The decision by Vermont Senator James Jeffords to bolt the Republican Party and join the Democrats will likely have significant implications for US relations with Taiwan by affecting the fate of legislation dealing with Taiwan and China.
The switch puts the Democratic Party in control of the Senate, including the powerful Senate Foreign Relations Committee, where fierce pro-Taiwan chairman Republican Jesse Helms of North Carolina, will be replaced by Democrat Joseph Biden of Delaware, who has been lukewarm to Taiwan's needs in the overall Sino-US scheme of things.
The committee plays a crucial role in many congressional foreign policy issues by way of its constitutional role in endorsing treaties, approving foreign relations legislation and consenting to the appointment of key administration foreign policy officials, from the Secretary of State on down.
Helms is one of the Senate's most vigorous pro-Taiwan campaigners, and his loss of the chairmanship will remove a source of friction between the Senate and China, especially as it relates to Taiwan.
While Biden is also tough on China, he differs markedly with Helms on a number of key issues, and is generally expected to be more forgiving of Beijing's actions affecting the US.
For instance, Biden firmly opposed the appointment this spring of John R. Bolton to be Undersecretary of State for Arms Control and International Security, while Helms was Bolton's main champion in the Senate. Biden took issue with Bolton's earlier writings advocating US diplomatic recognition of Taiwan and his paid freelance writings for the Taiwan government. Biden also objected to Bolton's position against the UN and against the ABM treaty.
Helms is a strong supporter of President George W. Bush's planned national missile defense system, while Biden is an equally strong supporter of the 1972 Anti Ballistic Missile (ABM) treaty with Russia, which would have to be scrapped to buils the president's planned missile shield.
One of the casualties of the Senate switch will likely be to kill the so-called Taiwan Security Enhancement Act, one of Helm's top hobby horses which he had pledged to see enacted this year. Biden has spoken repeatedly against the bill, which would enhance military-to-military cooperation between the US and Taiwan. That bill would, according to Biden and other opponents, create a de-facto military alliance between Washington and Taipei, in violation of the Taiwan Relations Act and other laws and agreements that govern US-Taiwan interaction.
However, the Taiwan security bill might already have been scrapped unofficially as a result of the robust arms sales package the Bush administration approved to Taiwan last month. Helms had been holding up introduction of the bill pending the results of the arms sales package, and the shape of the package might have satisfied Helms that the administration's commitment to Taiwan was enough that the security bill was not needed.
In other issues, Helms was an implacable foe of granting China normal trade relations status and, last year, granting PNTR. Biden, on the other hand, has long supported normal trade status for China, and last year fought hard to derail an amendment that threatened to kill PNTR for China.
In a statement in January 2000 outlining his foreign policy priorities for last year, Biden said, "we must maintain our efforts to engage China, an emerging great power in Asia. Engagement is neither a slogan nor a strategy, it is a hard-headed means of advancing our national interest in the region. We can hardly ignore China, and it is folly to think we can isolate it."
Nevertheless, both Helms and Biden are equally incensed by China's worsening human rights violations and its proliferation of nuclear weapons and other weapons of mass destruction to countries Washington considers "rogue states." Both have consistently supported US resolutions condemning China's human rights violations at the annual meetings of the UN Human Rights Commission in Geneva, and the condemnation of China contained in the annual State Department Human Rights Reports.
Biden was the author and main champion of the law that created Radio Free Asia.
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