The US Strategic Pivot to Asia and Cross-Strait Relations

Economic and Security Dynamics

P. Chow

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781137360779
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Asian Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Providing a coherent and current account of how the U.S. manages to 'pivot to Asia' amid a rising China, this book provides an insightful glimpse into China-US relations, and the complexities of the two nations' economic and defense issues as China asserts is financial and military might in Asia and beyond.

SECTION III

Retrospect and Prospect of Cross-Strait Relations amid US Pivot to Asia

CHAPTER 9

Why Taiwan? ROC Leaders Explain Taiwan’s Strategic Value

Steven Phillips

Where does Taiwan fit in East Asia? Since late 2011, President Barack Obama and his cabinet have promised a “pivot” or “rebalancing” to reassert American influence in the region.¹ Obama seeks to implement a variety of measures in response to China’s increasing power and to perceptions that wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have distracted the United States. The pivot includes a redeployment of military assets, greater diplomatic engagement, and measures to boost economic integration. The United States has increased its military cooperation (and sometimes its military presence) in an arc stretching from Japan to Australia to India. Washington has enhanced the level of diplomatic representation at regional and bilateral meetings. Finally, gradual progress toward the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a regional trading group advocated by the United States, highlights the economic side of the pivot. Leaders in most of the countries around China have encouraged the American initiative.

Based on Taiwan’s position near vital sea-lanes, as well as its democratic political system and advanced level of economic development, one might expect the island to be part of the pivot. Any effort to ensure freedom of navigation in the East China Sea or South China Sea, or to maintain a balance of power in the region, is unlikely to succeed without Taiwan’s participation. Regional economic arrangements, such as the Trans-Pacific Partnership, would benefit from the active participation of Taiwan, one of the 30 largest economies in the world and a vital contributor to the global information technology industry. However, Obama and his secretaries of state (Hillary Clinton and, most recently, John Kerry) have said little of Taiwan’s role in these policies. This is not a new experience for Taiwan. Even during the height of the Cold War, American leaders were ambivalent about embracing the Republic of China (ROC) on Taiwan.

English-language scholarship on Washington’s views of Taiwan’s importance is voluminous, and Alan Wachman has ably documented the Chinese Communists’ views.² This brief chapter will introduce interpretations of the island’s significance from Chiang Kai-shek through Ma Ying-jeou, and compare their views to those held by a series of American presidential administrations. Taiwan’s rulers offered a series of “mental maps” of the region that reflected shifting conceptions of national security. A “mental map means an ordered but continually adapting structure of the mind—alternatively conceivable as a process—by reference to which a person acquires, codes, stores, recalls, reorganizes, and applies, in thought or action, information about his or her large-scale geographical environment, in part or in its entirety.”³ Here, mental maps are frameworks for understanding where Taiwan fits within the region, in an American-led alliance structure, and vis-à-vis China. Is the island part of an arc of containment or is it a base for an attack directed against the People’s Republic? Is Taiwan part of a regional community of democracies or an avenue for trade with the mainland? Does Taiwan stymie China’s international interaction or facilitate it? Does Taiwan benefit China or is it the other way around?

Containment and an ideological struggle against communism formed two key parts of America’s Cold War strategy. Leaders of the ROC tried to ensure that their conception of the island’s strategic value was compatible with Washington’s views, even as they sought to shape American policy to support the interests of Taipei. The Nationalists understood that their anticommunism and claims to democracy, as well as the island’s geographic position, combined to make Taiwan significant to Washington. During the 1950s, Taipei and Washington were mostly in sync in their approaches, but the two sides drifted apart by the late 1960s, as America’s leaders and public began to question the wisdom of supporting right-wing anticommunist regimes in South Vietnam, South Korea, and the Republic of China. Many Americans also called for greater engagement with Chiang’s rival across the strait.⁴ Washington’s gradually declining enthusiasm for the Nationalists on Taiwan almost collapsed in the 1970s, when President Richard Nixon visited China and President Jimmy Carter switched recognition to the People’s Republic. America’s China policy underwent fundamental changes even as many Nationalists continued to promote a strategic vision from the early Cold War.

During the 1980s and 1990s, the two sides were once again able to promote a common model of the island’s importance. President Lee Teng-hui reconciled the Nationalists to the collapse of the ROC’s diplomatic position and built the regime’s legitimacy through economic development and democratization. Anticommunism and containment disappeared. Further, Nationalist claims to membership in a family of democratic nations had become credible due to comprehensive reform. Both the United States and the ROC highlighted Taiwan’s economic and political transformation, and held up the island as a model for the mainland. Under President Chen Shui-bian, the first president who did not come from the Nationalist Party ranks, the gap between Washington and Taipei widened once again. Chen’s efforts to push the envelope on the independence issue put the island into more open opposition to the mainland even as Washington policy-makers focused on engagement with Beijing. The beleaguered president’s vision of Taiwan as a bastion of democracy was drowned out by concerns over cross-strait conflict.

When President and the Nationalist Party leader Ma Ying-jeou took office in 2008, Taiwan and the United States appeared in sync, as Taipei focused on improving cross-strait relations through economic integration and on avoiding contentious issues related to sovereignty. Taiwan was contextualized less as part of a community of democracies and more as a partner of the mainland. Under Obama, however, the United States, with the support of many nations in the region, appears to be hedging its bets on China’s peaceful rise and even seeking to limit Beijing’s influence. Can Ma reconcile his view of Taiwan as peacemaker and economic partner of China with shifting American policies and presence in East Asia? Does Ma’s portrayal of Taiwan fit with growing regional concerns over China’s assertiveness and military power?

Taiwan as a Cold War Bastion

Taiwan’s security dilemma grew from China’s unfinished civil war and the one-China policy. In 1949, the Nationalist government led by Chiang Kai-shek collapsed on the mainland and retreated to Taiwan, which became the final redoubt for up to 2 million soldiers, bureaucrats, businessmen, and their families. Mao Zedong and Chiang agreed that there existed only one legitimate China and that dual recognition was unacceptable—every nation had to make a choice. Many countries, particularly newly decolonized nations in Asia, chose to recognize Mao’s People’s Republic rather than Chiang’s Republic of China. In this context, it is not surprising that the Nationalists desperately sought allies. China’s civil war had to be connected to the anticommunist crusade led by the United States—America’s 1950’s “pivot” to the region. Besides desiring reinvigorated ties with the United States, Chiang dreamed of creating a multilateral alliance, an East Asian North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). When that effort failed, the Nationalists turned to mass organizations, such as the Asian Peoples’ Anti-Communist League (APACL), in order to make Taiwan into a regional center of anticommunist activity.

From 1950 through the 1970s, Chiang focused on Taiwan as “Free China,” a vital link in the containment chain. The rhetorical strategies and images set before the Korean War would last through the next three decades. For example, in March of 1950, Chiang explained how helping his regime had regional significance, noting that “Geographically the countries of the West Pacific depend upon one another and their interests are identical. Both Taiwan and Hainan are the main front lines of the West Pacific areas against the Red Tide.”⁵ Chiang’s biography would later claim that

He [Chiang] determined upon a new approach. The onrushing tide of Communism in East Asia was threatening not only China, but Korea, Indo-China, Burma, Malaya and the Philippines. If all of these nations could be united in an East Asia anti-Communist entente, it would be possible to approach the United States with a constructive proposal to contain Communism within its present area.⁶

Taiwan, as the hub of a multilateral military pact, had several functions beyond a passive containment of China. The Nationalists hoped the regional initiative would motivate Washington to increase its support. K. C. Wu, who would accompany Chiang on his Philippines visit in 1949, complained to Americans that “China, PI [the Philippines], and South Korea [are treated] as Far East orphans as [a] result [of ] State Department inaction but [they are] still in US camp and hoping for better treatment.”⁷ Shih-chieh Wang, who held a plethora of government posts including Secretary in the President’s Office after the retreat to Taiwan, reported to US diplomats that “there was [a] realization [that the] initiative must be taken in Far East and that there must be [a] demonstration of [the] possibility [of ] success before hoped for American participation and assistance could be expected.”⁸ To the Nationalists, a regional anticommunist military alliance (fangong junshi lianmeng) would do more than block the expansion of China’s influence. Such an agreement would facilitate retaking the mainland, thus fulfilling Chiang’s 1949 promise of “one year to prepare, two years to counterattack, three years to sweep clean, five years to success.”⁹

In 1949, Chiang met with leaders of South Korea and the Philippines, two other men who felt that Washington was not heeding their security concerns. After a summit with the Generalissimo, Philippine President Elpidio Quirino briefly became a vocal proponent of a “Pacific Union.” As was the case with Chiang, Quirino saw a regional security treaty as the framework to increase US assistance. It also offered an opportunity for Quirino to highlight his role as a regional leader, something Chiang was happy to support if it served his interests. He portrayed the union as an “answer to the threat of Red imperialism and new slavery” and called for “common counsel and assistance” among Asian nations.¹⁰

Chiang and the South Korean strongman Syngman Rhee met at Chinhae Bay on Korea’s southern tip in August of 1949. Upon arrival, Chiang publicly called for an “anti-Communist union.”¹¹ Their joint statement declared that “international communism … must be eradicated and to combat this common threat we must fight collectively as well as individually. Security can only be strengthened by solidarity.” Both supported the July Chiang-Quirino statement and called upon the Philippine president to “take all necessary steps to bring about the birth of the proposed union” through another, larger, conference. The details of each state’s responsibilities within the proposed union were not revealed publicly.¹² Behind the scenes, there was less to the meeting than the public declaration would suggest. Americans in Seoul reported that Rhee stated that the Chinese were “somewhat disappointed but they understood” that South Korea could not join a military pact with the Chinese and Filipinos.¹³ Washington stymied these arrangements by making clear its lack of interest in a multilateral pact along the model of NATO. Nor could Chiang count on bilateral help from the United States.

The Korean War renewed American support, giving Nationalist leaders confidence in that their regime would survive, or even counterattack the mainland. Chiang Kai-shek’s government continued to make its case for the importance of the island, both echoing and modifying the views of some Americans. In particular, General Douglas MacArthur’s map of Taiwan’s value corresponded most closely to the Nationalists’ ideal. In August 1950, he drew a line from Alaska southward, an...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Contents
• List of Figures and Tables
• Foreword
• Preface
• Section I: The Role of Taiwan Strait in the US Strategic Pivot to Asia
• Section II: Economic-Security Nexus and China’s Responses
• Section III: Retrospect and Prospect of Cross-Strait Relations amid US Pivot to Asia
• List of Contributors
• Index