There is talk of a stunning reversal of White House - and, indeed, American - policy towards Taiwan. Bill Kristol:
[A]ccording to numerous government sources, the senior director for Asian affairs at the National Security Council, James Moriarty, and Doug Paal, the de facto U.S. ambassador to Taiwan, are urging President Bush to declare, privately and perhaps publicly, that the United States opposes Taiwan's independence. This would be a significant change in America's so-called "One-China Policy," a change very much in Beijing's favor.
The print edition of the Wall Street Journal offered an editorial on the subject today, as well, echoing that "[Moriarty and Paal] want Mr. Bush to change U.S. policy on Taiwan independence from one of neutral 'non-support' to active and presumably public 'opposition.'"
Not suprisingly, both conservative publications warn that such a decision would not only risk escalating tensions between the two Pacific nations, but would stand as flatly contradictory to the president's overriding foreign policy of spreading democracy. Appeasing the world's most powerful totalitarian state does not exactly jive.
Here's where the situation gets interesting: the Journal, perhaps trying to be fair to the interests of Paal and Moriarty, did a bit of an overreach in describing Taiwan's confrontation with China. Here it is, draped across about five paragraphs:
The U.S. policy shift is also being advocated as a way to rein in the admittedly erratic behavior of Taiwan President Chen Shui-bian. ...Mr. Chen would love to replay the events of 2000, when he rallied victory after the mainland Chinese Premier wagged his finger and told Taiwanese not to vote for him....[Shui-bian's] goal seems to be to steer a course toward Taiwanese independence that goes just far enough to infuriate China into public threats, but not so far as to spark a war.
...So Mr. Chen has been raising the ante. ...He now also wants to invoke a provision for holding a "sovereignty" referendum. ...His excuse for the referendum...so Mr. Chen is flirting with disaster like never before.
...The job of reining in Mr. Chen can best be accomplished by the Taiwanese people...
Too often the passage of time so ossifies a debate that people are separated from their dearest principles. The Wall Street Journal seems to have fallen into the same trap it anticipates snaring Bush. Does the Journal actually believe that a nascent country's provocation - through referendum for declaration of democratic independence - of its vastly militarily superior, authoritarian motherland across the ocean is "combustible" behavior? What a shame the paper wasn't published two hundred years ago, when it could help "rein in" the "admittedly erratic" likes of Patrick Henry, John Adams, and Thomas Jefferson. I think the Journal's editors need to refresh their perspective - and realize what they wrote about the struggle for freedom today.