BEIJING - Taiwan President Chen Shui-bian has thrown a wrench into Washington's careful plans, furthered last week by Secretary of State Colin Powell's visit to Brunei, to shore up Asian commitment to its war against terrorism - ie, to make sure Asian countries would support the coming attack on Iraq.
To the same end - ensuring peace in the Far East so that the US can concentrate on the Middle East - Powell reopened dialogue with North Korea after 20 months of icy relations between Pyongyang and the George W Bush administration, and green-lighted Seoul's mission of rapprochement with the North.
Then, last Saturday, Chen dropped his bombshell about a referendum on the formal independence of Taiwan from China, reigniting the long-standing fight between Beijing and its "renegade province".
Beijing's reaction was moderate. It avoided the graphic and bellicose comments it has previously levied against independence talk in Taipei. But it did urge Chen to pull back from the brink of disaster - a not-so-veiled reference to China's threat to use military force if Taiwan were to declare formal independence from the mainland.
On Monday, Taiwan's businessmen voted on the issue with their stocks: they fled the Taipei market, which plunged almost 6 percent to an eight-month low. Their fears reverberated in other Asian markets and contributed to the return of the bear to markets around the globe.
After all, Taiwan businessmen had already taken sides. Despite years of warning from Taipei's governments, they had sunk about US$100 billion of investment in the mainland. Moreover, they knew pretty well that without exports to the mainland - last year Beijing ran a trade deficit of $18 billion with the island - Taiwan's economic performance would have been even worse than the -2.5 percent growth scored in 2001.
Certainly Chen's initiative is a nuisance for the Americans, concerned about their new phase of the war on terrorism, and a delegation from Taipei took off to explain their president's action to Washington. However, it is the war on terrorism itself that makes Chen's initiative urgent. For, as the United States' war in Afghanistan did, a future war with Iraq would put the Taiwan issue on the American back burner.
Such a war would give Beijing new leverage with Washington, which would be forced to come to terms with China in the United Nations and other international forums to ensure China's support. Taiwan knows this from direct experience. The war on terrorism last year and the attack on Afghanistan muted Taipei's protests when Beijing blocked its participation in the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Shanghai.
The coming war in Iraq could well be more complicated than the war in Afghanistan. America's commitment to it could be larger, and for a longer period of time. Maintaining the political balance among Iraq's Muslim neighbors would add to the complication. A solution to the Kurdish issue would be fuzzier; sensitivities in Israel, where suicide bombings have become a daily routine, could be ignited ever further. In sum, once it is in Iraq, Taiwan will be much lower on Washington's list of priorities than it was last year. And so, with the United States preoccupied with Iraq, the Taiwan economy would become even more dependent on mainland China, and Chen Shui-bian's leverage with Beijing would be further whittled away.
So the moment was right for Chen to act - a pre-emptive move to put the Taiwan issue back on Washington's agenda at the very time it is trying to shift its priorities to the Middle East. This raises two issues, one for Washington and one for Beijing.
Can Washington afford to have its war against terrorism derailed by the Taiwan issue? The war against terrorism is a response to a real attack, one that brought war to New York City for the first time in two centuries. The Taiwan issue is about a specter, that of an emerging China that might, one day, threaten the global power the United States achieved after its victory over the Soviet Union in the Cold War.
At the beginning of the Bush administration's term in office, the China "threat" was a top priority. That changed on September 11. While concerns about China are not completely off the table, it would be difficult for the administration to explain to the US public that war on Iraq should be postponed because Chen Shui-bian decided to provoke Beijing. So the fact that Chen has caused trouble for the Bush administration at this moment could backfire on Taiwan - but it could also complicate Washington's handling of Beijing.
And that is the only card Taipei has to play. Beijing is adamant that Taipei must accept the "one China" principle before anything can be discussed across the Taiwan Strait. That principle is unacceptable to the Chen administration, but its economy is increasingly tied to the mainland's and its diplomatic clout, never strong, is dwindling even more - as proved by tiny Nauru, which shunned Taipei and shook hands with Beijing. The direct links, one of the few strong bargaining chips Taiwan has with the mainland, are taking shape without any political bargaining with Beijing. On top of all this, the war on terrorism and problems with the Middle East and Central Asia, entailing sensitive energy issues, have led the US to cooperate with China in the short term.
The fact that the pyramid of Chinese boxes piled up by the Taiwan issue could trip the US up as it marches toward war with Iraq surely makes Washington very nervous. The American public, accustomed to figuring things in black and white, without colors or even many gray areas, could get even more agitated. And so Beijing finds itself with a riddle to solve, just when it thought it already had its hands full with the thorny issue of the succession to President Jiang Zemin. (2002-08-07 Asia Times)
