President Chen's long trip to
nowhere By Ting-I Tsai
TAIPEI - On a sunny afternoon on
May 5, the aircraft carrying Taiwanese
President Chen Shui-bian finally landed at
Chiang Kai-shek Airport, ending a 10-day global
odyssey from Taipei to Abu Dhabi to Costa Rica then Amsterdam for
a brief stop, after Chen refused Washington's
offer to use Alaska as a refueling stop.
Despite Chen's and his administration's
claims that the trip was meant to fight for
Taiwan's diplomatic recognition, concerns about
the damage it may have caused to US-Taiwan
bilateral ties have been raised in both Taipei and
Washington. Furthermore, an anti-Chen coalition
made up of Washington, Beijing and Taiwan's
opposition Kuomintang party has obviously been
formed.
"I think that US-Taiwan ties have
hit a new low. Improving the relationship is
possible, but trust is not rebuilt overnight and
requires a concerted effort,"
said Bonnie Glaser, senior associate at the
Washington-based Center for Strategic and
International Studies (CSIS).
Most of the
countries that still officially recognize Taiwan
as the Republic of China are in Latin America. To
fly there from Taiwan usually requires a refueling
stop in the United States. If relations are
reasonably good, that stop may be in an important
US city, with the president allowed to leave the
aircraft to meet local supporters.
If
relations are cool, that means a quick refueling
job in some place like Anchorage, the president
required to remain on board. So Washington's offer
of Alaska was correctly interpreted in Taipei as a
deliberate snub and was rejected.
"The
whole trip was an acrobatic performance. If he
meant to piss Washington off, he should have made
a stopover in Iran or North Korea," said Antonio
Chiang, former deputy secretary general of
Taiwan's National Security Council. "Chen has
tried very hard, but he didn't do Taiwan's
diplomacy any good."
The official purpose
of Chen's trip was to attend the inauguration
ceremony of Costa Rican President Oscar Arias.
Taiwan submitted its request for Chen's stopover
shortly after Chinese President Hu Jintao left
Washington. At the time Chen himself believed,
based on hints from Washington, that a stopover
would be allowed at San Francisco and maybe New
York City. But the US shifted the transit site to
Alaska just prior to his departure.
At a
press conference in Costa Rica, Chen defended
himself by arguing, "I'm not doing this for fun. I
would rather take less time, but I need to be
concerned with Taiwan's dignity." Neglecting urges
to stop the steady decline in US-Taiwan bilateral
ties, Chen chose to make a surprise visit to Libya
followed by Indonesia on his return journey rather
than transit in Alaska. A proposed stop in
Lebanon, however, was not approved.
Interpreting the scenario's development,
Michael Green, former senior director at the
National Security Council for Asian Affairs and
now senior adviser at the CSIS, said: "I think the
senior people in Washington were nervous after
President Chen's remarks on abolishing the
National Unification Council and were being extra
cautious for fear that President Chen might
surprise them again on US soil."
Shortly
after his Democratic Progressive Party suffered a
severe defeat in local elections at the end of
last year, Chen announced his decision to abolish
the National Unification Council, an organization
created in the early 1990s by the former
Kuomintang government to promote unification with
mainland China. Because he did so without
consulting Washington, the Americans considered
this a violation of his pledge not to push for
Taiwan's de jure independence.
Washington
worried that he was going back on the promise made
in his first inauguration speech in 2000 not to
declare independence, not to promote a referendum
over independence, not to push for inclusion of
the so-called "state-to-state" description in the
constitution, nor change the national name to "The
Republic of Taiwan".
Chen seemed to go
back on that promise by pushing for Taiwan's first
ever referendum at the end of 2003. Then came the
fracas over the unification council. That left
Washington concerned whether Chen would pull
another is dramatic tactic, such as announcing a
national title change, and doing it while on US
soil.
"This is the concern - that
President Chen believes he can continually play
with issues that are that dramatic and get away
with it," said a Washington-based observer, who
spoke under the condition of anonymity.
Back in 2003, Chen was allowed to make a
transit stop in New York City to receive a
human-rights award. While there, he made several
public statements amid the vehement objections of
Beijing. The then chairwoman of the American
Institute in Taiwan, Therese Shaheen, declared
that US President George W Bush was "the guardian
angel" of Chen's trip, which provoked even more
wrath from Beijing.
Chen's public approval
rating has dropped to less than 20% in the past
few months, in part because of his wife's
suspected involvement in some financial scandals,
so he also faces the cruel reality of becoming an
irrelevant lame duck in the last two years of his
presidency (which ends in 2008).
"Chen has
initiated more and more offensive tactics to
consolidate his party while he is weak," said Wu
Yu-shan, director of the Academia Sinica's
Institute of Political Science. "But it has been
obvious that Washington, Beijing, and Taiwan's
opposition Kuomintang party have formed a
coalition effectively preventing Chen from going
too far."
Washington is bent on isolating
Chen by ignoring him. It did not trouble to
criticize Chen or Taiwan publicly during President
Hu's visit but instead chose to snub Chen on his
trip. At the same time it went out of its way to
welcome Taiwanese opposition leader Ma Ying-jeou
warmly last month.
In a hearing before a
committee of the US Congress, Deputy Secretary of
State Robert Zoellick said: "We want to be
supportive of Taiwan, while we're not encouraging
those that try to move towards independence.
Because let me be very clear: independence means
war."
The secretary general of the
Taiwanese Presidential Office, Mark Chen, is
scheduled to visit Washington soon for discussions
that may include future steps to make amends,
according to Washington observers.
Ting-I Tsai is a Taipei-based
freelance writer.
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