I was puzzled by your editorial ("From about face to in your face," Dec. 18, page 8), because while purporting to criticize my column, you have made so many of the same points contained in it.
You say in the editorial there is no fear in the US of instability if the KMT should fall from power. That was one of the main points of the column; President Lee Teng-hui ( 李登輝) had seemed to be suggesting there was such a fear.
You write that President Lee deserves "much of the credit" for democratizing Taiwan; the column indeed went slightly further and said Lee "brought demo-cracy to Taiwan." You say Lee's remarks last July caught the US flat-footed; the column makes the same point. Your main objec-tions seem to be to things that aren't in the column. I'd respectfully ask you to look again.
The column did not criticize President Lee's theory of special state-to-state relations of last July; rather, it urged that he take no further steps in that direction in his last months in office.
You argue that the president should not renounce his declaration of last July; in fact, nowhere in the column is there any suggestion that he should.
You write that "Mann said he suspects Lee might try to touch off a military conflict with China during his remaining months in office, in order to create an excuse for putting off the election and keep himself in power." But the column didn't say that. It said US officials and scholars have such fears -- and added the skeptical note that "not all these fears are justified."
So often, people in Taiwan (and elsewhere) try to speculate on what Washington, or the US government, "really" thinks -- that is, to discern the beliefs and attitudes underlying the official policy statements.
The column described these underlying attitudes: that US officials aren't worried about any particular candidate or political party winning or losing the election, but that they have been concerned about some new surprise initiative from President Lee.
I'm confident the column was an accurate portrait of these Washington viewpoints. Whether I understand Taiwan is something you are in the best position to judge. The column, however, was about Washington and American attitudes, even ones that some in Taiwan may not be eager to hear.
As for the idea that the US leave Taiwan alone to develop into a mature democracy, once again there's certainly no disagreement here; after all, the column was aimed at rebutting a statement from Taiwan that seemed to attribute a role to the US by suggesting that Americans favored a political party in the upcoming election.
Jim Mann
LA Times columnist
Los Angeles, California
Don't count on the US
I read Holmes Liao's well-researched commentary (Dec. 25, page 9) on Taiwan's high tech industry and its role in the country's defense with great interest.
I would respectfully disagree, however, with one assumption: that the world's increasing reliance on Taiwanese technology will increase its willingness to protect Taiwan in a conflict with China. The reason for this lies in Washington, DC.
When Bill Clinton came to the White House in 1992, he was almost bereft of ideas on how to structure foreign policy. As he is prone to do, he compensated for this with the advice of others.
In the case of China policy, intense business lobbying and campaign contributions sold him on the mantra currently gripping US government and business circles: that untold fortunes are to be made in China, given access to its 1.2 billion customers.
The result has been seven years of spineless grovelling to China, the shelving of security concerns and other important policy aspects, all in the hope that China will grant access to markets and exercise "restraint."
Regardless of who wins the White House next year, big business has far too tight a grip on China policy to expect any measurable change in the US' future approach to China. Against this background, few in the US have the stomach for a war with China to save Taiwan, regardless of how important its technological resources are.
Recent statements by AIT Chairman Richard Bush, as well as the commander of the Seventh Fleet confirm this. Such a war would be no antiseptic air campaign like Kosovo. Congress has its vocal supporters of Taiwan, but far more members are jumping through hoops for China to get trade deals for their respective districts.
In such a conflict, a Chinese "offer" to resume and honor all prior high-tech trade arrangements with Taiwan as soon as the invasion was complete, would be a tempting plum to the US government and business leaders all too eager to avoid conflict with China.
It would not be the first time strategic materials shifted to foreign control, and not the first time China was taken at its word.
Brian Shea
Taipei
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