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Dodging Bullets

After seeing negative campaigning at its finest in Spain, you can imagine election officials in the Republic of China wanted a quiet vote. Instead, they got the worst possible outcome imaginable. An assassination attempt on the incumbent, Chen Shui Bian and his veep, Annette Lu, ends up with both of them recovering within hours. The gunman has yet to be identified or found...and with a razor-thin victory for the incumbent, there's demand for a recount. Well, maybe this isn't as bad as it could get. For on the same ballot was a referendum on "Taiwanese independence". This is a novel idea since the Republic of China (which occupies Taiwan) and the People's Republic of China (which resides on the mainland) are still at war. No side has ever surrounded to the other and there is speculation that "A-Bian" simply wanted to promote his own legacy by changing the goal of the ROC into the ROT and he would be it's founding father. And the truth is, the Kuomingtang, the political machine that ran the island until 2000 (much as the Party Revolutionary Institucional did in Mexico) would just as likely want the measure passed. However, the KMT told it's partisan to abstain from the referendum. And it failed.

Somewhere in Washington D.C. a very happy George W. Bush took the news. After all, the U.S. guarantees that an invasion by the PRC into Taiwan would be something like Germany plowing into Belgium in World War I. With no additional provocation, the PRC would not likely test out it's new artillery. And on a map, it would appear that a nation as small as Taiwan would find itself immediately humbled by the might of the Communist Dynasty. But that's inaccurate, because while the ROC army is smaller, it has much more technological innovation and a professional fighting force. The PRC has numbers, and not much else. Add to that American military assistance, and one wonders why this referendum matters at all.

The answer is money. Not in the sense that most people think of money as greed, but rather the concept of money itself. Iraq had very few if any American financial presence. The jets were free to bomb any target they wanted. But take that logic to Shanghai or Beijing, and you get a totally different outcome. One, you would get a ravaged Chinese infrastructure which could ruin the American companies that rely on it, like WalMart and General Electric. Two, you have a major problem with refugees and waves of Chinese expatriates washing up on shores from Japan to the United Kingdom. Three, you would have the world's richest country trying to restructure it's most populous nation. It is without a doubt that Chen Shui Bian could hop a jet to Beijing and within hours declare the Republic of China victorious. But it would be far more challenging to rebuild a country that already is falling apart.

Nevertheless, the US can't exactly avoid defending the Republic of China from mainland aggression either. Democracy continues to grow in Asia, and the Japanese, South Koreans, and Indians all very much want China to continue to have problems with Taiwan. For if that is the case, China is unable to concentrate on consolidating its control on Asian markets. Secondly, the US does not trust "Red China". For while many of us wonder how it's Communist China when unions are outlawed, the Nixonian distrust of the Reds runs large. In fact, many moderate conservative and liberals argue the best way to modernize China is to encourage free market reform and have the regime abolish itself. And this is still quite possible, given that as more manufacturing heads to China, the prospect of labor unrest, and with it, labor reforms grows extant. And why not, given the dynastic heartbeat of Chinese history?

The response to this question is painfully acute. "Reaganesque" foreign policy is to fight many small wars hoping that you can negotiate the other side into defeat. Taking on the People's Republic of China would be a conflict of direct engagement, something which no one in Washington currently can handle. What's worse is that the referendum will be back, and someday will put the Eagle nose-to-nose with the Dragon. We can only hope one side is smart enough to blink.
posted by Thomas at 9:47 PM 0 comments