Last week, on the heels of the recall election that turned out so badly for Taiwan, came the news that US President Donald Trump had blocked the transit of President William Lai (賴清德) through the US on his way to Latin America. A few days later the international media reported that in June a scheduled visit by Minister of National Defense Wellington Koo (顧立雄) for high level meetings was canceled by the US after China’s President Xi Jinping (習近平) asked Trump to curb US engagement with Taiwan during a June phone call. The cancellation of Lai’s transit was a gaudy slap in the face, but the rejection of the Koo visit was probably more important.
Permitting presidents to transit through the US is longstanding policy, though this is not the first time that the US had altered plans. The novel move was that both Taiwan and the US issued denials that a trip had ever been planned. A State Department spokesman said: “Taiwan has not announced any travel plans for President Lai. So that is generally a hypothetical — now, I know it’s been in the news… There have been no plans — travel plans for the president. There has been, as a result, nothing canceled.”
Really? Like many international and local media, this paper quoted Paraguayan President Santiago Pena in a July 16 report that Paraguay was preparing to welcome President Lai in August. Lai’s trip would likely involve transiting in the US.
Photo: Reuters
NATIONAL SECURITY THREATS
Smiles all around in Beijing, no doubt. Yet it should be noted that during the kerfuffle over the non-cancellation of unplanned presidential transits the Vice Premier, Cheng Li-chun (鄭麗君), was actually in DC in talks about the tariffs. That visit could just as easily have been cut short.
Despite that, the threat to US national security and to Taiwan’s security from the Lai transit cancellation seemed obvious, and widely remarked on by pundits. There is already a perception that Trump’s Undersecretary of Defense for Policy, Elbridge Colby, is preparing to use the excuse of Taiwan’s too-low military spending to abandon Taiwan. Many others, especially in pro-China venues, have called for this. The canceled visits will feed this perception.
Photo: AFP
Much of the commentary will assign the blame for this debacle to the mercurial, transactional Trump, but the fact is that Taiwan has always been treated as an asset to be traded for something from the People’s Republic of China (PRC). This approach to Taiwan is bipartisan (see my “How the US fails Taiwan,” March 24, 2024). It strengthens the claim by the pro-PRC forces that the US is an unreliable ally that doesn’t care about Taiwan. Ironically, the US, demanding that Taiwan spend more on defense, hands Taiwan a reason not to spend.
The US has also rewarded the PRC by carrying out a small but concrete action that hurts its own and allied interests in exchange for… the chance to talk. This pattern is also an old and common one in US-PRC relations. Remember when the administration of Barack Obama canceled a major arms sale so it could get climate talks with the PRC? The PRC then went on to build coal plants at a furious rate and become the world’s largest source of greenhouse gases.
Over a decade ago Heritage Foundation commentator Walter Lohmann noted that the PRC dictates the terms of what is “stability” and the US simply accepts that. Nothing has changed.
Too often the commentary focuses on the US-Taiwan-PRC triangle. Yet, another piece of fallout, spotted by a handful of observers, is that Lai’s visit was to three countries in Latin America that are not friendly with the PRC and were supporting the US. Trump’s decision also hurt Taiwan’s relations with them.
By taking over the media, news of the transit cancellation erased the possibility of considering the silence from the US during the recall. The US blew another opportunity to communicate with the Taiwanese people directly and positively during a key local election. Certain voices that carry real weight in Taiwan and should have been talking loudly for months were also silent. Again, these are all voices that have been warning Taiwan to spend more. As voices of private citizens, they can comment in any way they please. Even if the recalls were going down to defeat, US speakers should be displaying vigor and commitment, not passivity.
TARIFF CASH GRAB
It is tempting to read the vice premier’s continued presence in Washington for tariff negotiations as suggesting that the cancellation of Lai’s visit was merely low-cost political theater and the substance of US-Taiwan relations remains strong. It is clear that Trump’s tariff negotiations with Taiwan (and other Asian states) are being conducted without regard for the security needs of either Taiwan or the US. A cash grab, they signal nothing one way or the other about the level of support in Washington for Taiwan.
In late May it was widely reported that Trump officials had promised that weapons sales to Taiwan would exceed the US$18.3 billion in sales from the first term. Whether these promises will be carried out is another matter, but they have not been mentioned in connection with Trump’s desire for talks with the PRC. Yet.
Small consolation: there is a tide in US-PRC relations. One real possibility here is that the PRC will make promises that it will then not carry out, as it always does. Or Trump will come away from the meeting in Stockholm with nothing. The result then could be a U-turn in Taiwan policy similar to Trump’s recent shift on Ukraine, once Trump is disappointed.
The Central News Agency queried well known scholar Bonnie Glaser, managing director of the Indo-Pacific Program at the US-based German Marshall Fund, about the recalls. She was quoted as saying: “The deep polarization in Taiwan’s politics is harmful to national security. Taiwan’s ruling and opposition parties need to strike compromises that strengthen governance and deliver better outcomes for the people.”
A happy thought, but far from reality. Rather, as many observers feared, the recall win is likely to make the KMT more brazen. US observers need to push the KMT harder.
Compromise? Some of us are old enough to remember the KMT’s scorched earth treatment of the Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) administration, which it is now repeating for the Lai administration. Indeed, last week legislator Chen Gau-tzu (陳昭姿) of the KMT-allied Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) listed three conditions under which the TPP could cooperate with the DPP: treat former TPP Chair Ko Wen-je (柯文哲), now in detention in a corruption investigation, “fairly”; submit to the “legislative reforms” that the KMT and TPP passed last year; and support the TPP’s surrogate pregnancy bill. The DPP has no control over how prosecutors and courts treat Ko, while acceptance of the legislative “reforms” means acquiescing to a legislative dictatorship. These are not the conditions of a party looking for compromise.
It’s going to be a long, bitter three years.
Notes from Central Taiwan is a column written by long-term resident Michael Turton, who provides incisive commentary informed by three decades of living in and writing about his adoptive country. The views expressed here are his own.
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