The story made the front page of both the Taipei Times and the Taiwan News on Tuesday, while the China Post buried it on page 19. The Bush Administration’s message to Taiwan: You want to play political games with your security? Include us out.
To be honest, I’m surprised this didn’t happen sooner. What did Taiwan’s KMT party leaders think they could do – block the 2001 special arms bill ANOTHER 58 times over the NEXT two years, and get away with it, scot-free? Bush took the flak from China for offering weapons that the KMT itself requested in the late ’90s, and the KMT said thank you by wittingly or unwittingly colluding with Communist China to keep the island undefended.
So now, the KMT is receiving a little thank you in return – Texas-style.
I DO have a few minor criticisms about the way this was handled. First, top U.S. officials should have publicly spoken about Washington’s growing impatience, which would have given the lie to the KMT’s local spin that their intransigence was actually earning America’s respect. Second, the KMT chairman, Ma Ying-jeou, should have been given the cold shoulder during his visit to America back in March of this year. That would have been a clear sign of Washington’s displeasure with the KMT’s antics. Perhaps harsh words WERE spoken to him in private; but politically speaking, those conversations were irrelevant. Ma was able to return to Taiwan and portray the red-carpet treatment he received as whole-hearted American support for his party’s capitulationist policies.
Finally, I think the timing of this is also a mistake. Right now, all eyes in Taiwan are distracted by the Depose [President] Chen circus, which will soften the impact of this move. Picture such a bombshell being dropped a month before the Taiwanese legislative elections – that would have been BEAUTIFUL.
UPDATE (Oct 6/06): The View from Taiwan is a bit more indignant over this than I am. As for myself, I’ve been expecting some kind of American response to the KMT’s stonewalling for a long time now. But I certainly agree with these sentiments:
If the US really wants Taiwan to purchase those weapons, it needs to lean on the Blues, and hard. It needs to stop coddling KMT visitors. It needs to get credible people over here who will warn the KMT that US patience is exhausted, and that the US will switch its support to the Greens if the KMT does not start serving the interests of Taiwan, and it needs to keep doing that until the message gets through. It is incredible at this late date, with the Blues blocking the arms purchase after promising it would go through, fomenting unrest in Taiwan’s streets, paralyzing the government, and cooperating with China, that any American policymaker could consider them a viable partner for future long-term cooperation.
As I said earlier, the timing for this was pretty bad. There hasn’t been so much as a single editorial here in the English papers about the issue, because everyone’s preoccupied with anti-Chen protesters. If you want to send a message to someone, you have to make sure they’re at home to pick up the the phone.
UPDATE (Oct 31/06): America ratchets up the pressure, cancelling an annual meeting between the American and Taiwanese military:
[A Taiwanese Ministry of National Defense spokesman] told the Taipei Times by telephone that an annual meeting in which officials from the ministry’s Armaments Bureau travel to the US for exchanges with the US military had been suspended.
A ministry source, speaking on condition of anonymity, told the Liberty Times, (the Taipei Times‘ sister newspaper), that the ministry had tried to salvage the situation, but was told that the decision had been made by a high-ranking official in the White House.
Hope the Taiwanese people get the message soon, because the KMT obviously isn’t.
UPDATE (Nov 14/06): Looks like there’s still some movement on the F-16 C/Ds.
LOL. We both pegged coddling Ma. I’ll have Mark Stokes talk at the last Swenson’s meetup up in a few days — he was the Pentagon’s Taiwan guy for seven years, and had some interesting things to say.
Michael