said Senator Trent Lott, the Senate majority leader, was the author of this legislation.
"Senator Lott wants to ensure that the Congress is fully briefed on the Department of Defense's preparations for any eventualities in East Asia," the staffer stated.
"This bill requires a report that lays out possible scenarios and what the defense department has in the way of operational plans to meet these possibilities," the staffer said.
Again, Congress is showing how seriously it takes its own responsibilities under the TRA to stay informed about any threat to the security of Taiwan.
The final angel is HR 3427, the Foreign Relations Authorization Act. Here the Congress lays out a far more expansive burden on the administration than that in HR 1794, which mandated an accounting of how the administration was working to get Taiwan's participation in WHO.
The bill requires semiannual reports from the secretary of state on the status of US efforts to support "the membership of Taiwan in international organizations that do not require ... statehood as a prerequisite to such membership," and also "the appropriate level of participation by Taiwan in international organizations that may require statehood as a prerequisite to full membership."
The report requirements are quite extensive. Each report first shall set forth a comprehensive list of the international organizations in which the US government supports the membership or participation of Taiwan; second, it must describe in detail the efforts of the US government to achieve the membership or participation of Taiwan in each organization listed. Third, each report is to identify the obstacles to the membership or participation of Taiwan in each organization listed, including a list of any governments that do not support the membership or participation of Taiwan in each such organization.
One can guess that, no matter what the holiday carols are saying about angels, neither the US State Department nor the Department of Defense is overly happy about these new developments.
But Congress is determined to make a firm statement about its commitment to Taiwan and to its own responsibilities to seeing that the Taiwan Relations Act is fulfilled. Peace on Earth -- or at least in the Taiwan Strait -- is the message.
With these bills, the US Congress wants to ensure that the message is heard on high.
Chen Wen-yen is president of the Formosan Association of Public Affairs (FAPA,
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) caucus whip Fu Kun-chi (傅?萁) has caused havoc with his attempts to overturn the democratic and constitutional order in the legislature. If we look at this devolution from the context of a transition to democracy from authoritarianism in a culturally Chinese sense — that of zhonghua (中華) — then we are playing witness to a servile spirit from a millennia-old form of totalitarianism that is intent on damaging the nation’s hard-won democracy. This servile spirit is ingrained in Chinese culture. About a century ago, Chinese satirist and author Lu Xun (魯迅) saw through the servile nature of
In their New York Times bestseller How Democracies Die, Harvard political scientists Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt said that democracies today “may die at the hands not of generals but of elected leaders. Many government efforts to subvert democracy are ‘legal,’ in the sense that they are approved by the legislature or accepted by the courts. They may even be portrayed as efforts to improve democracy — making the judiciary more efficient, combating corruption, or cleaning up the electoral process.” Moreover, the two authors observe that those who denounce such legal threats to democracy are often “dismissed as exaggerating or
Monday was the 37th anniversary of former president Chiang Ching-kuo’s (蔣經國) death. Chiang — a son of former president Chiang Kai-shek (蔣介石), who had implemented party-state rule and martial law in Taiwan — has a complicated legacy. Whether one looks at his time in power in a positive or negative light depends very much on who they are, and what their relationship with the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) is. Although toward the end of his life Chiang Ching-kuo lifted martial law and steered Taiwan onto the path of democratization, these changes were forced upon him by internal and external pressures,
The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) caucus in the Legislative Yuan has made an internal decision to freeze NT$1.8 billion (US$54.7 million) of the indigenous submarine project’s NT$2 billion budget. This means that up to 90 percent of the budget cannot be utilized. It would only be accessible if the legislature agrees to lift the freeze sometime in the future. However, for Taiwan to construct its own submarines, it must rely on foreign support for several key pieces of equipment and technology. These foreign supporters would also be forced to endure significant pressure, infiltration and influence from Beijing. In other words,
RSS