Trump’s seesaw: Under Secretary of State visits Taiwan | Yeh Yao-Yuan
Under Secretary of State Keith Krach arrived in Taiwan yesterday to start his three-day visit, which has quickly broken last month’s record made by Secretary of Health and Human Services Alex Azar as the highest rank U.S. official visiting Taiwan since the two countries severed their diplomatic relationship. He is also the second senior official visiting Taiwan since the “Taiwan Travel Act” was passed. Many media and academics are observing, wondering the reason behind Krach’s visit and what changes would it bring to the triangle relationship of the U.S., China and Taiwan.
Krach’s visit has three objectives. First of all, Krach is in charge of economic growth, energy and the environment, so naturally, he will meet Taiwan officials and continue to discuss in depth on the bilateral free trade agreement between the U.S. and Taiwan, and how to create a win-win situation for both countries through trade agreements. Keith used to be the Vice President of General Motors and has a lot of business achievements; since being appointed as Under Secretary, he launched the DC Central Deal Team in the Department of State to integrate various business departments to help the U.S. enterprises expanding their business territory, especially opportunities of overseas markets. Therefore, Krach is not just visiting Taiwan on behalf of the U.S. Department of State, but also representing the business sector to inspect possible opportunity of bilateral trade with Taiwan.
Secondly, Krach’s visit to Taiwan is also part of Trump’s ongoing anti-China policy. Coincidentally, Terry Branstad, the U.S. ambassador to China, will be stepping down and leaving Beijing soon. With the U.S. presidential election approaching, even if a new ambassador is to be appointed, it will take over a month before the new appointment takes the office. In other words, the official diplomatic communication channel between the U.S. and China will be downgraded to the level of a chargé d’affaires. This would certainly cast a shadow on the future relationship development between the U.S. and China and has made a stark contrast comparing to Krach’s Taiwan visit.
Lastly, it was speculated that Krach’s visit is actually a pre-show for the U.S. Secretary of State Pompeo’s visit before the election. Since Trump took the office, the relationship between Taiwan and the U.S. has been consistently warming up, it seems that there is an earth-shattering change nearly every month leading up to the election. Therefore, it is possible that Trump would send an even more senior official to Taiwan shortly before the election to show his stance to all the anti-China people within the U.S. and confirm his anti-China determination. Pew Research Center published a poll in July, which showed as high as 73% of U.S. people have a negative attitude towards China. That means, the series of pro-Taiwan and anti-China actions from the Trump administration is to attract votes from these anti-China people.
In general, the team leading by Trump is using a seesaw tactic – on one end neglects China, on the other end, continues to court Taiwan – to pave a way for his own re-election. Of course, Tsai Ing-wen’s government agreeing to allow the import of U.S. pork and purchase arms that worth approximately US$600 million has also helped to improve the U.S.-Taiwan relationship. Interestingly, the Taiwanese public has been suspicious and feels that Taiwan should not be the pawn and manipulated by the U.S. They also fear that it might anger China so much that it will then attack Taiwan by force.
But the above suspicion has assumed the U.S.'s anti-China policy is just a political operation Trump uses for the election; if Biden, the Democrats candidate gets elected, the China policy from the U.S. might have a 180-degree change. Furthermore, President Trump is very fickle with his policies, even if he gets re-elected, does it really mean the anti-China policy would continue? If the U.S. changes its attitude towards China, would Taiwan be abandoned because it is overly pro-U.S. and anti-China, then end up losing the relationships with both countries and being blamed for the causing issues between the U.S. and China.
This view has ignored the phenomenon created by the rising power and power transitions as discussed in international relations. The U.S. has changed its China policy not just because of China’s unfair trade practice and conflicts caused by problems in China’s own system; but the main reason is, China has previously also tried to use grand external propaganda to rob the U.S.'s right to speak in the international world and become the new hegemony. In the U.S. perspective, this is a blatant challenge on its role as the world hegemony, created since the cold war ended between the U.S. and Soviet Union. As the current hegemony, the U.S. would of course be doing everything in its power to avoid being replaced by China.
That means, the conflicts between the U.S. and China were not solely created by a hawkish ruler like Trump, but also an inevitable phenomenon caused by the structural change of the international world. Therefore, although the corresponding situations and policy guidelines of a hawk government will be different from a dove government, anti-China has already become a consensus. They will just do things differently.
To Taiwan, because of such structural conflicts, the U.S. is gradually changing its previous strategic ambiguity tactic on the cross-strait relations and has sided with Taiwan much more. If Taiwan has no intention to stand on the same side as authoritarian China, it must of course clearly show the U.S. that it is determined to support the U.S. anti-China’s Grand Strategy.
(Yeh Yao-Yuan, Assistant Professor of the Center for International Studies at University of St. Thomas, U.S.)
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