Trump is tanking decades-old policy toward Taiwan — but it's not too late |
Trump is tanking decades-old policy toward Taiwan — but it’s not too late for change
President Trump seems determined to break U.S.-China and U.S.-Taiwan relations in as many historic ways as possible, but he persists in retaining the one policy most likely to result in cross-strait, regional and potentially global war.
Within days of his first election in 2016, the president-elect did what had been unprecedented until then — he accepted a congratulatory telephone call from Taiwan’s democratically elected president at that time, Tsai Ing-wen. No U.S. president has had direct contact with his counterpart in Taipei since 1979, when Jimmy Carter had his secretary of State call unelected President Chiang Ching-kuo with fateful news: The U.S. was breaking diplomatic relations with the Republic of China (Taiwan). Henceforth, Washington would formally recognize, exclusively, the People’s Republic of China, run by the Chinese Communist Party. The Mutual Defense Treaty of 1954 was also severed.
When Secretary Cyrus Vance and Chiang hung up their phones, it was universally expected, especially in Beijing, that it would be the last such contact between a U.S. president and any high-level Taiwanese official. That is how it has been for nearly four decades, until Trump took Tsai’s call. Although he rebuffed Beijing’s criticism that the call was “just a petty trick” with a refreshingly blunt response, essentially saying he would talk with anyone he wants to, he did not speak again with either Tsai or her successor, Lai Ching-te. Nor did President Joe Biden follow Trump’s precedent-breaking action in his own four years in the White House, and for the same reason as Trump — so as not to antagonize Xi Jinping.
During his recent face-to-face meeting with Xi, Trump openly discussed his pending decision to proceed with, modify, or abandon........