Hands Off The Clinton Administration Faces Its Thorniest Foreign-Policy Question In Taiwan. The Correct Answer Can Be Found In The Past

The outbreak of renewed tensions between Beijing and Taipei underscores the perils of world power. A war between the mainland and the overmatched island would be a disaster for U.S. foreign policy. The hard-won gains in Sino-American relations of the last 20 years could well be reversed. This crisis will be a major test of the Clinton administration’s capacity for wise statesmanship.

Ostensibly, the conflict is between a Chinese Communist government determined to bring Taiwan under its control, and the policy of the United States. U.S. policy aims to preserve island’s independent regime and its society, successfully based on Western models of free enterprise.

But the conflict runs far deeper. A separate Taiwan, much like a British-controlled Hong Kong, is symbolic of China’s century-old humiliation at the hands of the West and imperial Japan. China remembers the old days when external domination made it more a warring ground of imperial ambitions than an autonomous, sovereign state.

U.S. reluctance to stand aside while Beijing pressures Taiwan into “reunification” rests on enduring American assumptions about our role in Chinese affairs. For more than a hundred years, Americans saw themselves as China’s benefactors - from the 1844 Treaty of Wanghia regularizing trade with China, through the Open Door documents of 1899 and 1901, opposing partition, and continuing through the alliance against Japan during World War II and the support of the Nationalists during the Civil War of 1945-49. We envisioned ourselves as ardent anti-imperialists, eager to preserve the independence of a backward but potentially great nation receptive to instruction from and trade with the West.

Passively accepting Taiwan’s incorporation into an undemocratic China would run counter to the long history of U.S. efforts to advance republican government and freedom for the Chinese people. It would raise the ghosts of Munich and Kuwait. It would remind the Clinton administration that the gobbling up of small states by larger ones does not sit well with Americans who remember the run-up to World War II.

Passive acceptance would stimulate memories of the critical 1950s debate about “Who Lost China?”

Ever since the Roosevelt and Truman state departments were accused of letting the Communists seize mainland China, subsequent Democratic administrations have feared the political consequences of failing to meet the “Communist threat” in Asia. Truman’s decision to fight in Korea, and the commitments from John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson in Vietnam, were considered within the context of what “losing” South Korea and South Vietnam to Communist aggression might mean to their administrations. And, to the future of the Democratic Party in national elections.

Never mind that Washington had far less power to shape Chinese affairs than it believed. The myth of the China market - where we were supposedly capable of selling U.S. goods to hundreds of millions of Chinese - has been combined with exaggerated assumptions about our ability to influence Chinese politics. This led to wild accusations that unwise and even “traitorous” actions turned friendly China into a hostile Communist state. For example, Sen. Joseph McCarthy claimed that the defeat of the Nationalists by the Communists had to do with U.S. decisions not to intervene directly in the civil war. He failed to acknowledge any long-term developments in China.

In this scheme of things, China’s developing history was largely irrelevant, and a determined America could work its will anywhere in the world. One hopes this misreading of China’s ability to shape its own destiny and the limitations of U.S. power will not reoccur.

There is, of course, a real case for supporting Taiwan’s independence from mainland control. Self-determination for peoples everywhere has been a central proposition of the American ethos since the Declaration of Independence.

Yet, America’s affinity for supporting national autonomy for distant lands has sometimes created insurmountable problems. Our failure in Vietnam can be ascribed partly to a stubborn determination to protect a South Vietnam government that was incapable of national unity and stable self-governance.

Taiwan is different. It has achieved the political independence and economic well-being Saigon never came close to gaining.

But U.S. support for Taiwan does face other difficulties that were confronted in Vietnam. Hanoi wanted to swallow up South Vietnam. Similarly, Beijing is determined to restore Taiwan to what Beijing sees as Taiwan’s natural place in China’s national life. No amount of U.S. muscle-flexing seems likely to deter the Communists from their goal.

Yet, in its drive to incorporate Taiwan, Beijing must realize it will pay a heavy price in international trust and investment.

There is a better way out of the current Sino-American dispute over Taiwan. Displays of military force on both sides will only add to the tensions. Threats of economic boycotts and reduced trade will make both sides more adamant about protecting their interests.

If ever there was a time for quiet diplomacy in U.S. relations with China, it is now. Clinton would do well to ask Richard Holbrooke, architect of the Dayton Accords for Bosnia, and a former assistant secretary of Asian affairs, to begin a dialogue with Beijing about Taiwan. The Chinese would do well to listen and respond.

There is a model, in the Anglo-Chinese arrangements for Hong Kong. An agreement bringing Taiwan into Beijing’s orbit in 12 or 15 years, with guarantees of economic and political freedoms comparable to those given Hong Kong, could provide a reasonable way out of this conflict.

No one should make light of the resistance Taiwan likely will show to any reduction of its current autonomy. But Taipei, like Beijing and Washington, must understand that a bloody struggle over Taiwan would be a disaster for everyone - for Taiwan’s freedom, for China’s immediate economic future and for Washington’s image as a great power capable of helping friends and preserving some measure of self-rule around the globe. As Winston Churchill once said, “It’s better to jaw, jaw, jaw than war, war, war.

MEMO: Dallek is a professor of history and policy studies at the University of California, Los Angeles.