Taiwan needs to learn about pragmatism
and compromise to survive
2005/10/25
Jeff Geer Las Vegas,
USA
I am writing to you about the social problems of
Taiwan society and the growing political pressures of interest groups in
the USA and Taiwan. The general comments of readers often suggests the
U.S. is not entirely prepared to send its own American military assets to
defend Taiwan. The TRA-based military arms race in Taiwan is fueled by the
U.S. industrial military complex and budget spending is the crux of the
matter.
Taipei officials must use all TRA-based defense
spending budgets for black gold practices with the Washington policy
makers and the U.S. business lobbying interests concerned.
These DPP continuations of the old KMT lobbying practices in Washington
still reflect the Cold War mentality of all politicians in
Taipei.
There has been the very clear substitution of
one "Quasi-Leninist" party for another, but so little has politically
changed since the DPP assumed power in Taiwan.
The Nixon
doctrine of the 1972 Shanghai Communique was to slow down U.S. arms sales
to Taiwan and to withdraw from East Asia.
This has occurred
in sporadic fashion but the KMT legislative blockade of the arms spending
bill on numerous occasions demonstrates the Nixon objectives of 1972 are
occurring.
The "One China" policy has manifest itself in the
present reality of Taiwan politics, and it is unlikely it will fade away
soon.
As Taiwan society is resistant to military drafts, and
the vast majority of Taiwanese businessmen want to live unencumbered by
the hardline political objectives of those DPP ideologues who would send
the sons of Taiwanese parents to fight for a "Taiwan
republic".
Thus Taiwan society needs to find an alternate
protection mechanism in the absence of the will to fight for DPP
objectives.
Some will find reunification with China is a
political solution.
Others will find the Richard Hartzell
theory on the SFPT-based civil rights is the best solution for truly
preserving the political future of a Taiwan republic, especially as there
is no further need for expensive Taiwan defense expenditures and no more
ROC military conscription schemes under the Hartzell
solution.
In light of the political predicament in Taipei,
the DPP policy position on U.S. arms sales and ROC conscription is
untenable in the long term for 2008 and beyond, especially if the KMT wins
the Taiwan Presidency again.
I feel that Taiwan is not best
served by these highly confrontational DPP ideologues who lack their
God-given common sense in taking any political course of action with the
least political resistance from the KMT.
This is a good time
for some 'pan-green' political compromises, but not more DPP
ideologists with their Cold War lobbying objectives in DC.
Kissinger was a pragmatist, but oddly the Taiwan people have forgotten how
to be pragmatic ever since the DPP came into power. Hartzell is on the
right track, and his unambiguous interim solution of SFPT status, One
China policy, and TRA "civil rights" is politically palatable to everyone in
Taiwan except the DPP.
2005/09/07
Jeff
Geer Las Vegas, NV
The pending U.S. arms purchase bill in the
Legislature is a major political dilemma for Taiwan society that is not
easily resolved by political means.
In 1972, the Nixon
doctrine on Taiwan emerged in the Shanghai Communique signed with
Beijing.
It simply held that U.S. Armed Forces would slowly
withdraw from East Asia in Vietnam and Taiwan.
The 1979
Shanghai Communique saw the unilateral termination of the U.S.-ROC Mutual
Defense Treaty and the 1983 Shanghai Communique for declining U.S. arms
sales to Taiwan.
The Taiwan Relations Act has replaced the MDT, and TRA
has still continued to assist the U.S. military industrial complex in the
very profitable exports of their American-made military hardware to a
supposedly former Chinese ally on Taiwan.
While the Nixon
doctrine is to reduce the self-defense capacity of Taiwan like it did to
South Vietnam by 1975, the Taiwanese have still remained highly resilient
to Beijing's geopolitical intentions under the 1972 Nixon
doctrine.
Part of the resilience of Taiwan's self-defense
capacity is directly facilitated by a San Francisco Peace Treaty effect on
Taiwan status like the bilateral U.S.-defense mechanisms for Japan after
the World War II.
Both of their post-war self-defense needs
are directly related to the San Francisco Treaty as are their post-war
economic success.
This 1952 post-war treaty phenomena
certainly irritates many American strategists because it does not emulate
the multilateral NATO defense treaty system in the post-war era.
The
Nixon doctrine of 1972 in its origins is a political irony, and yet this
political subterfuge is systematically opposed to the 1952 San Francisco
Treaty self-defense needs of Japan and Taiwan spinoff in the
TRA.
Even if the KMT does not pass the massive arms bill,
the San Francisco system still remains in place for a steadfast
self-defense of the Taiwan economy during the process of Japanese de
colonization.
Perhaps the Taiwanese politicians and
businessmen should be more preoccupied with the business stability of the
island economy and allow the "San Francisco system" to work in favor of
their vested interests in the Taiwan separate customs
territory.
Dependence upon the American military for
self-defense does not require massive expenditures to "bribe" Washington
into political support of Taiwan.
The vested self-interests
of the San Francisco Treaty system are "life, liberty, and property"
(Downes v. Bidwell, Neely v. Henkel) and these treaty-based rights
inalienably accrue to the 23 million people of Taiwan without resorting to
the political intrigues of the Nixon doctrine's "One China
policy."
The former Japanese people of Taiwan really need to
invoke their vested rights of the San Francisco Treaty and refute the 1972
One China theory that they have no such treaty rights under the Nixon
doctrine just because they are ethnic Chinese.
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