'Freedom' is just another word for an election Bush might lose...

In what many consider an election-year ploy to gain votes, Taiwan's democratically elected leader has proposed giving the people of Taiwan a voice in the debate about whether Taiwan is an independent nation or a province of China by voting on a referendum that would call upon China to remove missiles it currently has pointed at Taiwan and renounce the use of force to keep the island from breaking away from the mainland.

The Communist leaders of China responded by threatening to go to war if the referendum were held - even though the referendum would not be actually require that anything actually be done by China - it would just tell the leaders of China what the people of Taiwan want.) China sees the referendum as a signal that Taiwan is trying to move toward independence, something that has been an issue for over half-of-a-century.

The US maintains official relations with China, but has also pledged to help defend Taiwan if China were to take military action against it. The dispute between Taiwan and China over the referendum, therefore, puts the US in a bit of a sticky position. We don't want to anger China, but we have a commitment to Taiwan. So, what does President Bush decide to do? He warns China that "any military action against Taiwan by China would invite a forceful response from the United States, reiterating an earlier pledge to defend the island republic from potential mainland aggression", which is appropriate, but he also "cautioned Taiwan's leadership Tuesday against "comments and actions" aimed at independence, telling visiting Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao that the United States opposes such steps."

You might want to read that last part again, because it's rather important. Our President, whose administration has taken to justifying our war on Iraq by claiming we needed to bring democracy to the Middle East and freedom to the oppressed people of Iraq, tells Taiwan that we oppose any movement on their part toward independence from China and democratic freedom for themselves. One senior US official told CNN "We don't want to see Taiwan moving toward independence. We don't want to see any unilateral moves in that direction."

As a Washington Post editorial notes:

Yesterday President Bush essentially placed the United States on the side of the dictators who promise war, rather than the democrats whose threat is a ballot box. His gift to visiting Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao was to condemn "the comments and actions made by the leader of Taiwan" while ignoring the sanguinary rhetoric of the man standing next to him. Mr. Bush had his reasons for doing so -- above all to avoid one more foreign policy crisis during an election year. But in avoiding a headache for himself, he demonstrated again how malleable is his commitment to the defense of freedom as a guiding principle of U.S. policy.

While the editorial says that Bush "ignored the sanguinary rhetoric" of China, as I noted above, he has warned China that military action toward China could result in the US responding with force on Taiwan's behalf. I don't know if the WaPo editors were unaware of the warning to China when the editorial was written, if they just ignored it or if the warning was not issued until after the editorial was published, but even with Bush warning China, the rest of the comments by the WaPo editors are still, in my opinion, valid.

Why? Because even though we've committed to help defend Taiwan if China attacks them, right now, our nation is telling Taiwan that we don't want them to have independence or freedom. Right now, the Taiwanese people live with the knowledge that China has 500 missiles pointed at them, and hears that China would consider a demand from the Taiwanese people to remove those missiles and renounce the use of force to keep Taiwan as a Chinese province as justification to go to war. China has even indicated that they would be willing to accept the cancellation of the 2008 Olympics (something the government has seen as a way to show off China and improve their image worldwide) or, worse, "mass casualties", in the pursuit of such a war. Yet the United States, who is supposed to be the world's leader and defender of democracy, says we don't want Taiwan to take even as small of a step as asking its people to tell China if they want missiles pointed at them or not. Instead, we tell their leaders to back off on anything that might indicate even a small desire for independence. Our pledge to defend them is not a promise that we will help them seek or gain their freedom from a Communist government, only that we will help protect them from an aggressor. It may not sound like a big difference, but it is.

Certainly, we don't want or need a war between China and Taiwan right now. For starters, with our military spread as thin as it currently is, it would be very difficult for us to fulfill our pledge to help defend Taiwan - and its true that another foreign relations crisis would look very bad for Bush. But if our country is truly committed to world-wide democracy - if we're going to take the position that freedom is so important for one group of oppressed people that we will invade their sovereign nation and get it for them (whether they want it or not) - then it should be important enough for us to tell China in this situation that they need to back down from their warmongering rhetoric and allow the Taiwanese people to have their say.

Posted by thorswitch at December 10, 2003 08:30 PM | TrackBack