U.S. back on unilateral track on Taiwan

Xin Bei, China Daily, Asia News Network, Beijing

As the six-month anniversary of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks spurred American people to reflect mournfully, the Bush administration was eager to pick up its unilateral approach again.

By granting a visa to Taiwan's so-called "defense minister" Tang Yiau-ming, the U.S. government showed no hesitation in putting one of its key bilateral relationships severely to the test.

Regardless of Beijing's strong opposition, the U.S. government allowed Taiwan to send a representative to a military conference held in Florida earlier this week.

The U.S. government insisted that the three-day conference was merely an unofficial gathering. It was reported that U.S. Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz had met Tang at the arms summit, marking the highest-level military contact between Taiwan and the U.S. since Washington severed formal ties with Taiwan in 1979.

As early as December 1978, China and the U.S. issued a joint communique on the establishment of diplomatic relations. In the document, the U.S. said it "recognizes the government of the People's Republic of China as the sole legal government of China" and "acknowledges the Chinese position that there is but one China and Taiwan is a part of China."

Since then, it has been the U.S. government's obligation to adhere to the "one China" principle and earnestly implement the three communiques between the Chinese and U.S. governments.

To fulfill its promises, the U.S. should maintain only cultural, commercial and other non-governmental relations with Taiwan. It should oppose Taiwan independence and the idea of "two Chinas" or "one China, one Taiwan" and it should not stand in the way of Chinese reunification.

Acting otherwise will only destroy the external conditions necessary for the Chinese government to strive for peaceful reunification.

However, from time to time, the U.S. government has failed to match its words with deeds and the one-year-old Bush administration has been particularly guilty of this.

U.S. President George W. Bush, while publicly backing the Chinese government's "one China" policy, announced last April the most comprehensive arms deal with Taipei since 1992, including the dispatch of four Kidd-class destroyers, eight diesel submarines and 12 P-3C submarine-hunting aircraft.

He also bluntly declared that he would do "whatever it takes" to defend the island.

Coming just after Bush reiterated his commitment to the "one China" policy during his visit to Beijing last month, this week's defense meeting is an open violation of the Sino-U.S. communiques and will encourage Taiwan's separatists.

Maybe hard-line U.S. politicians believe that, by adopting a tough stance on China, they are defending the core interests of their country.

Unfortunately, the possibility of miscalculation on their part seems high.

Hardliners with a deeply rooted "cold war" mentality have pushed hard on the Taiwan question, and Taiwan separatists have thus sought to take advantage of this at the expense of the stability of Sino-U.S. relations.

Nevertheless, hardline U.S. policies -- largely based on the assumption that China poses a strategic, economic and cultural threat -- can only create a tragic, self-fulfilling prophecy.

In fact, if Sept. 11 was a wake-up call to the Americans, it should also be a wake-up call to the hawks in the Bush administration.

One vital lesson the U.S. should definitely learn from the tragedy is that unilateralism is not an option.

As the world has awakened to the threat of terrorism, a new concept of security is taking shape, at the core of which is security through mutual trust and development through co- operation.

It is now evident that the opportunity to tear terrorism out by the roots lies in a global coalition of responsible governments that is as wide as possible.

Those who determine U.S. foreign policy must therefore recognize that many of the new threats can only be countered through multilateral responses.

Sadly, it was only after the first hijacked plane hit the World Trade Center in New York that the U.S. notion of unilateralism was seriously questioned; but it has still not been questioned sufficiently.

Withdrawing its support for treaties on environmental protection, nuclear testing, biological weapons and even the anti-ballistic missile treaty, the Bush administration has fully exposed its intention of unilateralism in the past year.

After softening its stance for a while as it reached out to other countries for help in its "anti-terrorism" war, the U.S. government has now wrongly risked its bilateral ties with China with this week's defense meeting.

The U.S. administration has always referred to the Taiwan Relations Act to deny its responsibility for hurting Sino-U.S. relations.

The Taiwan Relations Act, however, is only a U.S. document that China has opposed from the very beginning.

The latest provocative act may have U.S. domestic backing but it really only fits in well with politicians seeking to score political points and profit-hungry arms contractors.

Blindly putting the domestic concerns of one's country above its international commitments is not a wise way to safeguard long-term security.

The Taiwan question could remain an especially dangerous flashpoint as long as the U.S. refuses to reject its myopic unilateralism.