“He is bold and cunning. Even now he plays a game with peril and wins a throw. Hours of my precious time he has wasted already.”
Four Aprils ago Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) met US President Donald Trump for the chocolate cake lovefest at Mar-a-Lago. Pundit Daniel Drezner hyperventilated in the Washington Post (“The looming strategic disaster at Mar-a-Lago this week,” April 3, 2017) that “…So long as Trump can proclaim some glossy, high-profile investments, he is willing to trade off US interests in the Pacific Rim or Europe or wherever.”
That Trump would willy-nilly sell out key US interests for cash was a commonly held position, I suspect in part because uttering these sentiments aloud made commenters feel superior and in part because it identified them tribally as members of the Establishment in good standing.
Photo: EPA-EFE
Nearly four years later the end of his first term is upon us and, amazingly, Taiwan remains unsold. Indeed, we’ve been flooded with weapons sales and relations with the US have been upgraded, with Congress pitching in to support The Beautiful Island.
Was cash-for-assets ever really a threat? Trump is not the kind of “deal-maker” who keeps the deals he makes. Famously, he never pays for anything. Instead, his tactic is to troll with some possibility like a weapons sale or revising the “one China” policy (remember that one?) and use that as a vapor threat to extract concessions. He’s not going to hand over assets when he can extract favors by trolling with them. After all, assets are only useful (and fun for trolling!) if you hold them.
Whether Trump will sell Taiwan remains to be seen, but a more credible and still ongoing threat of selling out Taiwan remains, not from the Administration, but from within the foreign policy establishment itself.
Last month Paul Heer, a Distinguished Fellow of the Center for National Interest, argued in the National Interest (“The Inconvenient Truth About Taiwan’s Place in the World,” Sept. 7, 2020) that “the good news is that ... Beijing is not ... looking for excuses or an opportunity to attack Taiwan: it is looking for reasons not to do so” and went on to blame Washington and the administration of President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) for not giving Beijing sufficient reason to forego the pleasure of maiming and murdering Taiwanese and annexing their island.
Longtime observers will recognize, couched in forceful, informed and articulate polispeak, the familiar tropes of poor, put-upon Beijing and real men arguing for selling out their allies, along with an understanding of the Taiwan-US-China pavane now two decades out of date.
Heer even borrows the Chinese Communist Party’s (CPP) own language to describe its behavior, quoting the Chinese side in the Shanghai Communique: “the Taiwan question was the crucial issue obstructing the normalization of relations” between China and the US. In reality, the crucial issue obstructing Beijing’s view of “normal” relations — relations in which Washington is subordinate to Beijing — is the immensity of US power. Should the Taiwan issue disappear, another one will take its place as “the crucial issue” for which Beijing demands special accommodation. Describing Beijing’s motivations using its own language is merely spreading its propaganda.
Heer followed up this month with another piece in the same venue (“Understanding US-China Strategic Competition,” Oct. 20, 2020). This piece downplayed Chinese ambitions, assuring readers that “China is not seeking to destroy the US system or to supplant the United States as the global hegemon.”
One piece might be an interesting if antique take on US-China relations, two pieces downplaying the China threat hint at a media campaign.
Readers whose spidey sense is all a-tingle should open the Web page for Heer’s organization, the Center for National Interest (CfNI). One chairman emeritus is Henry Kissinger, a businessman with China interests who was once secretary of state. It was Kissinger who set up a Chinese channel to Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner for the Xi-Trump meeting in 2017. Its other chairman emeritus is Maurice R Greenberg, a longtime insurance executive who ran AIG when it was the largest insurance company in history. The current chairman is Drew Guff, who runs a private equity firm with a long list of corporate clients and offices in Shanghai, among other world cities. Guff is also a member of other elite foreign policy organizations.
Over a decade ago, Ken Silverstein observed in Harper’s Magazine (“The Mandarins,” August, 2008): “Today, most of America’s so-called experts on China, including advisers to Obama and McCain, have a definite if unacknowledged stake in keeping close ties with Beijing.” Silverstein pointed out then that four of Obama’s appointees, including China policy people, had ties to Stonebridge, an elite consulting firm which did business in China. A few years ago, when Evan Medeiros stepped down from high level Asia positions in the Obama Administration, he rotated out to the Eurasia group, which has business interests in…
Another example of this problem is Chas W Freeman Jr, once picked to head the National Intelligence Council under Obama (he was pressured into withdrawing his nomination). He frequently fulminates against Taiwan in his writing and speaking, arguing it belongs to China and should be sold out. Freeman, generally titled “Ambassador” by publications in his think-pieces, heads up Projects International, a consulting firm which — the reader has already guessed — has business interests in China. As Ben Franklin once observed, the advantage of having a reasoning mind is that it can think of reasons for anything.
Today foreign policy experts continue to rotate in and out of think tanks and organizations funded by Wall Street and corporations with business interests in China back into government positions, where, unsurprisingly, they argued for “restraint” and “constructive” engagement, the view that China would westernize and democratize, inevitably, as it became wealthy and globalized. In fact, the opposite occurred.
The results of this policy were manifest in the dilatory and timid Obama China policy these experts bequeathed us, which provided eight years for China to ramp up its strength, annex the South China Sea and put smaller nations on its borders such as Laos and Cambodia on the road to being protectorates, along with the intensification of its surveillance state and the oppression of minorities at home.
Twelve years ago Silverstein remarked: “Constructive engagement isn’t working well for the United States or the Chinese people, but it is working quite well for the very individuals from whom we might hope to see a new approach emerge…”
This remains true today. As a piece last week in The Hill described: “China’s investment in Western political, business, intellectual and opinion elites is complicated but is, fundamentally, an investment in the personal financial success of these elites, including their families, friends and partners. In turn, this results in a personal investment in China’s success.” (Thayer and Han, “China’s Investments in Western Elites Really Paid Off,” Oct. 28, 2020).
Those of us concerned with Taiwan will need to remain vigilant. Trump’s whimsical nature may remain a gaudy and distracting threat, but the real problem is the deep investment of many US foreign policy elites in China. When the reader encounters someone arguing for selling out Taiwan, look for the China interest. It won’t be far, because while the arc of the public policy universe is long, it bends toward money and power.
Long-time resident Michael Turton provides incisive commentary and analysis informed by three decades of living in and writing about Taiwan.
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