The Bush administration came into office warning that the Clinton folks had seen only what they wanted to see in Beijing — business opportunity — and had therefore mistakenly treated a strategic rival as a "strategic partner." Instead, the new administration wants to draw a few lines in the sand. But in both the current spy-plane drama and the wider context of the administration's dilemma over selling an advanced anti-missile system to Taiwan, the Bush team may be bumping into the limits of the hard line on China.
Over the next few weeks, the Bush administration must make a decision on Taiwan's request to buy two Arleigh-Burke-class destroyers equipped with the advanced Aegis anti-missile system. Beijing has strenuously opposed the sale for fear that it will make Taiwan's defenses impregnable, and warned that the sale would escalate regional tensions. Beijing is also implacably hostile to Washington's proposed National Missile Defense shield, which while presented as a response to "rogue" states' missiles would also necessarily neutralize China's small nuclear missile arsenal. And it fears that the Aegis system would be a precursor to including Taiwan under a U.S. anti-missile umbrella.
The delicate "One China" policy
China's handling of the spy-plane incident will certainly reinforce the arguments of Bush administration hard-liners that Beijing is a strategic rival that should be kept at arm's length — just as the incident itself will be claimed as evidence by Beijing's own hard-liners of Washington's hostile intentions. Still, as much as each side needs to project a tough and resolute image, neither has much to gain from an escalating confrontation between the two countries. And that requires the policy equivalent of an egg dance.
Since the Nixon administration, the U.S. has followed a "One China" policy. The U.S. does not recognize Taiwan as a separate state, instead regarding both the mainland and the island as ultimately part of the same entity. For years, this policy was congruent with both Beijing's insistence that Taiwan is simply a rebel province where the remnants of the old nationalist regime overthrown in 1948 had taken refuge, and with the claim by the heirs of that same nationalist leadership in Taiwan that they were the true rulers of all of China. A second pillar of the same U.S. policy was rejection of reunification of the two territories by force — the U.S. is committed to defending Taiwan in the event of an invasion from the mainland.
But a number of changes over the past decade have affected the relationship. For one thing, Taiwan has been democratized, and with that has come an increasing desire for independence. While Beijing had hoped that the example of its reintegration of Hong Kong on a "one country, two systems" basis would tempt the island's leaders to negotiate reunification, the Taiwanese have instead elected an even more independence-oriented president. Also, since the end of the Cold War, the U.S. no longer needs China as an anti-Soviet ally. And when China began test-firing missiles toward Taiwan in 1996 in a show of saber-rattling designed to intimidate independence-minded Taiwanese, the U.S. sent a naval battle group into the Taiwan Strait, forcing a dangerous confrontation in which Beijing eventually backed down. The experience of 1996 led many in the corridors of power in Washington to conclude that making the Taiwanese more militarily self-sufficient would reduce the risk of drawing the U.S. into a dangerous confrontation.
A matter of air power
In the long run, China will almost certainly develop the military capability to overwhelm Taiwan. But right now, most experts agree that China would be unable to make its dramatic advantage in troop numbers and weapons determine the outcome of a showdown, because it lacks the power to control the air space over the Strait, rendering an invasion too risky to contemplate. But Taiwan remains vulnerable to medium-range missiles fired from the mainland, and beefing up its ability to defend against that threat — for example, through the Aegis system — would certainly leave the island a lot more secure against intimidation from the mainland.
But it's not that simple for Washington. While the U.S. wants to make Taiwan strong enough to dissuade Beijing from invading, it also wants more than anything to avoid a war. And that forces policymakers to confront the scenario in which Taiwan's military self-sufficiency emboldens its leaders to declare formal independence — an eventuality that would almost certainly lead Beijing to declare war.
Reclaiming Taiwan has for decades been a nationalist rallying cry of China's communist leadership, often when domestic policy was subjecting the population to great hardship. And the hardship that will accompany China's current transition to capitalism will be immense. Beijing is unlikely ever to let Taiwan go without a fierce fight, and a fierce fight will inevitably draw in the U.S. There's a real danger that hawks in Beijing may even press for preemptive action if China fears that the island's defenses are being prepared for independence.
As long as the U.S. maintains the "One China" policy, it's caught in an unhappy triangle in which it has to beef up Taiwan's defenses but discourage moves toward independence, and restrain China without provoking it. But any move to abandon "One China" is to choose an epic confrontation with Beijing. Thus the delicate art of China policy in the Oval Office, as opposed to on the campaign trail.