There were many good things said and answers made at the confirmation hearing for Richard Armitage, the new US deputy secretary of state, that doubtless pleased many in Taiwan reading them. One that particularly pleased me was his statement: "Too often we think of `diplomacy' as a sort of specialized language mastered by the keepers of a special code, one featuring indirectness and ambiguity."
Ambiguity has its place on occasion, but as the people joining the new administration doubtless already know, Sino-diplomacy is directed by ambiguous language.
Practitioners point to the flexibility this provides in getting around insoluble problems. It does that, but have we, on all sides, overdone it? The changes that have taken place -- politically, economically, and militarily -- make the consequences of misunderstanding or misjudgment much more serious.
Total clarity has its shortcomings, but so does total ambiguity. When one looks at what is broadly called our "China policy," making it less of a guessing game is an enormous challenge.
Let's start with "one China." It depends on who is saying it, and how. The one China "principle" and one China "policy" are getting blurred, though they have an important difference in meaning (US Secretary of State Colin Powell please note). Is it "the" one China policy, or "a" one China policy, or "our" one China policy -- all have a different meaning. The PRC version, the Taiwan version, and the US version, are all different. The US version, in particular, isn't even about one China -- it is about whatever -- as long as it is peacefully resolved between the two sides. Our use of the one China expression for our policy has been a mistake.
This is not making the US position on Taiwan's sovereignty better understood. We continuously refer to our one China policy as a code word that is supposed to mean, I think, that there is no change in our policy. Relatively few people understand that while we support the concept of one China, we take no position on what that means. To add to the confusion, perhaps because the PRC strongly disagrees with it, we seldom mention our position on Taiwan's sovereignty. Most people would guess that we agree it belongs to China. For those who generally follow the issue, the question is: which China -- the PRC or the ROC?
Even the US ambassador to Beijing, the other day, according to the press, said that Washington recognized Taiwan was part of Chinese territory and that as long as a peaceful resolution of the Taiwan problem was accepted the US would support its unification with the mainland.
It would take several paragraphs to explain the abundant number of ambiguities in that paragraph, but just to focus on the sovereignty matter, only last week, Powell publicly re-endorsed the six assurances. They include that the US will not change its position on Taiwan's sovereignty. That position is that Taiwan's sovereignty is yet to be determined.
The ambassador was speaking to Beijing University students. They could more usefully have been told that the US acknowledges (not recognizes, which is quite different) the Chinese position on Taiwan's status. And it might have been more important for the students to know that the US would accept any resolution agreeable to the voters on democratic Taiwan because we respect the free and democratic ways they resolve issues there.
Another ambiguity is the way we ourselves manage a set of self-made rules to conduct an "unofficial" relationship. The atmosphere at the time these rules were established was hardly favorable to Taiwan. The rules, like Taiwan, were not expected to be needed for very long. The emphasis was on avoiding Beijing's objections, not on efficiency for ourselves, or support for an entity that had now become a "problem."
These rules are clear, as written, but ambiguous because they are not made public (though some light was shed on them in the 1995 Taiwan Policy Review). This permits flexibility, but without oversight it also permits judgments that do not reflect changing circumstances and domestic concerns. As Taiwan's economy grew, for example, and more recently as security considerations became more prevalent, the precedents established by these rules have become increasingly counter to our own interests.
There are many examples of this. The most recent were the restrictions on President Chen Shui-bian (
With all the ambiguity written in them, as usual, it was not the rules but the political will, or lack of it, that determined the deci-sion. As in the case of former president Lee Teng-hui (李登輝) transiting through Honolulu, where PRC sensitivities were given more weight than US sensitivities; the result was a far more important visit to Cornell University. I would not be surprised if a similar result happened again.
Our ability to manage relationships with China and Taiwan is hampered by an overkill in the use of ambiguity, and in overreacting to PRC sensitivities. Our foreign policy can only be seen as unreliable if it continues to over-use ambiguity to avoid PRC displeasure. Inevitably this often leads to reaction in some form not only in democratic Taiwan but from our allies and the US Congress.
In our relations with the PRC, we should create a better balance between the occasional need for ambiguity with the equal need for clarity.
It would not be necessary to change the laws, the agreements, or even the rules we have established. It will require, however, the political will to take whatever action we believe is necessary, even if it displeases Beijing, especially on matters that are legitimately our own affairs (such as visitors from Taiwan). This is not a call for belligerence or confrontation, but for legitimate and responsible assertiveness.
Nat Bellocchi is the former chairman of the American Institute in Taiwan and is now a special adviser to the Liberty Times Group. The views expressed in this article are his own.
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