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Updated Monday, July 26, 2010 9:50 am TWN, The China Post news staff

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Ambiguous ambiguity

In March 2009, for instance, Burghardt again said that the U.S. was very heartened by the new atmosphere across the Taiwan Strait, calling it something that made Washington “comfortable.”

According to Richard C. Bush, former AIT chairman and director of the Brookings Institution's Center for Northeast Asian Policy Studies, the ECFA will further help Taiwan become part of the Asian economic integration and avoid marginalization in the region.

Most experts also anticipate that China's rise to superpower status could affect the United States and Taiwan's economic development. In this eventuality, seeking to join international economic and trade organizations is a feasible approach for Taiwan to maintain its economic momentum.

Although U.S. policy towards Taiwan and China is deliberately ambiguous, in order to give Washington more flexibility in responding to any dangerous situation in the Taiwan Strait, there are at least two points on which the U.S. policy is unambiguous: Taiwan's unilateral declaration of independence and China's use of force to resolve the cross-strait issue.

In the long run, however, the recent warming of Taipei-Beijing relations demonstrates that the situation in the Taiwan Strait is not determined by American policy, even if it plays some role. Whether the two parties engage in dialogue or confrontation does not lie with the U.S. dual deterrence strategy, but with the two former archenemies' confidence in respect to the negotiation process.

In this respect, U.S. President George H. W. Bush's decision of selling 150 advanced aircraft (F-16 A/B) to Taiwan in September 1992 had serious consequences for Taipei and Beijing as they both lost a measure of confidence in the commitments previously made.

Contrary to all expectations, the controversial decision bolstered President Lee Teng-hui's (李登輝) position in negotiations with China throughout the 1990s. It also torpedoed the Kuomintang administration's first secret negotiations with the communist regime, which led to the important “unofficial” meetings between the PRC and R.O.C. senior public figures, Wang Daohan (汪道涵) and Koo Chen-fu (辜振甫) in Singapore in April 1993. Without notice, the very foundations of a Taiwan-China relationship were shaken.

Now, if Washington is still hesitant in authorizing the sale of F-16Cs and F-16Ds, it is fine. But Taipei, Beijing and Washington should further commit to improve the international trade environment in order to create a deeply-rooted community of interests.

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