What's gotten in to Uncle Colin?
With the election and "missing explosives" and Osama bin Laden Kerry endorsements raging all this week, Colin Powell's shafting of Taiwan got buried beneath the static.
Powell told CNN and Hong Kong-based Phoenix Television the following:
“There is only one China. Taiwan is not independent. It does not enjoy sovereignty as a nation, and that remains our policy, our firm policy.”
Needless to say, this royally pissed off the Taiwanese without extracting a blessed thing from the ChiComms on pressuring their North Korean clients. Retorted Taiwanese President Chen Shui-bian, “Taiwan is absolutely a sovereign, independent nation. It’s a great nation, and it absolutely does not belong to the People’s Republic of China. That is the present situation, that is the reality.”
Using the island’s official name, Republic of China, Chen said no country had the right to tell Taiwan it isn’t independent. “Other countries, whether they have official diplomatic relations with our country or not, have no way of influencing or deny the present situation and the fact that the Republic of China or Taiwan is a sovereign, independent nation.”
Taiwanese Premier Yu Shyi-kun was even blunter: “Taiwan is a sovereign, independent nation. This is reality.”
Apparently realizing how badly he had stepped in it, the SecState was backpedaling furiously only a day later. He lamely "clarified" his earlier remarks in a CNBC interview Wednesday, saying the "goal" "really is to have a peaceful resolution of the problem" between Taiwan and China, which split amid civil war in 1949.
I didn't find an analysis of this FUBAR until yesterday. The money shot is this:
"It is unsettling for the United States to be seen siding with an arrogant, belligerent, and aggressive Communist dictatorship against any democracy. But Taiwan isn't just any democracy: It has been one of America's staunchest allies — despite the 1979 break in formal diplomatic relations. Over the past 16 years, Taiwan has been the biggest purchaser of U.S. defense services and equipment, even bigger than Saudi Arabia or Israel. Taiwan is America's tenth-largest export market. Taiwan has Asia's fifth-largest military and Asia's second-largest merchant-marine fleet (after China's). And with the approval of long-range radar systems for Taiwan's army, the island could potentially be a vital link in America's global missile-defense architecture. It is the world's 17th-largest economy (on par with Russia's), and has nearly twice the population of Australia. The State Department also acknowledges that Taiwan is the third-largest contributor to Afghan reconstruction. Taiwan gave $150 million to U.S. efforts in the war on terror, refugee and victim relief, and Afghan reconstruction since the 9/11 attacks — and at Washington's request, it has seized dangerous chemical cargo from a North Korean ship, something no other U.S. partner except Japan has been willing to do.
"Yet somehow Secretary Powell has been persuaded that democratic Taiwan's interests can be sacrificed to the warlike threats of Communist China."
This makes Powell's decision to leave his Cabinet post after Bush's first term look better and better. But it won't be enough unless Dubya makes fumigating Foggy Bottom a second term priority, and reorients State toward actually representing American national interests instead of a dictator-fellating "international stability" that is indistinguishable from the foreign policy nostrums of the man he will have defeated.
Sure, it'll incense his enemies there. But it's not as if they've been refraining from stabbing him in the back for the past two years. Once safely re-elected, it'll be long since time for some payback.
Nominating Condi Rice as Powell's replacement would be a good start.
Powell told CNN and Hong Kong-based Phoenix Television the following:
“There is only one China. Taiwan is not independent. It does not enjoy sovereignty as a nation, and that remains our policy, our firm policy.”
Needless to say, this royally pissed off the Taiwanese without extracting a blessed thing from the ChiComms on pressuring their North Korean clients. Retorted Taiwanese President Chen Shui-bian, “Taiwan is absolutely a sovereign, independent nation. It’s a great nation, and it absolutely does not belong to the People’s Republic of China. That is the present situation, that is the reality.”
Using the island’s official name, Republic of China, Chen said no country had the right to tell Taiwan it isn’t independent. “Other countries, whether they have official diplomatic relations with our country or not, have no way of influencing or deny the present situation and the fact that the Republic of China or Taiwan is a sovereign, independent nation.”
Taiwanese Premier Yu Shyi-kun was even blunter: “Taiwan is a sovereign, independent nation. This is reality.”
Apparently realizing how badly he had stepped in it, the SecState was backpedaling furiously only a day later. He lamely "clarified" his earlier remarks in a CNBC interview Wednesday, saying the "goal" "really is to have a peaceful resolution of the problem" between Taiwan and China, which split amid civil war in 1949.
I didn't find an analysis of this FUBAR until yesterday. The money shot is this:
"It is unsettling for the United States to be seen siding with an arrogant, belligerent, and aggressive Communist dictatorship against any democracy. But Taiwan isn't just any democracy: It has been one of America's staunchest allies — despite the 1979 break in formal diplomatic relations. Over the past 16 years, Taiwan has been the biggest purchaser of U.S. defense services and equipment, even bigger than Saudi Arabia or Israel. Taiwan is America's tenth-largest export market. Taiwan has Asia's fifth-largest military and Asia's second-largest merchant-marine fleet (after China's). And with the approval of long-range radar systems for Taiwan's army, the island could potentially be a vital link in America's global missile-defense architecture. It is the world's 17th-largest economy (on par with Russia's), and has nearly twice the population of Australia. The State Department also acknowledges that Taiwan is the third-largest contributor to Afghan reconstruction. Taiwan gave $150 million to U.S. efforts in the war on terror, refugee and victim relief, and Afghan reconstruction since the 9/11 attacks — and at Washington's request, it has seized dangerous chemical cargo from a North Korean ship, something no other U.S. partner except Japan has been willing to do.
"Yet somehow Secretary Powell has been persuaded that democratic Taiwan's interests can be sacrificed to the warlike threats of Communist China."
This makes Powell's decision to leave his Cabinet post after Bush's first term look better and better. But it won't be enough unless Dubya makes fumigating Foggy Bottom a second term priority, and reorients State toward actually representing American national interests instead of a dictator-fellating "international stability" that is indistinguishable from the foreign policy nostrums of the man he will have defeated.
Sure, it'll incense his enemies there. But it's not as if they've been refraining from stabbing him in the back for the past two years. Once safely re-elected, it'll be long since time for some payback.
Nominating Condi Rice as Powell's replacement would be a good start.
posted by JASmius at 1:03 PM
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