US Taiwan Policy: Constructing the Triangle (Asian Security Studies)

US Taiwan Policy

The relationship between the United States and China is one of the most important issues in the twenty-first century, and is, ultimately, hostage to conditions across the Taiwan Strait. This book is the first to attempt to trace the historical origin of what is known as the ‘Taiwan issue’ in US–China relations from a constructivist perspective, based on detailed archival research. The analysis used supplements the mainstream rationalist approach by developing a new theoretical perspective on US Taiwan policy that incorporates constructivism’s emphasis on identity, norms and discourse analysis. Whilst the potential utility of such an approach has been gestured towards in the past, scholars have never previously developed or elaborated upon it to any significant extent. Here, this approach is used to re-examine the Truman administration’s decision to protect Taiwan by military means following the outbreak of the Korean War, and to investigate how the ‘one China’ policy was established in relation to the process of rapprochement during President Nixon’s first term in office. The book also considers the contemporary challenges posed to the ‘one China’ policy by the increased importance of promoting human rights and democracy in US foreign policy, arguing that the current US China policy is guided by a new strategy based on ‘engagement plus hedging’. This book will appeal to students of US foreign policy, discourse analysis, Asian security, international security and IR theory in general. Øystein Tunsjø is a Senior Research Fellow, Norwegian Institute of Defence Studies, Oslo, Norway. He holds a PhD in International Relations from the University of Wales, Aberystwyth, UK.

Asian Security Studies

Series Editors: Sumit Ganguly, Indiana University, Bloomington and Andrew Scobell, US Army War College

Few regions of the world are fraught with as many security questions as Asia. Within this region it is possible to study great power rivalries, irredentist conflicts, nuclear and ballistic missile proliferation, secessionist movements, ethno-religious conflicts and inter-state wars. This book series publishes the best possible scholarship on the security issues affecting the region, and includes detailed empirical studies, theoretically oriented case studies and policy-relevant analyses as well as more general works. China and International Institutions Alternate paths to global power Marc Lanteigne China’s Rising Sea Power The PLA navy’s submarine challenge Peter Howarth If China Attacks Taiwan Military strategy, politics and economics Steve Tsang (ed.) Chinese Civil–Military Relations The transformation of the People’s Liberation Army Nan Li (ed.) The Chinese Army Today Tradition and transformation for the 21st century Dennis J. Blasko Taiwan’s Security History and prospects Bernard D. Cole

Religion and Conflict in South and Southeast Asia Disrupting violence Linell E. Cady and Sheldon W. Simon (eds) Political Islam and Violence in Indonesia Zachary Abuza US–Indian Strategic Cooperation into the 21st Century More than words Sumit Ganguly, Brian Shoup and Andrew Scobell (eds) India, Pakistan and the Secret Jihad The covert war in Kashmir, 1947–2004 Praveen Swami China’s Strategic Culture and Foreign Policy Decision-Making Confucianism, leadership and war Huiyun Feng Military Strategy in the Third Indochina War The last Maoist war Edward C. O’Dowd

Asia Pacific Security US, Australia and Japan and the new security triangle William T. Tow, Satu Limaye, Mark Thomson and Yoshinobu Yamamoto China, the United States and South-East Asia Contending perspectives on politics, security and economics Evelyn Goh and Sheldon W. Simon Conflict and Cooperation in MultiEthnic States Institutional incentives, myths and counterbalancing Brian Dale Shoup

China’s War on Terrorism Counter-insurgency, politics and internal security Martin I. Wayne US Taiwan Policy Constructing the triangle Øystein Tunsjø

US Taiwan Policy Constructing the triangle

Øystein Tunsjø

First published 2008 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by Routledge 270 Madison Ave, New York, NY 10016 This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2008. “To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge’s collection of thousands of eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk.” Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2008 Øystein Tunsjø All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Tunsjø, Øystein. US Taiwan policy : constructing the triangle / Øystein Tunsjø. p. cm. – (Asian security studies) Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. United States–Foreign relations–Taiwan. 2. Taiwan–Foreign relations–United States. 3. United States–Foreign relations–China. 4. China–Foreign relations–United States. 5. Taiwan–Foreign relations– China. 6. China–Foreign relations–Taiwan. I. Title. JZ1480.A57T28 2008 327.7305124’9–dc22 2007036112 ISBN 0-203-93035-5 Master e-book ISBN

ISBN10: 0–415–45202–3 (hbk) ISBN10: 0–203–93035–5 (ebk) ISBN13: 978–0–415–45202–1 (hbk) ISBN13: 978–0–203–93035–9 (ebk)

For Hege and Axel

Contents

Acknowledgements Abbreviations 1 Refocusing the study of US Taiwan policy

x xii 1

2 Discourses and the origins of the ‘Taiwan issue’ 1949–50

20

3 Opening space on the Taiwan question 1969–72

51

4 Contemporary challenges in US Taiwan policy

76

5 Debating US strategy towards China

101

6 Understanding US Taiwan policy: the linkage between history and theory

120

Notes Bibliography Index

129 170 190

Acknowledgements

My sincere thanks are owed to many people who either directly or indirectly have proved invaluable to the process of researching and writing this book. I began working on this project as a PhD student at the University of Wales, Aberystwyth and I owe a particular debt of gratitude to my PhD supervisors, Patrick Finney and Ian Clark, whose support, advice and assistance have been invaluable to this study. To be a recipient of their knowledge, insight, encouragement and advice has been a privilege, and has pushed me far beyond what I could have achieved alone. I am also grateful to others who have generously given of their time and expertise. Colin Mackerras, who first introduced me to China’s fascinating history, has shared with me his exceptional knowledge and experience. Ulla Holm, Phil Cunliff, Patricia Bradshaw, Christopher Coker, Johannes Rø, Stein Tønnesson and Cian O’Driscol have read various drafts and provided valuable feedback. Will Bain and Jan Selby provided guidance and pushed me in the right direction while the project was in its initial stages. I would also like to thank the Department of International Politics, Aberystwyth, Lise and Arnfin Hejes Fond and the Eckbo legat for their financial support. To all my friends and peers at Aberystwyth I am very grateful. In particular I would like to thank Wayne, Phil, Scott, Sara, Cian, Nick, Rens, Tom, Ching Chang, Jay, Adam, Carl, Darren, Seb, Columba, Dick and the Harriers and many others besides who all made my stay in Aberystwyth enjoyable and enriched my time as a PhD student. The book has been completed while working as a researcher at the Norwegian Institute for Defence Studies. I was extremely fortunate to be able to join this Institute and I would like to thank my colleagues there for creating such a hospitable climate for research and writing. Anna Therese Klingstedt, the Institute’s editor, has guided me through the most frustrating parts of preparing a manuscript for publication. It has also been a pleasure working with Routledge and I have been very impressed by their professionalism, feedback and speedy turnaround. I would especially like to acknowledge Andrew Humphrys, the military and strategic editor, for being so approachable and supportive. Thanks are also due to three anonymous reviewers who provided concise and constructive suggestions. While writing this thesis, I was grateful to have the support of Ragnhild Evjen Andersen who employed her English language editing skills. Moreover, it gives me

Acknowledgements xi great pleasure to acknowledge the support of those individuals who helped during my research at libraries and archives in the United States. I am indebted to Jan Cornelius for his hospitality while I was staying in Washington. The staffs at the National Archives and the Library of Congress in Washington were professional and always willing to give generously of their time. At the Truman Presidential Library I was received with a spirit of generosity and enthusiasm that still takes my breath away. The Harry House, in Independence, Missouri, not only provided me with excellent accommodation, it was also an inspiration to know that I was staying at the childhood home of President Truman. It seems almost customary to leave them until the end, but it goes without saying that my biggest debt is to my family who have lived this project with me. The Tunsjøs, the Smiths, the Smedstads and the Leinaas have supported me through seemingly endless years of education. Even if they have been far away, their affection never felt distant and while somewhat in wonder at the length of time the project has required, they have all continued to be supportive. I am especially indebted to my father for providing me with the opportunity to study for so many years. Without his relentless encouragement, patience, humour and enduring support this book might never have seen the light of day. Writing a monograph has its pleasures, but they pale before the other rewards that life has to offer. I have dedicated this book to my wife, Hege, and my son, Axel. Although Hege and Axel have not received the attention they deserve, Hege’s patience, love and companionship have been unwavering. Hege’s loving and caring personality has soothed the wounds inflicted by times of yearning and has made me able to go through the process of writing this book. I could not have done it without her.

Abbreviations

AIT APEC ARF ASEAN CCNAA CCP CIA CRS CTC DNSA DoD DPP EU FRUS GRC HAK HSTL IGO INGO IR JCS KMT MDT MFN NARA NK NPM NSA NSC NSSM QDR OECD PRC

American Institute in Taiwan Asian-Pacific Economic Cooperation Forum ASEAN Regional Forum Association of South East Asian Nations Coordination Council for North American Affairs Chinese Communist Party Central Intelligence Agency Congressional Research Service Congressional Taiwan Caucus Digital National Security Archive Department of Defense Democratic Progressive Party European Union Foreign Relations of the United States Government of the Republic of China Henry A. Kissinger Harry S. Truman Library Intergovernmental organisations International non-governmental organisations International Relations Joint Chiefs of Staff Kuomintang Mutual Defense Treaty Most Favoured Nation National Archives and Record Administration North Korea Nixon Presidential Material National Security Archive National Security Council National Security Study Memorandum Quadrennial Defense Review Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development People’s Republic of China

Abbreviations xiii RG 59 RN ROC ROK SCO Telecons TRA UN UNSC

Record Group 59 Richard Nixon Republic of China Republic of Korea Shanghai Cooperation Organization Telephone Conversations Transcripts Taiwan Relations Act United Nations United Nation Security Council

1

Refocusing the study of US Taiwan policy

United States (US)–China relations today encompass a broad range of issues essential to the peace, prosperity and stability of East Asia and the world. Undoubtedly, the question of US–China relations is one of the most important issues that will shape international politics in the twenty-first century. As many writers have argued, US–China relations are, ultimately, hostage to the conditions across the Taiwan Strait and the ‘Taiwan issue’ remains one of the few potential areas of conflict where US preponderance could be challenged militarily by another major power. Taiwan’s successful transition to democracy and its pride in its achievements have deprived Taiwan and China of their common objective of a unified oneChina and increased Taiwanese impulses towards independence. Conversely, China views Taiwan as a renegade province and has, as evidenced by its most recent anti-secession law, threatened to use force if the island takes steps towards establishing formal independence. Although since 1972 US policy has recognised that Taiwan is part of China, Washington has indicated it would intervene if China tried to take Taiwan by force. It is therefore essential to broaden our understanding of this pivotal relationship and examine historically the shifting foundations for Taiwan’s independence and the adherence of the US to the one-China principle. My key research question asks to what extent the Taiwan issue in US China policy is a shifting discursive construct tied to US identity and American representations of China and Taiwan. To date there has been no attempt to trace from a constructivist perspective the historical origin of what is known in US– China relations as the ‘Taiwan issue’. Accordingly, this study’s main claim to originality is to offer the first rigorous and detailed critical constructivist analysis based on original and detailed archival research of the construction of the Taiwan issue in US China policy. In the official documents and records examined, I have identified four discursive representations of the Taiwan issue since 1949: Taiwan as representing all of China (the ‘red menace’ discourse), the status of Taiwan as ‘undetermined’, Taiwan as ‘independent’, and the status of Taiwan as ‘determined’ (meaning there is one-China and that Taiwan is part of China). Although labels such as ‘determined’ and ‘undetermined’ may seem awkward to a discourse analyst, they have been chosen because they have been articulated by state officials, elaborated

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on in key documentary sources and identified through discursive practices. They are therefore not replaced by labels more easily grasped by discourse analysis. Similarly, because I work with different source material in Chapters 4 and 5, I do not keep to the labels identified in Chapters 2 and 3. However, this does not imply that there is no relation between the discursive representations of the Taiwan issue throughout this study. On the contrary, when juxtaposing these different periods, there is something similar about the discursive representations which highlights how the ongoing process of constituting an American identity constructs a particular US Taiwan policy and how the practices of US Taiwan policy produce and reproduce US identity. For instance, the underlying representations that guide the contemporary engagement discourse in US China policy, which acknowledges the one-China principle, resemble previous discursive practices of the ‘determined’ discourse which has its roots in the Truman and Nixon administrations’ position that Taiwan was part of China, and an emphasis on China’s vital and constructive role in world affairs. Equally, the current containment discourse shares similarities with the ‘red menace’ and the ‘independence’ discourses in its focusing on the threatening aspects of the Communist regime and the binary opposites that differentiate the political systems on either side of the Taiwan Strait. Finally, the nuances in contemporary US Taiwan policy can be traced back to the ambiguity embedded in the ‘undetermined’ discourse, a central aspect of US Taiwan policy since 1949. Thus, by problematising the origins of the Taiwan issue in US China policy and focusing on the discursive representations that produce meanings and possibilities within the situation statesmen face, this analysis draws attention to the way US Taiwan policy shapes and impinges on the status of Taiwan in international affairs. Building on the premises of constructivist international relations theory, which take the contingent and social construction of policy more seriously than do rationalist approaches, I aim to illuminate the processes through which the architects of US Taiwan policy produced and reproduced identities, constituted new knowledge and pursued new meanings to construct and sustain particular representations of China, the US, Taiwan and the relations between these countries.1 In other words, this study endeavours to investigate the discourses that enable US decision-makers to represent the world in specific ways. It also aims to discuss the emergence of different discourses of US Taiwan policy which have been pertinent in structuring the possibilities that facilitated certain courses of action and to rediscover what made a particular action more reasonable, imaginable and desirable. By representation I mean the ways in which the Taiwan issue has been represented discursively by policymakers, scholars and others in the US. Critical constructivists do not deny the existence of a material world outside their heads, but they oppose the notion that ‘phenomena can constitute themselves as objects of knowledge independent of discursive practices’.2 Thus, representations are always the result of an interpretive construction of the world out there, which cannot be known purely and directly, but only grasped through lenses which are based on language, categories and social practices. Representations sustain a

Refocusing the study of US Taiwan policy 3 particular discursive understanding but they are inherently unstable and always in the process of being produced and reproduced. To scrutinise the prevailing discourses and representations within a particular decision-making environment and encourage greater reflexivity about how identities help to specify which objects are to be protected and which constitute threats, a critical constructivist approach aspires to explore how discursive representations, which are seen as a priori and constitutive for action, shape identities and interests. Such an analysis, then, opens up the possibility of new kinds of questions and answers, allowing us to deal with US Taiwan policy and the complexity of the Taiwan issue with fresh insight. To contextualise my research project, the introduction starts by looking at the literature on US–China relations to question the rationalist assumptions underpinning this scholarship and point out that, despite a number of excellent studies examining US–China relations since 1949, few analysts have focused on US Taiwan policy. Indeed, rarely does any study of US–China relations examine the effects US Taiwan policy has had on the status of Taiwan. In the second section of the chapter, the work of various constructivists is introduced and this study’s main theoretical and methodological assumptions are laid out. The final section provides some background on the main sources used, presents a chapter outline, and offers a brief preview of the overall argument of the book.

Challenging mainstream approaches For an overall picture of US–Chinese relations, Harry Harding’s A Fragile Relationship and Rosemary Foot’s The Practice of Power stand out as the major contributions to the field. Harding’s analysis emphasises the different cycles in US–China relations between 1972 and 1992, which he characterises as a pattern of ‘progress and stagnation, crisis and consolidation’.3 According to Harding, the most significant dynamics which push the relationship in different directions are found in geopolitical and strategic concerns, ideological differences and economic interests. While acknowledging the influence of all these three elements, Harding believes that ideology and economics remain subordinate to geopolitical concerns.4 Foot takes a broader perspective and examines the relationship from 1949 onwards in a predominantly thematic overview, which focuses on the diplomatic, economic, strategic and domestic political aspects of the relationship. Although she recognises the powerful influence of the realist perspective and the important strategic underpinnings of US–Chinese relations in this period, Foot dissociates herself from the central assumption of Harding’s assessment. As Foot argues, ‘American relations with China were embedded in a wider structure of relationships at the global and domestic levels; they also embraced areas other than bilateral concern about the global strategic balance’.5 Adopting a similar approach, David Shambaugh utilises international relations theory and the ‘level of analysis’ approach to US–Chinese relations.6 Recognising the lack of primary data, Shambaugh leaves out the so-called ‘idiosyncratic/

4

Refocusing the study of US Taiwan policy

individual’ level and focuses instead on global systemic, societal and governmental levels of analysis.7 Noting the dramatic shift within the relationship from war and hostility on the Korean peninsula during the 1950s, to coming close to a de facto alliance after normalisation of relations in 1979 and then a sharp downturn after the Tiananmen Square massacre in 1989, Shambaugh acknowledges that it is difficult to find a ‘consistent equilibrium’. As he argues, ‘[i]t is a relationship fraught with high emotions, misperceptions, and considerable historical baggage. Even when the two nations’ objective national interests coincided, these subjective factors eventually tended to introduce tensions into the relationship’.8 Taking up the issue of ideology, Richard Madsen concurs that perceptions held within the broader American public indeed played a role in shaping US–China policy. Assumptions derived from Americans’ own moral values and expectations have been projected onto China, and intensified disputes over human rights issues, political liberalisation and independence movements.9 To search for the place of ideology in American foreign policy, Michael H. Hunt’s Ideology and US Foreign Policy provides the best introduction, and his book also contains several sections on the approach of the US to China.10 As an account of Chinese perceptions of Americans, David Shambaugh’s Beautiful Imperialist, China Perceives America, 1972–1990, stands out as a unique and substantial study of Chinese interpretations and images of the United States.11 Though various accounts emphasise ideological, cultural, societal and economic issues, the theme that has enjoyed most prominence within the literature on Sino-American relations throughout the Cold War, and especially since the rapprochement in 1971–2, has been strategic considerations and balance of power logic. The strategic aspects of US foreign policy which focused on containing Communist China prior to the process of rapprochement can be followed in the groundbreaking work of John L. Gaddis, while Harding provides a starting point for a realist account of US–China relations since rapprochement.12 Although these studies provide useful insights into US–China relations during the Cold War and the early 1990s and, when supplemented with more contemporary analyses, undoubtedly broaden and enrich our understanding, it should be noted that they do not draw extensively on archival material.13 More importantly, few studies have been written on US–China–Taiwan relations and most scholars have tended to focus on particular crises.14 Tucker’s contribution is still the major exception, although recently available accounts have supplemented Tucker’s analysis of what Bush has declared to be still ‘relatively unstudied issues’.15 Not previously examined, however, is the way in which discourses and representations work to construct a particular status for Taiwan. As members of the Allied coalition during the Second World War, the heads of state of China, the US and the United Kingdom (UK) jointly signed on 1 December 1943 the Cairo Declaration stipulating that ‘all the territories Japan has stolen from the Chinese, such as Formosa, Manchuria, and the Pescadores, shall be restored to the Republic of China’.16 In October 1949, after several years of civil war, the victorious Communist forces established the People’s Republic of China (PRC) in Beijing while Chiang Kai-Shek and his defeated Kuomintang (KMT) withdrew

Refocusing the study of US Taiwan policy 5 to Taiwan, and proclaimed Taipei the temporary capital of the Republic of China (ROC). The Truman administration was initially interested in some form of reconciliation with the newly established PRC regime. However, stalemate across the Taiwan Strait was solidified when the United States dispatched its Seventh Fleet to the Taiwan Strait in June 1950 in the aftermath of the Korean War. Small-scale fighting in the Taiwan Strait continued throughout the 1950s and 1960s over a string of islands (Quemoy and Matsu), but the situation eventually settled into deadlock. Through a number of historic visits in 1971 and 1972, Nixon and Kissinger laid the foundations for rapprochement and later normalisation of US–China relations and shifted US Taiwan policy towards acknowledging the one-China principle, which saw Taiwan as part of China. The Republic of China was expelled by the United Nations National Assembly and simultaneously the PRC was admitted to the United Nations (UN) in 1971 as representing China. Despite a number of communiqués acknowledging the importance of improving US–Chinese relations and reaffirming the one-China principle, the ‘Taiwan issue’ has developed into one of the most enduring stand-offs originating in the Cold War. The reversals and shifts in US Taiwan policy have generally been explained in terms of strategic calculations and balance of power logic. On this view, with war on the Korean Peninsula, Taiwan became strategically important as an essential link in the offshore island chain of bases and key to the southern flank of US operations.17 The balance of power, however, had changed by the late 1960s and early 1970s with the animosity in Sino-Soviet relations escalating into border clashes and US military superiority waning in relation to the Soviet Union. The structural imperatives of the international system, therefore, prompted the rationale to overcome conflicting interests in US–China relations, and accordingly the US changed its Taiwan policy.18 Although the contemporary picture is more mixed, a number of studies emphasise the strategic value of Taiwan and the need to support Taiwan as an independent entity in any attempt to contain the ‘rise of China’.19 Unsatisfied with the kind of interest-based, balance of power explanations in mainstream literature that ‘treat interests and structures as if they were objective, hard, substantial realities of the kind that are uncovered and explained by natural science’, I would instead argue that the current theoretical understanding of the rationalist approach is insufficient and that we now have other theoretical tools with which to re-examine current literature on US–Chinese relations and the Taiwan issue.20 As Ninkovich has observed, ‘as objects of study, interests are slippery because they have no objective existence apart from the way people constitute and interpret them’.21 Noting that a concern with the way identities are constantly constituted and reconstituted in social interaction has not been central to dominant approaches examining US Taiwan policy, this study explores the central role of discourses and emphasises the effects of a contingent construction of US identity and the representations which constituted its ‘national interests’. There are significant analytical and methodological differences between an analysis inspired by constructivism and the rationalist assumptions underpinning

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most traditional accounts of US Taiwan policy. This is reflected in the different kinds of questions such analyses seek to answer. Preoccupied with a form of causal explanation, traditional accounts emphasise ‘why’ questions. By moving from ‘why’ to ‘how-possible’ questions, we can illuminate the context of and facilitate an understanding of the ‘why’ questions, and ‘inquire into the practices that enable social actors to act, to frame policy as they do, and to wield the capabilities they do’.22 Consequently, in Chapter 2 I do not ask why it was necessary, but rather how it was possible for the US to decide to intervene in the Taiwan Strait in response to North Korea’s attack on South Korea in June 1950. In other words, the North Korean attack had to mean something before US decision-makers could decide on the appropriate response. Likewise, the central question asked in Chapter 3 is not why President Nixon and National Security Advisor Kissinger changed US Taiwan policy in the early 1970s, but how it was possible to consider alternatives which had previously been understood as unrealistic. Kissinger and Nixon might have been convinced that there was a strategic rationale behind US–China rapprochement; however, this says next to nothing about how the conflicting dynamics underpinning a new Taiwan policy would be reconciled. Indeed, moving from the view that Taiwan represented all of China, to seeing Taiwan’s status as undetermined and eventually to acknowledging that Taiwan was part of China, suggests that the ‘interest’ guiding the Nixon administration’s Taiwan policy was not in fact objective and unitary but rather split and contradictory. Instead of framing the Nixon administration’s Taiwan policy according to statecentric balance of power logic, we need a theoretical and methodological approach that scrutinises the discursive conditions of possibility that shape and constitute the parameters for action. Moreover, the analysis in Chapter 4 is primarily concerned with identifying how the re-writing and re-production of US identity in the post-Cold War era interrelates with increased attention on the binary opposites that differentiate the political systems on either side of the Taiwan Strait, which provide commonsensical arguments that undermine and challenge official US adherence to the one-China principle. Thus by tracing the changing representations of China and Taiwan within American policymaking circles, the analysis highlights how the debate about US Taiwan policy replicates the figurations of past discursive representations, which work to construct Taiwan and the PRC as two distinct kinds of subjects. Finally, I do not focus on Taiwan’s role in a strategy that contemplates engagement on the one hand, and on the other the containment of an emerging China in contemporary world affairs. Rather, by drawing on hedging and risk management I aim to develop a conceptual tool that encapsulates the complexities embedded in developing a US strategy for dealing with the rise of a major power. Shifting from ‘why’ to ‘how-possible’ questions, then, opens up the possibility of new kinds of questions and answers about US Taiwan policy, and the type of intersubjective political context in which changes to the status of Taiwan could be meaningfully introduced and, therefore, embraced. In other words, rather than framing the issue in zero-sum terms such as whether ‘why’ or ‘how-possible’

Refocusing the study of US Taiwan policy 7 questions are more important or appropriate, we should treat these as different kinds of questions which have different methodological entailments and recognise that answers to them may have different implications for the way we understand the means by which the Taiwan issue was finessed. A central theme in this study is then that more scepticism is needed when assessing the claims to knowledge of rationalist approaches and that such a reservation provides an important starting point from which to investigate how one might look differently at the Taiwan issue. Rather than assuming that ‘the truth’ is out there and discoverable, a more modest conception of what knowledge is must acknowledge that ‘perfect objectivity, unmediated and therefore undistorted, is not part of the human condition’.23 The aim is not to jettison rationalist approaches entirely. Rather, it is to develop a new theoretical and analytical perspective on US Taiwan policy that supplements the rationalist approach by incorporating the emphasis on identity, norms and discourse analysis found in constructivism. While some scholars have gestured towards the potential utility of such an approach, it has been neither elaborated nor developed to any significant extent.24 Two exceptions might be Goh’s constructivist-inspired analysis of US–Chinese rapprochement during the 1960s and 1970s and Lynch’s hermeneutical and Habermasian approach which underlines the relatively greater significance of the logic of communicative engagement as opposed to strategic engagement in contemporary US–Chinese relations.25 So, there has been little work so far that theoretically explores the interactions within this triangular relationship while tracing historically using archival sources the origins of what is known today as the ‘Taiwan issue’. A central theme in my thesis, then, is to provide theoretical and analytical guidance to re-examine aspects of this triangular relationship which to date has been inadequately tackled. ‘Applying theory’, as Costigliola has noted, ‘need not mire written history in endless relativism. Rather, theory can enable fresh topics and new ways of thinking about the past.’26 Although a focus on discourse analysis and critical constructivism cannot encapsulate any ultimate reality, such an analysis is concerned with the way discourse(s) construct a particular reality which constitutes the Taiwan issue in US China policy. By the label critical I am referring to approaches that take more elements of the policymaking problematic and take less as given.27 Mainstream positivist approaches in international relations tend to take as the starting point of their analysis a certain reality as given, which limits what social construction can mean and the possibility of analysing identity formation as a discursive process.28 Theoretical guidance, then, is indispensable in order to grasp the underlying dynamics of US Taiwan policy.

Theoretical and methodological assumptions My core theoretical and methodological objective is to explore how critical constructivism can shed new light on US Taiwan policy during and after the

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Cold War. The approach can be divided into four steps. The first step is to reflect critically on Alexander Wendt’s notion of a ‘via media’ or a ‘middle ground’ between rationalist and reflectivist approaches to world politics.29 The next step is to examine in more detail the tension between conventional and critical constructivism and acknowledge the danger of lumping constructivism into one homogenous school of thought. In response to repeated calls for constructivists to cease their discussion of ‘metatheory’, this study emphasises the comparative advantage of using a critical constructivist method to explain US Taiwan policy since 1949. This brings me to the third and fourth steps: my theoretical and methodological approach. Closely related to a critical constructivist approach, discourse theory provides the conceptual framework for this study. Finally, the concepts of predication, presupposition and subject positioning are important methodological tools that guide my analysis. In International Relations (IR), constructivism has emerged as ‘the officially accredited contender to the established core of the discipline’ and has been claimed to be ‘one of the most important theoretical developments of the last decades’.30 ‘Constructivism as a phenomenon has become inescapable’ within a ‘field that has been described as undergoing or having undergone a constructivist turn’.31 The ‘success story’ owes much of its current appeal to Wendt’s ambitious project to develop a ‘via media’ between rationalist and reflectivist approaches to world politics in what has been labelled the Third Debate in the historiography of the discipline of IR theory.32 Wendt himself terms this approach ‘structural idealism’, a philosophical position that represents both an ‘idealist’ and a ‘holist’ or ‘structuralist’ account.33 Scientific realism plays an important part in finding ‘a “via media” through the Third Debate by reconciling what many take to be incompatible ontological and epistemological positions’.34 Wendt sides with the post-positivist or the reflectivist camp when it comes to ontology, which he sees as more important than epistemology. However, on epistemological questions, Wendt sides with the positivists, and argues that ‘social science is an epistemologically privileged discourse that gives us knowledge, albeit always fallible, about the world out there’.35 Given Wendt’s commitments to a positivist social science, the central problem with the ‘middle ground’ or the ‘via media’ position is that Wendt has shifted the ‘constructivist turn’ in IR in the direction of rationalists in order to be acceptable to more mainstream approaches. In that process, something has been lost. As Smith, among others, has pointed out, by embracing the epistemological underpinnings of rationalism, conventional constructivism as understood in Wendt’s terms ‘fundamentally misconceives the nature of the social world, and limits the range of possibilities for a social theory of international relations based on it’.36 With epistemological differences checked for, in a conventional reading constructivist ontology is arguably compatible with the so-called ‘normal’ scientific criteria of rationalist approaches to international relations.37 However, this move has ‘normative overtones’ and brings us to what Persram criticises as

Refocusing the study of US Taiwan policy 9 ‘a strategic use of constructivism’.38 Consequently, Maja Zehfuss cautions us that if conventional constructivism is seen as satisfying the need for a critical stance within the field of IR, ‘it may become a licence to ignore and exclude other critical approaches’.39 Thus Keohane praises Wendt for his commitment to more traditional and restricted modes of inquiry as Wendt convincingly shows ‘that one does not have to swallow the contaminated epistemological water of postmodernism in order to enjoy the heady ontological wine of constructivism’.40 Others seem grateful to Wendt for laying ‘to rest the notion that constructivism is necessarily postmodern, devoid of an objective referent … [And] his discussion of scientific realism ought to be required reading for any student of international relations …’.41 Indeed, Katzenstein, Keohane and Krasner maintain that work they bracket together as post-modernism ‘falls clearly outside the social science enterprise’.42 To pull constructivism off its somewhat shaky middle ground, we need to acknowledge the impossibility of constructing a philosophically principled middle way that mixes ‘positivistic epistemology with post-positivist ontology’.43 Dispensing with notions of secure foundations often engenders the charge of relativism. With no Archimedean points to settle epistemological and ontological differences, the task is endless and it is perhaps necessary to recognise that the middle ground ‘has no particular virtues but many of the disadvantages of the positions it tries to mediate’.44 Such a position, however, does not necessarily portend a descent into nihilism. Rather, following Guzzini, this study argues that constructivism is in need of a reconstruction, thus, in a nutshell, acknowledging that constructivism is ‘epistemologically about the social construction of knowledge, and ontologically about the construction of social reality’.45 Before we look at how this philosophical position influences my theoretical and methodological propositions, it is necessary to propose a more nuanced view of the various approaches to what has been labelled constructivism. Constructivism is not a unified body of theory. Katzenstein et al. categorise three broad clusters: conventional, critical and postmodern.46 John G. Ruggie differentiates between three different variants: neo-classical constructivism, postmodernist constructivism and a third constructivist variant located on the continuum between these two.47 I shall concentrate on the distinction between conventional and critical constructivists.48 Such a distinction is similar to Wendt’s differentiation between ‘thin’ and ‘thick’ constructivism.49 I recognise the fact that considerable differences exist within each of these branches and that some scholars would reject any categorisation. Furthermore, by drawing this distinction I am not arguing that there is no relationship between these different strands of constructivism. In some areas they overlap and complement each other, so they should not be regarded as mutually exclusive. When examining the usefulness of conventional approaches I limit my analysis to normative and systemic constructivists. I proceed in two ways. On the one hand, I aim to show that normative constructivism needs to take much greater account of how a particular norm could be given meaning and significance by decision-makers at

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specific times and places.50 On the other hand, I seek to broaden the narrowly defined systemic constructivism associated with Wendt.51 As shown by a wide-ranging empirical work on the diffusion of Western norms to the Third World,52 global norms and apartheid,53 a chemical weapons ‘taboo’,54 the use of land mines55 and political change,56 norms do matter. Nevertheless, to encapsulate how norms define and reformulate an understanding of interest and limit a range of acceptable policy choices, a further push towards ‘reconstructing the social discursive context that made possible that particular understanding of that norm’ is needed.57 As Hopf argues, ‘normative constructivism’s focus on norms per se excessively narrows constructivism’s theoretical domain, depriving it of its own sociological ontology’.58 Once our empirical findings suggest that decision-makers adopt a particular norm, we need to go one step further and trace how that norm could be given meaning and significance by the decision-makers. Hence, to account for the rejection or adoption of any particular norm, the principal point must be to establish the ‘configurations of intersubjective meanings that made possible the very thinkability or imaginability of these choices’.59 Systemic approaches, usually associated with Wendt, hold that identities and interests are formed through processes of interstate interaction, and illuminate how states’ identities are shaped by interaction at the systemic level.60 However, systemic constructivism remains insufficient to account for the construction and variety of identities possessed by a state at the domestic level. An important aim is therefore to recognise that identity construction takes place at different levels. State identity is a product of both the domestic and the international realm and it is unlikely that either context will dominate in the construction of state identity.61 Wendt does not consider how states constitute themselves as subjects in the first place. Wendt succinctly states this view in explaining that Social Theory of International Politics ‘is a book about the international system, not about state identity formation’.62 Wendt’s commitment to develop a systemic theory follows Waltz in emphasising the necessity to ‘treat states as, at some level, given for purpose of systemic IR theory’.63 This is exactly where Wendt’s analysis becomes problematic. On the one hand, it is maintained that the world is socially constructed; on the other hand, conventional constructivists take a certain ‘reality’ as given as the starting point of inquiry. Wendt’s unitary actor, with its preconceived identity, places severe limits on what social construction can mean. What is at stake here, of course, is that ‘states are socially constructed, but they can only be socially constructed as unitary actors’.64 In short, Smith asks ‘how Wendt’s social constructions get constructed given that his world is composed of pre-social actors with stable identities’.65 The focus on ideas, norms, identities and cultures as ‘one more aspect of “the real” of international relations, or one more “cause” underlying foreign policy, that needs to be incorporated into our analysis’ threatens to absorb constructivism as a mere ‘facelift of the mainstream’.66 Accordingly, much of the success of conventional constructivism has been ‘paid for by a neglect of some basic ideas of

Refocusing the study of US Taiwan policy 11 constructivism’.67 A common concern among critical scholars, then, is that Wendt has sacrificed the possibility of studying the ‘multidimensionality of identity formation’ and explicitly sided with more mainstream approaches.68 Wendt himself acknowledges that states are only unitary actors analytically, not in fact. Indeed, Wendt postulates that ‘[t]hose ideas were no doubt formed in social interaction with other actors prior to the Encounter, but they are exogenous here’.69 Thus Wendt concedes that it is ‘striking how little empirical research has been done investigating what kinds of interests state actors actually have’ and finds that ‘there are important dangers, both theoretical and political, to leaving the internal construction of state identity unexamined’.70 A rewarding but challenging task is therefore not to prejudice analysis by singling out one particular level of analysis. Indeed, critical constructivists recognise that there is no theoretical reason to assume that the process of the construction of state identity occurs only, or even most importantly, at the interstate level. Instead they hold that state identities are a product of both the domestic and the international level.71 By drawing on critical constructivism, this book focuses on the processes of social construction that have constituted US identity at a particular time. It is guided by three interrelated analytical principles: ‘(i) What is understood as reality is socially constructed (ii) Certain agents or groups of agents play a privileged role in the production and reproduction of these realities, which reflect, enact, and reify relations of power (iii) A critical constructivist approach problematises dominant constructions, offers guidelines for the transformation of common sense, and facilitates the imagining of alternative constructions of reality’.72 Such a critical constructivist position does not reject the existence of a world external to thought. However, there is a tendency to talk about things being either real or ‘merely constructed’. The constructed world thus construed is somehow less tangible, less trustworthy. Critics of constructivism appear here to be contesting the idea that the world is a figment of our imagination and has no materiality, which was never any constructivist’s claim.73 Referring to something as socially constructed is not at all the same as saying that it does not exist. Because this misunderstanding persists, it should be repeated that the ‘discursive character of an object does not, by any means, imply putting its existence into question’.74 Constructivists would not deny that nuclear weapons exist, that their use has an apocalyptic effect on human life or that a number of states possess nuclear capabilities. ‘On this a constructivist and the most empiricist of arms-control experts can agree.’75 However, as pointed out by Weldes et al., constructivism is interested in how we get from here to such widely shared propositions that the United States is threatened by Russian and Chinese, but not by British or Israeli, nuclear weapons, that Iran’s nuclear potential is more threatening than the US’s nuclear arsenal and that states are safer with nuclear weapons than without them.76 Rather than being self-evident, threats and corresponding national interests are fundamentally matters of interpretation. Thus, it is this discursive constitution of the threat represented by nuclear weapons that Weldes et al. refer to as ‘ “construction,” and it means not

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that the weapons have been made up but that their meaning has been molded in discourse’.77 Recognising that reality is socially constructed does not, for example, mean that one has to deny that the US Seventh Fleet was interposed in the Taiwan Strait following North Korea’s attack on South Korea in June 1950. Indeed, any interpretation of these events, to be plausible, must recognise and account for these actions. The meanings articulated by those actions, however, are contingent and contested. As we shall see in the next chapter, Washington emphasised the ‘neutralising’ intentions behind the decision to interpose the Seventh Fleet in the Taiwan Strait, while the British saw it as an unnecessary provocation and the PRC denounced it as ‘armed aggression against the territory of China …’.78 As Weldes points out, then, ‘what is at issue in the claim that national interests are socially constructed is meaning and its social effects, not physical existence’.79 Meta-theory matters, but this study is more interested in showing concretely the way in which discourse operates and demonstrating how US Taiwan policy since 1949 has been driven by discursive representations, which are intersubjectively articulated and socially constructed. With this in mind, this book seeks to reconcile theory and empirical research by demonstrating the advantages of applying critical constructivist thinking to a specific area of investigation. The remedy to this problem brings me to a discussion of my method and source material. The concept of discourse has different meaning to various theoretical traditions in the social sciences.80 The work of these approaches has been taken up in different theories and disciplines, producing somewhat different and overlapping theorisations and analyses of ‘discourses’. The discourse theory utilised in this study differs from positivist, realist and Marxist accounts and is closer to the poststructuralist traditions of Foucault, Laclau and Mouffe than the work of Derrida and Kristeva or the critical discourse analysis developed by Fairclough and Wodak.81 My objective is to draw upon these traditions in order to examine the construction of various discourses of the Taiwan issue in US China policy.82 Borrowing selectively from a long tradition of discourse theory opens up new ways of interpreting and evaluating empirical material essential to our understanding of US Taiwan policy. Howarth identifies three basic categories central to discourse theory: the discursive, discourse and discourse analysis. By discursive Howarth argues that ‘all objects are objects of discourse, in that a condition of their meaning depends upon a socially constructed system of rules and significant differences’.83 The discursive realm is not equivalent to ‘ideas’, but incorporates material as well as ideational factors. Thus, against the prejudice of the ‘mental character of discourse’, Laclau and Mouffe state that ‘we will affirm the material character of every discursive structure’.84 For example, the ideas, policies and actions of the Nixon administration’s Taiwan policy can be seen as a discursive field. Not only did it consist of ideas (a ‘new era’ of American foreign policy and ‘Nixon doctrine’) it also included certain practices (‘strong leadership’, ‘official visits to the PRC’, ‘withdrawal of troops’, and ‘changing voting patterns in the UN’).

Refocusing the study of US Taiwan policy 13 The category of discourse refers to ‘historically specific systems of meaning which form the identities of subjects and objects … discourses are contingent and historical constructions, which are always vulnerable to those political forces excluded in their production, as well as the dislocatory effects of events beyond their control’.85 A discourse is intrinsically open-ended and incomplete. Its exterior limits are constituted by other discourses that are themselves also open, inherently unstable and always in the process of being articulated.86 Discourses, then, are constantly modified and transformed by what we say, think and do. The final category proposed by Howarth is discourse analysis which ‘refers to the process of analysing signifying practices as discursive forms. This means that discourse analysis treats a wide range of linguistic and non-linguistic material – speeches, reports, manifestos, historical events, interviews, policies, ideas, even organisations and institutions – as “texts” or “writings” that enable subjects to experience the world of objects, words and practices’.87 Accordingly, social relations are not purely linguistic phenomena and there are no ontological differences between the linguistic and behavioural aspects of social practices.88 Discourse analysis, then, can be differentiated from the study of linguistics. Whereas linguistics examines the rules of language that underlie particular statements, ‘the description of the events of discourses poses a quite different question: how is it that one particular statement appeared rather than another?’89 In other words, there is a difference between what one could say linguistically under the rules of grammar and logic, and what is actually said. The question, as Edkins points out, focuses on ‘[w]hy do we, in fact, say some things and not others?’90 Particular aspects of the world may be represented differently by various discourses, so we are generally in the position of having to consider the relationship between different discourses. Discourses are identified through prominent representations and they articulate different constructions of identity. However, discourses do not define one particular policy, but structure the policy space within which concrete decisions are made. Establishing what form any discourse about US Taiwan policy took, as well as how the Taiwan issue in US China policy was constructed, requires careful empirical analysis. Different discourses structure the world differently and can be understood, according to Hansen, ‘as framings of meanings and lenses of interpretation, rather than objective, historical truth’.91 Finally, discourse theory does not endeavour to uncover the true and underlying meanings of texts and social practices that are somehow deliberately concealed by ideological practices and propaganda.92 Instead, comparing public rhetoric with private statements suggests that rhetoric reflects fundamental assumptions guiding policymaking. Nixon and Kissinger expressed different views on the Taiwan issue in their discussions with the Chinese leadership and in the Shanghai Communiqué. However, to be effective, the shift in US China policy was embedded in the language of the determined discourse because it ‘constituted the framework in which policymakers deal with specific issues and in which the attentive public understands those issues’.93

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Public statements are often intended, perhaps even primarily, to persuade and to mobilise. Weldes points out, however, that ‘precisely the same language and arguments – in short, the same rhetoric – appears in documents not intended for public consumption’.94 NSC 68 gives a telling example. As Gaddis observed, ‘portions of it sounded as though they had been intended for the floor of Congress, or some other conspicuous public platform … This is not what one would expect in a top secret document destined not to be public for a quarter of a century.’95 In short, as Weldes persuasively argues, the criticism that the language of national interest is ‘mere rhetoric’ and so cannot help us to understand state action rests ‘upon an unsustainable distinction between rhetoric, on the one hand, and truth or objectivity on the other. Gaddis’ surprise at the language deployed by the authors of NSC 68 is a function precisely of this common but ultimately untenable distinction.’96 My understanding of discourse analysis is anchored in these theoretical commitments. The next step is then to explain the methodological tools that enable me to examine how discursive practices constitute subjects and objects, rendering some courses of action more reasonable than others based on a particular representation of subjects and the relations between them. As Adler has recognised, methodology is the major missing link in constructivist theory and research: ‘a coherent constructivist methodological approach also means approaching research less as a predictive enterprise than as an effort to explain how past and present events, practices and interests became possible and why they occurred in time and space the way they did’.97 Borrowing from Doty and Milliken, the concepts of predication, presupposition and subject positioning are important analytical categories that enable me to get at how discursive practices and representations shape policy options and choices.98 Predication is linked to the system of signification and is suitable for the study of language practices in texts (e.g. diplomatic documents, theory articles, transcripts of interviews), the main research materials for international relations discourse analysts. Laclau and Mouffe used the term nodal points to refer to privileged discursive points that fix meaning and establish positions that make predication possible.99 Thus, ‘[p]redication involves the linking of certain qualities to particular subjects … by extracting from the documents the descriptive characteristics, adjectives, adverbs, and capabilities attributed to the various subjects’.100 A predicate affirms a quality, attribute or property of a person or thing. For instance, to state that ‘[t]he United States will work for a just and secure peace: just, because it fulfils the aspirations of peoples and nations for freedom and progress; secure, because it removes the danger of foreign aggression’, establishes the United States as a particular kind of subject with these qualities.101 As Doty explains, ‘attributes attached to subjects are important for constructing identities for those subjects and for telling us what subjects can do’.102 Predication also occurs through practices of articulation. In the process of articulation, linguistic predicates are ‘combined and recombined to produce contingent and contextually specific representations of the world’.103 To paraphrase Weldes, in the construction of the Taiwan issue, for example, an articulation of

Refocusing the study of US Taiwan policy 15 the PRC leaders as authoritarian establishes a particular set of meanings in US representations of the Taiwan issue which constitutes the ROC and the PRC as different entities.104 Weldes argues that ‘articulations are never simply produced once and for all’, but keep being continuously reproduced and rearticulated. In other words, ‘alternative representations are always possible’.105 This contingency of discourse is embedded in Laclau and Mouffe’s characterisation of the practice of articulation as ‘the construction of nodal points which partially fix meaning … [T]he partial character of this fixation proceeds from the openness of the social, a result, in its turn, of the constant overflowing of every discourse by the infinitude of the field of discursivity’.106 Presupposition deals with other important textual mechanisms that create background knowledge and in doing so construct a particular kind of world in which certain things are recognised as true.107 One of the most important aspects of a discourse is its capacity to naturalise. Naturalisation occurs through presupposition, which creates background knowledge that is taken to be true, which entails an implicit theorisation of how the world works and also an elaboration of the nature of its inhabitants.108 Subject positioning constitutes the final part of this process of producing meaning. The rhetorical strategies found in discourses entail the positioning of subjects and objects vis-à-vis one another. What defines a particular kind of subject is, in large part, the relationship in which that subject is positioned relative to other kinds of subjects.109 According to Doty, some of the important kinds of relationships that position subjects are those of opposition, identity, similarity and complementarity.110 The process of subject position is also related to the notion of interpellation. Although the following analysis does not examine individuals’ self-understanding or how concrete individuals are interpellated by, or ‘hailed’ into those subject positions, the analysis notes that subject positions ‘are created when social relations are depicted’.111 A variety of subject positions are constructed within a state’s discursive understanding of ‘our state’ and ‘their state’, or ‘us’ and ‘them’. The central subject position is, of course, that of the relevant state itself. Moreover, the field of discursivity establishes the United States as ‘a particular kind of subject, with a specific identity and the specific interests attendant upon that identity’.112 ‘The United States’, rather than, say, individual American citizens becomes the primary object of security as a result of the interpellation of this subject position. As Weldes demonstrates, ‘since “we” Americans are freedom-loving democrats and civilised Westerners, it makes sense to claim that “our” U.S. actions abroad are designed to promote liberty and freedom, not self-interest or tyranny. Since “we” are concerned American patriots, the United States clearly has the right to do all that it deems necessary to protect the American way of life.’113 Thus each subject position is located within specific power relations, enabling particular ways of operating in the world and characterised by particular interests attendant upon that identity or subject position.

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Situating the US with a particular identity makes a material difference, since identities help to specify among other things which objects are to be protected and which constitute threats. Certain practices might be similar but ascertaining how actions constitute threats, aggression, obligations and commitments, requires significant interpretive work. For instance, the actual behaviour and physical content of providing economic and military aid might be identical, but the meaning attached to these practices is constituted through discursive representations.114

Sources and chapter outline These theoretical and methodological underpinnings are then applied to my source material. The main material used is archival documentation. The representations focused on in this study are for the most part representations of US Taiwan policy since 1949. My selection, like all selections, is therefore somewhat arbitrary. This study excludes many PRC and ROC voices. Leaving out alternative representations that may be present in what I have excluded does not mean that the omissions are unimportant. Rather, this exclusion is a result of a mere pragmatic choice based on time constraints, my limited knowledge of Mandarin and the difficulties in accessing archival material in the PRC and the ROC. Developments on the ground in Beijing and Taipei, of course, remain the most important factors in determining future eventualities across the Taiwan Straits. However, it will be emphasised throughout this study that the US has played and continues to play a considerable role in shaping vital aspects of the Taiwan issue. Furthermore, I make no claim to have accounted for all the discourses, meanings and identities guiding US Taiwan policy since 1949. There are always additional texts present and unaccounted for. By focusing on decision-makers and foreign policy elites I have concentrated my analysis on archival material and official statements and reports. Other scholars may argue that these sources are incomplete: no novels, poetry, cinema, or radio and television shows have been included to probe the deeper and wider cultural roots of discursive understandings. But I believe that focusing on the logic, mechanics and political effects of the state discourse makes it possible to say something meaningful about the room for manoeuvre, the context and the ‘reality’ constructed when decision-makers implemented a particular US Taiwan policy. This being so, it follows that it would be hypocritical to claim an Archimedean objectivity for my own perspective that I seek to deny others. As Haraway has argued, all knowledge is situated knowledge. At the same time, however, Haraway has noted ‘that analyses that confess their own situated and partial nature are, paradoxically, more objective than those that, in claiming to be objective, deny it’.115 Even if I had wanted to unpack all the potential discourses, limitations of time and space would have prevented me from going much further. Besides, because facts can be collected ad infinitum without necessarily arriving at something called the truth, a critical constructivist analysis must recognise that additional discourses, texts and identities are always present and unaccounted for.

Refocusing the study of US Taiwan policy 17 As Hopf points out, ‘[t]here is no place to stop, no place we can claim that we have accounted for all that we must account for’.116 In some respect this leads to ultimate openness. As Hans-Georg Gadamer observed about hermeneutics, its first principle ‘is to admit the endlessness of the task’.117 Thus I can make no claim regarding other possible discourses. It is possible, indeed, likely that other discourses existed that would have resisted the kind of constructions in the following chapters. The important point, however, which will be illustrated in the following chapters, is that a dominant discourse existed in United States policy circles which set the parameters for US Taiwan policy. For the chapter dealing with the Truman administration’s Taiwan policy, I have gone through the relevant papers of President Harry S. Truman and Secretary of State Dean Acheson at the Truman Presidential Library in Independence, Missouri, together with the papers of other influential policymakers within the Truman administration. Further, I have examined each Foreign Relations of the United States volume dealing with US Far Eastern policy from 1948 to 1950. The main archival material used when analysing the Nixon administration’s Taiwan policy is located in the Nixon presidential materials at the National Archives in College Park, Maryland. Most of the National Security Council files were declassified in 2002 and give a remarkably comprehensive inside account of the governmental debates at the time. Some materials, however, such as Kissinger’s telephone conversations during his tenure as Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs (1969–74) and Secretary of State (1973–4) have just recently been released by the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) on 26 May 2004. To my knowledge, no studies have applied this recently de-classified material to US Taiwan policy. Thus, I hope my analysis can provide a more comprehensive picture of policymaking during Nixon’s first term in office than is found in existing accounts. A collection of declassified China-related Nixon administration materials, China and the United States: From Hostility to Engagement, 1960–1998, is available at the National Security Archive, George Washington University.118 Material from the State Department Records, in particular Central Files (Record Group 59) – Lord’s files, has also been helpful in tracking down the Nixon administration’s China policy in the years 1969–72. Some documents relating to Kissinger and Nixon’s conversations with Chinese leaders in the period 1971–7 can be found in William Burr (ed.) The Kissinger Transcripts, The Top Secret Talks with Beijing and Moscow. Burr, however, acknowledges that a more comprehensive picture of the Nixon–Kissinger foreign policy requires access to Kissinger’s own papers and the NSC files in the Nixon papers at the National Archives.119 The chapter focusing on contemporary US Taiwan policy during George W. Bush’s presidency draws heavily on presidential and administration statements and congressional hearings. For instance, I have looked at all the hearings on US China policy in the House of Representatives and the US Senate since 2000. I have also scrutinised a number of reports by the White House (such as the National Security Strategy), and the US Department of Defense (such as the Quadrennial

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Defense Review), together with a massive amount of reports coming from the US–China Economic and Security Review Commission. When analysing these documents through the lenses of discourse analysis, I have looked for the predicates, presuppositions, categorisations and the articulatory practices that create meaning and identities, which in turn construct a particular reality. Taking discourse analysis seriously, then, means emphasising how meaningful action is intersubjectively constituted, contested and sustained. Discursive theorising must therefore explicate how discursive systems perform a constraining or enabling function with regard to state action and identify the discursive processes that make certain policy choices possible while excluding others as unintelligible or improper. In short, we have accounted for how rationalist approaches prevent us from developing an alternative framework for interpreting, debating and understanding US Taiwan policy and pointed out that traditional approaches seldom focus entirely on the Taiwan issue in US China policy. We then explored the incommensurable ontological and epistemological challenges involved in developing a stable middle ground and the danger of conventional constructivism facilitating the developments of a new orthodoxy in IR theory. Having differentiated between conventional and critical constructivism, and argued that conventional constructivist approaches too often abandon invigorating insights into the construction of social reality and knowledge, we examined the key concepts of discourse theory and a critical constructivist method in order to refocus constructivist research. It is now time to put the theoretical and methodological arguments to work and I will introduce the plan of the book. Chapters 2 to 4 provide a historical analysis of the emergence and development of different discourses that have been central in constituting US identity and have framed the possibilities of available action for US Taiwan policy. Chapter 2 asks: how do we get from North Korea’s attack on South Korea in June 1950 to US ‘neutralisation’ of the Taiwan Strait? In other words, this chapter examines how a policy of intervention in the Chinese Civil War, initially regarded by the Truman administration as counterproductive to American interests, came to be deemed necessary and non-intervention unthinkable. By focusing on the discursively constructed identity of the US, what it means to be America and how decision-makers see the role of the US in world affairs, I argue that the Korean War represented an understanding that US identity was under threat from a monolithic Communist bloc, which worked to objectify Taiwan as an object at stake in a worldwide struggle between good and evil, order and chaos. Hence, the scripting of a particular American identity undermined a diplomatic approach and reinforced Truman’s predilection to interpose the Seventh Fleet in the Taiwan Strait in June 1950. Chapter 3 seeks to scrutinise how the Nixon administration was able to open up space on the Taiwan issue to consider alternatives which had previously been understood as being unrealistic. Divided into two sections, the analysis begins by investigating the changing discursive representations of the Taiwan issue identified within official circles during the Nixon presidency. The second section

Refocusing the study of US Taiwan policy 19 shows how meanings and representations play an important part in the process of discursively constructing the status of Taiwan, by rendering some courses of action possible while excluding others as inappropriate or unthinkable. Accordingly, the discursive representations identified bore concrete policy consequences – notably in relation to the US position towards the PRC’s representation in the UN, in relation to American military presence on Taiwan and in acknowledging the oneChina principle. Chapter 4 demonstrates how the adherence of the US to the one-China principle, originating in Nixon and Kissinger’s visits to the PRC in 1971–2, is increasingly being challenged by the contemporary contradictions in US Taiwan policy. My intention is to show that the combined discursive representation of a threatening, expansive and authoritarian China, differentiated from the freedom, the flourishing democracy and the exemplary economic development model on Taiwan, creates persuasive, commonsensical arguments that increasingly contradict, constrain and undermine Washington’s official one-China policy. Paradoxically therefore, the US, the self-defined, indispensable promoter of democracy and human rights, finds itself in a precarious situation whereby the US has become constrained by the developments of democracy in Taiwan. Consequently, America’s increased attention on its image as the champion of freedom and democracy has a profound impact on whether the one-China policy is accepted, contested or allowed to remain ambiguous. In Chapter 5 I take a broader perspective and examine the overall debate relating to US China policy more generally. I argue that we need to transcend the politicised containment and engagement debate in favour of a hedging and risk management framework that allows one to explore the complexities peculiar to US China strategy in the twenty-first century. As part of a broader constructivist research agenda, my approach emphasises that policy choices are being made, and that not everything is pre-ordained and determined by systemic structure.120 In a brief concluding chapter, I return to the central research questions identified throughout the study and consider the future implications of the argument developed both for theoretical literature and for the ways in which we understand US Taiwan policy.

2

Discourses and the origins of the ‘Taiwan issue’ 1949–50

The central aim of this chapter is to consider US Taiwan policy in the critical years of 1949 and 1950. The overall emphasis is on how and why US policy towards China and Taiwan changed so drastically following the outbreak of the Korean War and what implications this shift had for the status of Taiwan. North Korea’s invasion of South Korea in June 1950 brought about a dramatic reversal in US Taiwan policy. Secretary of State Dean Acheson’s ‘hands off’ and ‘let the dust settle’ approach towards the Chinese Civil War, aiming to achieve American objectives by exploiting Sino-Soviet antagonism and carefully avoiding any irredentist issues in US relations with the PRC over Taiwan, was suddenly abandoned. This observation raises some central questions: How do we get from North Korea’s attack on South Korea to US ‘neutralisation’ of the Taiwan Strait? Given the consensus within the State Department and the military establishment that Taiwan was not essential to US strategic interests, and that it was inadvisable to commit US forces to deny Communists control of Taiwan, how could Truman reverse this policy and declare on 27 June 1950 that ‘[i]n these circumstances the occupation of Formosa by Communist forces would be a direct threat to the security of the Pacific area and to United States forces performing their lawful and necessary functions in that area’?1 In other words, why did the outbreak of fighting in Korea place the Taiwan situation in a dramatically different strategic context? In addressing these questions I emphasise how US interests came to be constructed through discursive representations. Taking issue with the mainstream rationalist proposition that US protection of Taiwan was embedded in strategic calculations, I instead advocate the importance of questioning how identities shape and constitute interests. I aim to show that an understanding of US interests towards Taiwan demands an understanding of the identity politics underlying US relations with China and the discourse of the ‘Communist conspiracy’, situated within a particular Cold War context. Put differently, the North Korean attack had to mean something before it was possible for US decision-makers to decide on the appropriate US response. Preoccupied with combating Communist aggression, Taiwan became a symbol of prestige which the Communists would enjoy if they succeeded in occupying

Origins of the ‘Taiwan issue’ 1949–50 21 Taiwan. Once the North Korean attack had been defined as part of a wider Moscowdriven Communist aggression, the decision to interpose the Seventh Fleet in the Taiwan Strait became commonsensical and incontestable. As Doty points out, then, we need to ‘examine how meanings are produced and attached to various social subjects/objects, thus constituting particular interpretive dispositions which create certain possibilities and preclude others’.2 Discursive representations establish a certain meaning and tell us who ‘we’ are, how ‘we’ act in relation to specific others and assign value (or not) to those identities and activities. These representations ‘can neither be wished away nor simply refused’.3 For instance, US interaction with the PRC when that state is construed as a threat and an aggressive member of the Communist bloc differs from interaction with it when it is construed as an emerging ‘Titoist’ China not tied to Moscow. Consequently, I examine a number of discourses about US Taiwan policy and emphasise the effects of a contingent construction of US identity and the national interests which emerge out of this representation. A central proposition of my work, then, is that interests derive from identity and discursive representations. Finally, the analysis can be differentiated from traditional accounts in its emphasis on ‘how-possible’ questions. In contrast to the focus on ‘why’ questions, concerned with explaining why particular decisions resulted in specific courses of action, I argue that the question being asked is not why a particular course of action was chosen but how it was possible, and indeed commonsensical, for an interventionist policy in the Taiwan Strait to be deemed necessary and nonintervention unthinkable. According to most scholars in the field, ‘[m]ilitary and strategic considerations were paramount in the decision for intervention’ in the Taiwan Strait.4 Although explanations that emphasise the strategic rationale are convincing, they are incomplete. ‘Why’ questions, as Doty explains, ‘generally take as unproblematic the possibility that a particular decision or course of action could happen’.5 So, this chapter asks not only why the Truman administration felt it necessary to intervene in the Taiwan Strait in the aftermath of the Korean War but also how the US responded to Communist aggression on the Korean Peninsula in late June 1950. Put differently, we must ask how ‘neutralisation’ of the Taiwan Strait became the appropriate US Taiwan policy following the North Korean attack on South Korea. In short, then, this chapter endeavours to complement traditional accounts in two ways: first, through an emphasis on the ‘red menace’ discourse it aims to provide a more nuanced view of the discursively constructed Cold War identity of the US; and second, it attempts to illustrate how US Taiwan policy was deeply embedded in the ‘determined’ and ‘undetermined’ discourses, often overlooked by existing accounts. I have divided the assessment into four sections. The first section elucidates the continuous reassessment of US Taiwan policy in 1949 and 1950. I demonstrate that before the outbreak of the Korean War, Taiwan was not considered essential to US national security and the military establishment was not willing to

22

Origins of the ‘Taiwan issue’ 1949–50

intervene militarily to prevent Taiwan from falling into the hands of the Chinese Communists. As General Bradley, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS), explained to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in January 1950, ‘[t]he Joint Chiefs have had five papers on this subject and all of them stated that Formosa did have strategic importance, but it was not of sufficient strategic importance to warrant sending troops to it’.6 Of course, the Truman administration favoured a situation whereby Taiwan was denied to the Chinese Communists, but the US government was only willing to commit diplomatic and economic means to obtain this goal. The second section engages with the historiographical debate concerning these vital years in US–China relations. The main emphasis, however, is not on whether there was a ‘lost opportunity’ for rapprochement between the US and China in 1949–50 or whether Acheson had the flexibility to contemplate accommodation with Beijing.7 Instead, the focus of my analysis is on Taiwan. I trace the debate, both within the Truman administration through documentary evidence and within the existing secondary literature, concerning a possible ‘change of heart’ among the leading policymakers within the administration regarding US China and Taiwan policy during 1949 and 1950. By the summer of 1950 there was undoubtedly pressure to reverse the administration’s policy and apply the necessary means to prevent the Chinese Communists from crossing the Taiwan Strait. Nevertheless, Acheson manoeuvred confidently through any challenges to his non-intervention policy. Sensing that the collapse of the KMT seemed imminent, the event Acheson passionately awaited, he refused to concede to pressure. In his vision, the US would finally be able to explore the possibility of accommodation with the PRC and take advantage of frictions between Beijing and Moscow. What, then, stimulated Acheson and Truman to change the administration’s policy and interpose the Seventh Fleet in the Taiwan Strait so abruptly two days after Acheson declared in a press conference on 23 June 1950 that ‘[t]he policy on Formosa was stated by the President on January 5 and that remains the policy’?8 Why did the administration exhibit such a strong preference for the use of military force? In my view, the issue of US ‘neutralisation’ of the Taiwan Strait following the Korean War has been insufficiently dealt with in the existing literature. I suggest that in order to understand this departure in US Taiwan policy, it is essential to examine the particular political and cultural context in which US Taiwan policy was formulated. Thus, the third section illuminates three discursive representations of US Taiwan policy identified within policy circles during 1949 to 1950: the ‘determined’ discourse (meaning that Taiwan was part of China), the ‘undetermined’ discourse and the ‘red menace’ discourse.9 Each of these discourses carried particular representations of the perceived identity of the US, China and Taiwan and can be separated by comparing and contrasting the descriptive characteristics and capabilities attributed to the various subjects. These discourses presuppose and construct social realities that create the ‘conceptual lenses’ which confer meaning on social phenomena and political events.

Origins of the ‘Taiwan issue’ 1949–50 23 A critical constructivist approach, then, permits a reflexive engagement with the ‘reality’ that policymakers are embedded in when interpreting and decoding information. In other words, each of these discourses constructs particular subject positions, positions these subjects vis-à-vis one another and thereby constitutes a particular reality which guided US Taiwan policy. Although I argue that the ‘determined’ discourse remained the dominant policy with regard to Taiwan prior to the Korean War, the ‘undetermined’ and the ‘red menace’ discourses shared some features with the dominant discourse, in particular with regard to US self-image. In the fourth section, I argue that the North Korean attack was interpreted through these discursive representations which provided the conceptual lenses and constructed the boundaries of which policy actions were deemed necessary and appropriate. From a plethora of threatening meanings attached to the North Korean attack and an understanding that the attack posed an intolerable danger to the US self-image, the Truman administration embarked upon a fundamental departure from the precept established in the ‘determined’ discourse, namely that Taiwan was part of China, and shifted its policy towards preventing any Communist takeover of Taiwan by ordering the Seventh Fleet to ‘neutralise’ the Taiwan Strait. Although I show how the ‘red menace’ discourse becomes the dominant discourse in interpreting events on the Korean peninsula, US Taiwan policy cannot solely be explained in terms of Taiwan’s strategic importance or ‘given’ as a result of balance of power calculations. Instead the complexity behind American intervention in the Taiwan Strait, an area where the nation’s strategic and economic stake was, by most conventional measures, insignificant, must be tied to policymakers’ representation of the particular identity constructed for the US and the ‘Communist conspiracy’ situated within a particular Cold War context. Moreover, decision-makers’ room for manoeuvre was also embedded in the ‘undetermined’ and ‘determined’ discourses. For instance, the particular decision to ‘neutralise’ the Taiwan Strait was profoundly shaped by the meanings articulated within these two discourses about US Taiwan policy.

Reassessment of US Taiwan policy 1949–50 On 24 February 1949 Acheson called prominent figures from Capitol Hill into his office and articulated his preferred China strategy to counter critics’ condemnation of the administration’s alleged passivity: the US would stand back and allow the ‘dust to settle’ in the Chinese Civil War before adopting a more positive policy towards Communist China.10 Despite the JCS November 1948 assessment that the implications of Taiwan and its immediate adjacent island falling under the domination of ‘Kremlin-directed Communist … could produce strategic consequences very seriously detrimental to our national security’, Acheson felt comfortable with his ‘dust to settle’ approach.11 Several factors inspired his confidence.

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Origins of the ‘Taiwan issue’ 1949–50

First, in its strategic appraisal of the Taiwan situation, the JCS recognised the peripheral importance of Taiwan, China and the Far East. In February 1949 the JCS concluded that despite ‘Formosa’s strategic importance, the current disparity between our military strength and our many global obligations makes it inadvisable to undertake the employment of armed force in Formosa … thus making it impossible then to meet more important emergencies elsewhere’.12 In several National Security Council (NSC) studies in early 1949 the JCS advocated only the ‘application of appropriate diplomatic and economic steps’ in order to deny Taiwan to the Chinese Communists, and the overriding consensus remained ‘that any overt military commitment in Formosa would be unwise at this time’.13 Acheson could therefore write to Edgar, the Consul in Taipei, assuring him that there was currently ‘no thought [that the] US Gov[ernmen]t would act unilaterally [to] separate Formosa from the mainland by milit[ary] means and in [the] event likelihood failure [to] prevent Comm[unist] domination [of] Formosa by pol[itical] and econ[omic] means [the] only recourse would be action through [the] UN’.14 Although the Truman administration took a more active role in China and its Far Eastern policy from 1948, Acheson remained an ‘Atlanticist and anglophile for whom Western Europe was the highest priority’.15 Second, Acheson was convinced that his own abilities and political skills would overcome any Congressional opposition, and if necessary, he would take the appropriate steps to mould, lead and educate public opinion. He therefore devised a China strategy which would await developments abroad. Once the discredited regime on Taiwan fell to the Chinese Communists, the China bloc in Congress and the China lobbyists would cease to have an issue and the administration could persuade the American people and Congressional members to acquiesce in actions the government deemed in their best interests.16 Simultaneously, Acheson quietly proceeded to formulate and gather support among the academic, business, religious and journalist communities to explain to a ‘confused and generally indifferent citizenry and Congress’ why dealing with the Chinese Communists would be conducive to American goals in the Far East.17 Third, the developments within the Communist bloc and the history of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) aroused feelings within the Truman administration that the US could be able to promote something comparable to Titoism in China. Truman and Acheson were encouraged by the recent split between Beograd and Moscow. If the CCP would distance itself from Moscow and pursue a working relationship with Washington, US interests would undoubtedly be enhanced. Furthermore, the military accomplishment of Mao’s Red Army despite modest support by the Soviet Union during the Civil War, its willingness to safeguard Chinese territorial integrity and the Soviet record in Sinkiang, Outer Mongolia and Manchuria, were seen as assets to be exploited in US China policy.18 Thus the Truman administration believed that the strong nationalist sentiments among the Chinese Communists created favourable conditions for a rift in Sino-Soviet relations and would be advantageous to Acheson’s ‘let the dust settle’ approach. However, reports were soon coming in pointing to the possibility ‘that the application of diplomatic and economic measures suggested by the Joint Chiefs

Origins of the ‘Taiwan issue’ 1949–50 25 Staff may not succeed in preventing Communist domination of Formosa’.19 As a result, by the summer of 1949, US commitments to Taiwan were being reconsidered. On 9 May 1949 Acheson called Edgar to Washington for consultations on the deteriorating situation on the Chinese mainland and the concern about chaos on Taiwan. In June, George Kennan of the Policy Planning Staff advocated a review of US policy towards Taiwan, and in early August the State Department requested the NSC to re-examine US policy with respect to Taiwan in the light of the developments of the past two to three months.20 As Acheson explained in a telegram to McConaughy, the American Consul in Shanghai, the government was currently ‘studying all aspects [of the] Taiwan problem’, and the administration was not prepared to make any public statements.21 Nevertheless, the JCS would not alter their previous considerations. In October the JCS reaffirmed ‘their earlier opinion that the strategic importance of Formosa does not justify overt military action, in the event that diplomatic and economic steps prove unsuccessful to prevent Communist domination’, and continued to regard Formosa and the Pescadores as not sufficiently important because of the potentially more pressing requirements elsewhere for the deployment of the US limited US military resources.22 By the end of the month Acheson telegrammed Strong, Chargé d’Affaires in China, and instructed him to inform the KMT leadership that ‘[t]he US Gov[ernmen]t does not intend to commit any of its armed forces to the defense of the island’.23 The drafting of the NSC 48 at the end of 1949 constituted the major policy showdown on US policy towards Taiwan and the KMT. The Pentagon and Johnson, the Secretary of Defense, had by the end of October 1949 started to have second thoughts about the importance of Taiwan. In particular, they drew attention to economic funds available to deny Taiwan to the Communists. Moreover, the JCS stressed the value of Taiwan in diverting the Communists from expansion into Southeast Asia, the importance of denying the island to the USSR in the event of war, and that the Taiwan Strait was strategically an advantageous area for the US to draw a line against Communist belligerence. However, as Robert M. Blum succinctly puts it, NSC 48 was merely ‘old wine in a new bottle’.24 Acheson had already secured Truman’s support for the preservation of his ‘hands off’ and ‘let the dust settle’ approach on 20 December. Thus, the NSC meeting on 29 December only presented Acheson with an opportunity to set the record straight with the military establishment.25 In reply to the opening statement of the Chairman of the JCS, General Omar Bradley, Acheson was particularly interested in ascertaining exactly what was the strategic importance of Taiwan. Responding to the course recommended by the Joint Chiefs that the existent funds under Section 303 of the Military Assistance Act could place Taiwan ‘in a position where it would hold out longer than otherwise’, Acheson emphasised that ‘we must ask what price do we pay for this delay’. Committing US prestige ‘in another failure for all to see’ would substitute the US with the ‘Soviets as the imperialistic menace to China’, and ‘excite and bring upon ourselves the united Chinese hatred of foreigners’ which were the credentials Acheson believed belonged to the Communists in Moscow.

26

Origins of the ‘Taiwan issue’ 1949–50

Acheson continued, arguing that ‘throughout all Asia we would be represented as the supporter of this discredited, decayed KMT Government’ and the Soviet Union would be offered an opportunity to smear America’s reputation by bringing the US before the Security Council. He forcefully concluded that: ‘If at this price we acquire an island essential to the defenses of the United States then it might be worth the price but there does not appear to be demonstrated a claim that the loss of Formosa really breaches our defense.’26 The downtrodden JCS retained a passive role. Unable to identify clearly the scope or nature of the developments in the Far East, General Bradley and his associates were naturally somewhat ambivalent when it came to formulating policy recommendations and were put on the defensive. General Bradley was left to make some feasible defence of the JCS position, replying that the Joint Chiefs presented ‘a purely military point of view which reflected the fact that Congress had appropriated money to support these people who were resisting Communism’. However, the military establishment was not prepared to invest American forces in the defence of Taiwan. At last, Acheson was presented with a satisfactory statement when General Bradley eventually recognised ‘that political considerations often must override military considerations’.27 After Acheson’s vigorous presentation in the NSC, and with the JCS reluctantly affirming Acheson’s non-intervention policy, the State Department prepared a statement by the President which clarified the administration’s position with respect to Taiwan. On 5 January 1950, Truman announced that ‘the United States has no desire to obtain special rights or privileges or to establish military bases on Formosa at this time. Nor does it have any intention of utilizing its armed forces to interfere in the present situation. The United States Government will not pursue a course which will lead to involvement in the civil conflict in China. Similarly, the United States Government will not provide military aid or advice to Formosa.’28 As Blum has pointed out, the statement had been modified in deference to the military’s reservations, when Truman had accommodated Bradley’s request that the phrase ‘at this time’ should be added, to guard against the eventuality of a possible future war in the Far East.29 However, Acheson was keen on making the most out of the President’s statement. Seven days later he confirmed that administration policy countenanced the possibility that Taiwan might fall to the Chinese Communists, when he defined Taiwan as situated outside the American defence perimeter in the Pacific. Even though the outcome of the policy review did not pose any serious challenge to Acheson’s ‘hands off’ policy of disassociating the US from the Chinese Civil War and the KMT, Acheson would soon learn that his sanguinity was premature. As expected, the China bloc in Congress and the China lobby relentlessly continued their work to reverse the administration’s policy. As on previous occasions when the administration had publicly stated that it would distance itself from the discredited regime on Taiwan, such as the publication of the China White Paper in the summer of 1949, the current effort only provided fuel for the department’s critics. Although Tucker has convincingly argued that the China lobby remained a

Origins of the ‘Taiwan issue’ 1949–50 27 fairly insignificant phenomenon, and that the Truman administration was still free from the fears of McCarthyism that the Korean War would engender, the China bloc posed a credible threat to the policies of the administration in alliance with fiscal conservatives and isolationist-minded legislators. Thus calls for aid to the Nationalists by the China bloc routinely surfaced when amendments to European assistance programmes came up, as they did in 1947 in conjunction with Interim Aid, in 1948 with the European Recovery Program, and again in 1949 as part of the Military Assistance Program.30 Furthermore, despite the defeat the military establishment experienced in the NSC 48 meeting and its pledge to honour the existing ‘hands off’ policy, it continued to devise emergency war plans ‘providing for the denial of Taiwan to the Russians in case of war’.31 Through several visits and in reports from prominent military figures in the Far East, the JCS was repeatedly reminded of the strategic importance of Taiwan in a potential conflict with the USSR and the disturbing consequences for the national security of the US if Taiwan were to fall into Communist hands. These assessments culminated, on 14 June 1950, in a memorandum from General Douglas MacArthur, the commander in chief of US Forces, Far East, which was brought to Truman’s attention in the crucial meeting at the Blair House following the outbreak of the Korean War on 25 June 1950. After briefly reminding the Government of Taiwan’s historical significance for waging war in the Pacific, General MacArthur famously argued that: ‘Formosa in the hands of Communists can be compared to an unsinkable aircraft carrier and submarine tender ideally located to accomplish Soviet offensive strategy and at the same time checkmate counteroffensive operations by the United States Forces based on Okinawa and the Philippines’. According to the General, ‘the domination of Formosa by an unfriendly power would be a disaster of utmost importance to the United States’.32 Even senior officials within the State Department had by the spring of 1950 begun to consider various proposals to rescue the Nationalists. To achieve this end, Dean Rusk, the Deputy Undersecretary and later Undersecretary of State, advocated that the US might go through the UN, making Taiwan a UN trusteeship by neutralising the island, an idea supported by John F. Dulles, who had been brought into the State Department as a consultant in an attempt to salvage bipartisan support for the administration’s Far Eastern policy.33 Kennan even contemplated reintroducing his plan from June 1949 for a US intervention in order to remove the present Nationalist government. Although he recognised that the US would ‘probably have to cut some legal corners to justify it’, he personally believed that if such a plan ‘were to be adopted and to be carried through with sufficient resolution, speed, ruthlessness and self-assurance, the way Theodore Roosevelt might have done it, it would be not only successful but would have an electrifying effect in this country and throughout the Far East’.34 The problem, however, was that it was precisely such an ‘electrifying effect’ that Acheson was trying to avoid in relations with Asian states, and particularly in Sino-American relations.

28

Origins of the ‘Taiwan issue’ 1949–50

Lost chance? – change of heart? Taken together, the continuous reassessment among the leading decision-makers within the administration of the appropriate policy to follow in US relations with the newly established PRC and the Nationalists in refuge on Taiwan, has stimulated controversy among China scholars on two main issues. First, was there a ‘lost chance’ for US rapprochement with the Chinese Communists? Second, did the Truman administration have a change of heart regarding Taiwan in the spring of 1950? With the transcendence of the emotional atmosphere of the early Cold War years and the impact of the Vietnam War, the access to a growing range of primary sources in the late 1970s permitted scholars to re-examine the foundations of US– PRC relations in the late 1940s and early 1950s.35 In her excellent review of the literature on US–China relations since 1945, Nancy B. Tucker has warned us, however, about the pursuit of consensus. ‘Discovery and controversy are the norm rather than any fresh, satisfying, and widely accepted paradigm.’36 Preoccupied with the idea that the US and the PRC might have missed an opportunity for rapprochement in the late 1940s, the conference volume edited by Dorthy Borg and Waldo Heinrichs introduced the most authoritative collection of scholarly debate on the ‘lost chance’ thesis.37 Without reaching any definitive conclusion, the ensuing consensus tended to accept Cohen’s argument that Acheson had sought accommodation with Beijing and hoped to encourage a breach between Beijing and Moscow. According to the strongest proponents of flexibility in American China policy, ‘had Acheson prevailed, there was every likelihood of early diplomatic relations between the United States and the People’s Republic’.38 However, war came to Korea first and shattered any real prospect for accommodation. Without engaging to any significant extent with Cohen’s argument, Steven M. Goldstein presented an argument which later would be supported by two different propositions taking issue with the Cohen–Tucker thesis. First, Goldstein argued that the Truman administration’s options were limited by foreign policy commitments elsewhere. ‘It was difficult to maintain simultaneously an anticommunist posture in Europe and an accommodating position toward a major Communist movement in Asia.’39 This position has later been supported by scholars who have described Acheson as a determined ‘Cold Warrior’ in both Europe and Asia, and Christensen’s influential study which demonstrated the domestic need to maintain a degree of anti-Communism in China policy while Truman mobilised support for anticommunist measures in Europe.40 In order to sell its containment policy in Europe to Congress, bipartisanship was a cardinal point. If Arthur Vandenberg, the ‘father’ of bipartisanship, was going to drum up Republican support on Capitol Hill, consistency between policies towards Europe and Asia was indeed important.41 Second, Goldstein believed it was impossible, in 1949, for American decisionmakers to overcome sharply contrasting world views ‘with the emerging Chinese regime as it was – a pro-Soviet, anti-imperialist movement, humiliating one of

Origins of the ‘Taiwan issue’ 1949–50 29 America’s wartime allies and driving uncompromisingly against United States interests in China’.42 In addition, though Goldstein lacked important source material, he argued that the Chinese Communists were at least as constrained by domestic and international factors as the Americans, and concluded that there was no ‘lost chance’ for the simple reason that neither side was in a position to take a chance.43 This reasoning has been persuasively sustained by works of China scholars using Chinese documentary sources. In a symposium in the journal Diplomatic History in 1997, Michael Sheng and Odd Arne Westad asserted that the Chinese leaders were in no position to contemplate accommodation with the US. Rejecting the idea of a ‘lost chance’ these scholars argued that China was never America’s to ‘lose’ in the first place.44 Another aspect of the debate was whether the Truman administration had a change of heart in its policy towards Taiwan in the first half of 1950. Gaddis has argued ‘that a revision of the administration’s “hands-off” policy was well under way at the time of the outbreak of the Korean War’.45 Although his assessment has been supported by Bruce Cumings and June Grasso, who have taken it a step further, hinting at plots and conspiracy within the administration in order to shift the direction of US China policy, Tucker and Christensen have convincingly demonstrated that Acheson seemed to have access to various opinions. In particular, Acheson could rely on the advice of Philip C. Jessup, Ambassador-atLarge, Livingston Merchant, former Counsellor at the US embassy in Nanking and foreign officers such as the American Consul-General in Beijing, Edmund Clubb, and Ambassador to China, John L. Stuart, in response to the mounting pressure to reverse China policy.46 Thus, according to Tucker, the advocates of a change of heart policy ‘have not been able to prove that Acheson did more than listen sympathetically, even occasionally with some interest, and then turn them down flat’.47 After the Chinese Communists had successfully invaded the Hainan Islands in April 1950, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) estimate that Taiwan would fall by the end of 1950 seemed about to be realised. Acheson’s long-anticipated ‘dust to settle’ approach that would reconcile US–PRC relations eventually appeared within sight, and he rebuffed any suggestions to save the downtrodden regime on Taiwan.48 On 23 June 1950, Acheson informed the press that the US had no intention of reversing its non-intervention policy towards Taiwan and the Chinese civil war.49 What then compelled Acheson and Truman to change course so drastically two days later? Why did they display an apparently automatic preference for a militant course of action? And how could the outbreak of fighting in Korea so radically change representations of the Communist bloc, unleash an open-ended struggle with an implacable Communist threat and blur the distinction between vital and peripheral areas to US national security? Those scholars who have emphasised Taiwan’s strategic value and a possible departure from Acheson’s ‘hands off’ policy in the first half of 1950, see the decision to interpose the Seventh Fleet in the Taiwan Strait as a pending precaution fulfilling the war plan envisaging denial of Taiwan to possible Soviet use in the

30

Origins of the ‘Taiwan issue’ 1949–50

event of war. ‘In fact, the administration had not written off Taiwan in the event of war with the Soviet Union’, argued Gaddis in his account of the origins of the defence perimeter concept in US security strategy.50 During conversations with Attlee in Washington in December 1950, Truman elaborated on his view about the historical contingency of the Cairo and Potsdam declaration. Having established China as a friendly power to the US and the UK in the Far East ‘to offset the vicious power of Japan, that power had now collapsed, and in its place the Chinese Communists have emerged, having really been taken by Russia, since they really were Russian and nothing else’. Truman continued: ‘When we thought that Formosa was not strategically important to us, we never considered that the Chinese Government would be one which would be very hostile to the United States. There is no question now that it is very hostile to us.’51 As Gaddis has pointed out, ‘Truman’s observation reflects an underlying element of consistency in American policy on the Taiwan question: the fact that at no point during 1949 and 1950 was Washington prepared to acquiesce in control of the island by forces hostile to the United States and capable of taking military action against other links in the offshore island chain.’52 Moreover, Finkelstein has argued that while Acheson and Truman never accepted the reassessment of Taiwan’s strategic importance before the outbreak of war in Korea, they did so once war began.53 In my view, the notion of ‘the underlying element’ as emphasised by Gaddis is underdeveloped and does not sufficiently comprehend the complexity of the decision to interpose the Seventh Fleet in the Taiwan Strait. The over-riding objectives when the Truman administration approached the summer of 1950 were to instigate a split in the Communist bloc, disentangle itself from Chiang and his followers and prevent the Chinese Communists from becoming an unequivocal enemy of the US. The Korean War dealt a blow to this strategy. But Truman’s decision to rescue an area of trivial strategic significance to American interests in Korea did not suddenly make Taiwan a prominent strategic asset to US national interests. What the Korean War did, as will be illustrated below, was to create a new representation of US identity under threat from a monolithic Communist bloc. More importantly, when interpreted through the lenses of a pivotal struggle between the Communist world and the free world led by the US, the Korean War instigated policies which contradicted the efforts to differentiate between what was vital and what was peripheral to US national security. Gaddis later wrote, in one of the most thorough studies on American foreign policy during the Cold War, that if it occurred to anyone ‘to wonder why the United States should be issuing blank checks to its adversaries in the first place, or how it proposed to keep its account balanced indefinitely in the face of such demands on it, they were too polite to ask’.54 Thus, as Nancy B. Tucker, one of the leading scholars on US–Chinese relations has noted, ‘[w]hen war broke out in Korea, protection of Taiwan appeared compulsory and Truman acted’.55

Origins of the ‘Taiwan issue’ 1949–50 31 Later, in one of few extensive studies on US relations with Taiwan, Tucker summarised the analysis on the origins of American commitment to the protection of Taiwan by writing that ‘the United States found itself undertaking policies and commitments that were not always in its national interest’. However, ‘such obligations proved almost impossible to avoid’. She concludes, without providing any deeper assessment or theoretical framework for examining the underlying causes for her claims, that: ‘America’s anticommunist crusade, which dictated norms of behaviour and tried to impose standards on thought, provided an optimum environment within which an anticommunist, if autocratic, Chinese leader could flourish’.56 Neither do other China scholars seem puzzled by the immediate shift in the Truman administration’s policy following the outbreak of war on the Korean peninsula. Robert Blum has maintained that, ‘[w]hen North Korea invaded South, administration officials who had championed the tattered Titoist policy for the previous eighteen months kicked it over in an evening, without much apparent regret and with full public support’.57

Three discourses on US Taiwan policy Inspired by Foot’s study of how US Cold War attitudes undermined a diplomatic approach and reinforced Truman’s predilections for a military solution to the North Korean crisis, the following analysis attempts to elucidate some of the ‘underlying elements’ and ‘hidden factors’ which ‘dictated norms of behaviour’ and ‘imposed standards on thought’, by exploring how interests are particular historical constructions that remain contingent and inextricably linked to discursive representations and identities.58 The aim, as Doty has pointed out, ‘is not to reveal essential truths that have been obscured, but rather to examine how certain representations underline the production of knowledge and identities and how these representations make various courses of action possible’.59 Thus, in providing a vision of the world, discursive representations help to specify, among other things, which objects are to be protected and which constitute threats. ‘Because identities are the basis of interests, the interests of the state are already entailed within the representations in which the identities of and relations among the relevant actors or objects are established.’60 As Doty shows in her excellent analysis of US counter-insurgency policy in the Philippines, there are two important aspects of a ‘discursive practices approach’. ‘One aspect is the detailed explication of the discourse itself. This consists of examining various textual mechanisms at work in the discourse that construct identities for subjects and position these subjects vis-à-vis one another. The second aspect entails an examination of how, from this construction and positioning, various possibilities of practice emerge.’61 The remaining part of this chapter, then, is divided into two sections. The first section identifies and examines three discourses about US Taiwan policy in 1949 and 1950: the ‘determined’, the ‘undetermined’ and the ‘red menace’ discourse. In

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Origins of the ‘Taiwan issue’ 1949–50

differentiating between these discourses I examine the predicates, presuppositions and categorisations attributed to the various subjects (the US, China and Taiwan) within each discourse. These discursive formations constitute the textual mechanisms that create background knowledge and construct particular kinds of meanings, identities and subject positions. The second section illustrates how discourse(s) work to construct a particular US Taiwan policy. Taking President Truman’s major statement on 27 June 1950 regarding US Taiwan policy as a starting point, I show how discursive representations, intersubjectively constructed and embedded in language, perform a constraining or enabling function with regard to state action, in the sense that discourses and identities situate policymakers when they strive to understand other states. As such, policymakers read other states through their understanding of their own state, and that understanding is itself related to the discourses and identities that constitute them.62 The ‘determined’ discourse The ‘determined’ discourse remained the official discourse of US Taiwan policy until the outbreak of the Korean War in June 1950. Although the attributes attached to the various subjects share some resemblance across the various discourses, in particular in the construction of the US self-image, the ‘determined’ discourse can be differentiated from the ‘undetermined’ and the ‘red menace’ discourses by the understanding of self and other(s) embedded within it. According to the determined discourse the ‘US Government stood for good faith in international relations’.63 In contrast to the imperialist and aggressive nature of the Soviet regime, the US had benign intentions and worked for selfdetermination of Asian states. Acheson elucidated these ideas in a speech before the Commonwealth Club of California in San Francisco on 12 March 1950 when he claimed that ‘[w]e are for something positive, for the most fundamental urges of the human spirit … [t]he basic objective of American foreign policy is to make possible a world in which all peoples, including the peoples of Asia, can work, in their own way, toward a better life. That is why we are opposed to the spread of communism not only in Asia but elsewhere.’64 In times where the Soviet Union threatened ‘all people and governments who stand for freedom, the dignity of the individual and the rule of law’, Acheson explained that it ‘is clear that there is a particular important export which the United States can provide and which must go hand-in-hand with the physical assistance we are providing for the free world. This is an export of spirit, an export of the confidence and assurance which is so genuinely an attribute of our country.’65 Thus, as Acheson argued in his background press conference on 5 January 1950, the underlying factors in regard to the matter of Taiwan ‘have to do with the fundamental integrity of the United States and with maintaining in the world the belief that when the United States takes a position it sticks to that position and does not change it by reason of transitory expediency or advantage on its

Origins of the ‘Taiwan issue’ 1949–50 33 part …’. Acheson then went on to amplify his statement: ‘the world must believe that we stand for principle and that we are honorable and decent people and that we do not put forward words, as propagandists do in other countries, to serve their advantage only to throw them overboard when some change in events makes the position difficult for us. We believe in integrity in our foreign relations. We believe also in respect of the integrity of other countries …’.66 Although the US was represented with a particular identity and corresponding responsibility, ‘inherent in these troubled times’, to ‘provide the strong and clear leadership which is needed’ to halt the spread of Communism around the world, Acheson worked assiduously within the determined discourse in order to differentiate between Soviet Communism and the Chinese Communists.67 As Acheson told Truman, there were broadly speaking two alternatives in US China policy: ‘One might be to oppose the Communist regime, harass it, needle it, and if the opportunity appeared to attempt to overthrow it. Another objective of policy would be to attempt to detach it from subservience to Moscow and over a period of time encourage those vigorous influences which might modify it.’ Acheson then pointed out that the ‘second alternative did not mean a policy of appeasement any more that it had in the case of Tito’. He then told the President ‘that the Consultants were unanimous in their judgment that the second course was preferable one’. Truman then argued that ‘in the broad sense … this was correct analysis and that he wished to have a thorough understanding of all of the facts in deciding the question’. According to Acheson, Truman believed that the meeting had greatly helped him.68 An important aspect of the position advocated by the ‘determined’ discourse, then, was to encourage a split between Beijing and Moscow. In the NSC 48 meeting, where Acheson established that political considerations must override strategic calculations, he also clarified his thinking on the broader perspective of his China policy. As he told his audience, ‘we must accept the fact that the Chinese Communists are Marxists who regard the Soviet Union as their great and only friend. In all this we must take the long view not of 6 or 12 months but of 6 or 12 years.’ Soviet efforts to separate territory from the Chinese in their northern provinces were the ‘seed of inevitable conflict between China and the Soviet Union. Mao is not a true satellite in that he came to power by his own efforts and was not installed in office by the Soviet Army.’ This situation, Acheson pointed out, ‘is our one important asset in China and it would have to be for a very important strategic purpose that we would take an action which would substitute ourselves for the Soviets as the imperialist menace to China’.69 The aim to drive a wedge between Beijing and Moscow was in Acheson’s view tied to US Taiwan policy.70 As Acheson explained in his National Press Club speech on 12 January 1950, ‘[w]e must not undertake to deflect from Russians to ourselves the righteous anger and the wrath and the hatred of the Chinese people which must develop. It would be folly to deflect it to ourselves. We must take the position we have always taken that anyone who violates the integrity of China is an enemy of China and is acting contrary to our own interest.’71

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This statement reiterated what Acheson had told Senators Knowland and Smith on 5 January 1950: ‘Inasmuch as Formosa was not of vital importance from a strategic standpoint’, Acheson advocated that the US had much more to lose than gain from military action or adopting a policy of military assistance that would lead to military involvement designed at holding Taiwan. However distasteful the eventuality was ‘that the island might be occupied by the Communists at some stage in the near future’, Acheson emphasised that ‘we must concede that possibility and not compromise our entire position in the Near East by doing deeds that would give lie to our words’.72 Historically, the ‘determined’ discourse drew its authority from the Cairo declaration of 1 December 1943, in which the US, the UK and China announced that ‘Manchuria, Formosa, and the Pescadores shall be restored to the Republic of China’. The three powers reaffirmed the Cairo Declaration in the Potsdam Proclamation of 26 July 1945, which the USSR subsequently endorsed. With the sanctions of the principal powers, Taiwan came under Chinese Nationalist administration in October 1945 and was administered as a province in May 1947.73 Thus, in Acheson’s view, there was a historical precedent for the administration’s policy as he eloquently explained to two of the most outspoken critics of the administration’s policy, Senators Knowland and Smith, on 5 January 1950. In reviewing the history of the Taiwan question Acheson pointed out that ‘Formosa was essentially a Chinese territory, the control of which was interrupted by the Japanese for a period of some 40 years and that in recognition of this inherent right of ownership of the island by China both the Cairo and Potsdam Declaration reaffirmed such rights’. Acheson forcefully continued by stating that ‘if we accept the thesis that to all practical purposes Formosa historically has been a part of China – that it is part of China today and must in all morality continue to be part of China – we are next confronted with the situation as to what, if anything, is to be done about the existing situation’.74 In essence, Acheson replied to his own question by arguing that he ‘did not believe it was in the interest of the American people to hazard a war over Formosa; and secondly, that the mere statement of our intention to so hold the island would be completely defeative of the general line we had been taking and the philosophy we had been preaching of self-determination of all countries and areas in Asia’. Acheson then reiterated that ‘we simply cannot afford, by overt moves on our part, to place ourselves in a position where we would have difficulty in answering the charge that we were moving in the same orbit of imperialistic design that Russia is following today’. Such a move by the US, Acheson remarked, ‘would be greeted by all of the other countries in that area with whom we are trying to work in instilling ideas of responsible government with a sense of revulsion and with an attitude that our deeds were belying our words’.75 From a legal standpoint, Acheson and Truman clearly took issue with those who argued that the final disposition of Taiwan was dependent upon the decision of the Japanese Peace Treaty. As Acheson told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee

Origins of the ‘Taiwan issue’ 1949–50 35 on 12 January 1950, whatever the ambiguities of the legal situation ‘Taiwan has been severed from Japan’ and the ‘Government has been set up’. Acheson then continued: ‘[y]ou can say that is all tentative and it does not make any difference until you have a peace treaty’, but then you can say, ‘[a] peace treaty by whom?’ With his legally trained mind Acheson elaborated: ‘[w]ho has to agree about that before it becomes legal, and what do you mean by ‘legal’? Does it become legal if the United States and Japan have a peace treaty? Does it become legal if all those who fought Japan have a peace treaty? Or does it become legal only if all of the nations in the world have a peace treaty?’76 Reiterating his background press conference statement on 5 January 1950, Acheson explained to the Senate Foreign Affairs Committee that the Chinese had administered Taiwan for four years. During this period, neither the US nor any other ally questioned that authority or that occupation. ‘When Formosa was made a province of China nobody raised any lawyers’ doubts about that.’ ‘Now, in the opinion of some’, Acheson argued, the mainland of China is unfriendly to us, ‘and therefore they want to say, [w]ell, we have to wait for a treaty’. Acheson vigorously continued, ‘[w]e did not wait for a treaty on Korea. We did not wait for a treaty on the Kuriles. We did not wait for a treaty on the island over which we have trusteeship.’ As he had explained in his press conference, ‘[w]hatever may be the legal situation, the United States of America, Mr. Truman said this morning, is not going to quibble on any lawyers’ words about the integrity of its position. That is where we stand.’77 In short, the ‘determined’ discourse acknowledged that Taiwan was an integral part of China, a view succinctly summarised by Acheson when he stated: ‘I said, the President said, the administration said, that so far as the attitude of the Government is concerned, this [Taiwan] is part of China.’78 Moreover, in order to preserve the integrity, principles and decency of American foreign policy the US would not intervene to save a corrupt and discredited regime on Taiwan. Acheson again forcefully maintained this view in his background press conference on 5 January 1950: ‘We are not going to use our forces in connection with the present situation in Formosa. We are not going to attempt to seize the Island. We are not going to get involved militarily in any way on the Island of Formosa. So far as I know, no responsible person in the Government, no military man has ever believed that we should involve our forces in the Island. I do not believe that is new policy. It would be new policy if we decided to do that.’79 According to Acheson and the military establishment, the fall of Taiwan was inevitable without the intervention of American military force.80 However, to assume such a commitment would undermine the core objectives of the Truman administration’s China policy. The US would ‘become militarily committed to continue a guerrilla warfare with the Chinese for the purpose of holding an island which as a military outpost is not one which we must hold’. As Acheson vigorously concluded his remarks to the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee in March 1950: ‘[w]hy should we reverse our entire objectives as regards China in order to fight the Chinese for an island which is not vital?’

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The ‘undetermined’ discourse Two main factors underpinned the ‘undetermined’ discourse: first, the argument that Taiwan was ‘still strictly speaking a part of Japan’, and second, the assertion that the Chinese Communist government was not the one which was in power at the time of the Cairo and Potsdam declaration. These propositions laid the groundwork for a number of Congressional members, military officers and even members of the administration to question the official US Taiwan policy advocated by Truman and Acheson. In the view of those who emphasised the ambiguity presented in the ‘undetermined’ discourse, the US had legitimate interests and a special responsibility as a result of the close connection between the ultimate disposition of Taiwan and the conclusion of the Japanese Peace Treaty. According to a CIA report in March 1950 ‘[n]either the US nor any other power, however, has formally recognised the annexation of Taiwan by China’. Although the US had admitted and acquiesced in China’s de facto control, the report argued that ‘the island’s legal status – like that of other Japanese-occupied territories in which the US and other participants in the war with Japan have interest – remains to be determined in the negotiation of the Japanese peace treaty’.81 Another theme that was highlighted was the fact that the PRC Government on the mainland was not itself a signatory to the Cairo and Potsdam declarations which had stated that ‘all territories Japan had stolen from the Chinese, such as Formosa, Manchuria, and the Pescadores, shall be restored to the Republic of China’.82 Furthermore, one of the provisions of General Order No. 1, issued by General MacArthur as Supreme Commander for the allied powers, which directed the surrender of the Japanese forces, was the order that the surrender of the Japanese forces in China and Formosa should be made to Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek. That surrender was therefore made by the Japanese to the Chinese and not to anybody else.83 The ‘undetermined’ status of Taiwan, therefore, provided justification to explore a number of schemes to support either an indigenous Taiwanese independence movement, a trusteeship for Taiwan, the overthrow of Chiang or a possible US occupation of the island. In early 1949 Acheson dispatched a special mission, led by Livingston T. Merchant, Counsellor in the Nanking embassy, to investigate if there was a viable indigenous separatist movement or if there existed a reformist KMT government which the US could support. The mission ended in May 1949 and it was reported back to Washington ‘that a Chiang-less and reformist KMT government was not on the cards and that no viable indigenous force existed’.84 Shortly thereafter, the idea of having another Asian nation propose a trusteeship for Taiwan under UN auspices was considered within the State Department.85 Another alternative explored the possibility of a coup, featuring pro-American General Sun Li-jen as the head of a more effective and compassionate successor regime.86 However, none of these measures could be carried out given Chiang’s iron grip on local politics and firm control over the military.87

Origins of the ‘Taiwan issue’ 1949–50 37 An additional idea, a military occupation of Taiwan by US forces, was also advocated by a number of people in and outside of the Government. Senator Smith told Acheson in late 1949 that ‘a military occupation [of Taiwan] would protect our strategic interests in that area’ which Smith regarded as ‘strictly speaking a part of Japan, even though by the Cairo Declaration we had permitted the Chinese to take over’. According to Acheson’s memorandum, the Senator stated that he felt ‘it would be better for Communists to try to dislodge us from the island first before we would have to come in later and try to do the same thing with them’.88 At this stage, Acheson informed Senator Smith that the subject was receiving constant consideration in the NSC and he hoped that a firm decision concerning the matter would be forthcoming on an early date.89 As pointed out earlier, NSC 48 strongly supported Acheson’s ‘hands off’ and ‘let the dust settle’ approach. However, neither Truman’s 5 January 1950 statement nor Acheson’s National Press Club speech placing Taiwan and Korea outside the US defensive perimeter ended speculation about the administration’s Taiwan policy. Truman had added three words to the original statement making it read that ‘the United States has no desire to obtain special rights or privileges or to establish military bases on Formosa at this time’. Sidney Souers later complained that ‘it’s a hell of a way to run a railroad, isn’t it’, referring to the fact that Truman had not checked the phrase with Acheson and that he did not know anything about it.90 Acheson defended the administration’s position in his background briefing a few hours later, arguing that the question ‘is not what does that phrase “at this time” mean … That phrase does not qualify or modify or weaken the fundamental policies stated in this declaration by the President in any respect. It is recognition of the fact that in the unlikely and unhappy event that our forces might be attacked in the Far East the United States must be completely free to take whatever action in whatever area is necessary for its own security.’91 However, this press briefing did not end speculation over US Taiwan policy, and Acheson was constantly defending the administration’s position on Capitol Hill. Even though the Senate Foreign Affairs Committee, at Senator Vandenberg’s request, had consulted the General Order No. 1, issued by General MacArthur, under which surrender of Taiwan and other territories was made to the Chinese, and found that there was no reservation in any of these papers of a final right of review at the Japanese peace table, Vandenberg was still ‘unable to follow the chain of events’ and reach the same conclusion as the Secretary of State.92 Thus Vandenberg, one of the leading Republican Senators, pointed out that it would be interesting to have an advisory opinion from the World Court on the precise status of Formosa. Vandenberg was not interested in looking back and trying to assess responsibilities, but in looking forward to the problem we confront, whether or not there is not some sort of a case to be made for the effort to preserve at least a neutral status for Formosa pending an appropriate review by the institution set up for the world precisely for such purpose, to-wit the United Nations, and to the end that perhaps the Formosans might, in connection with such a procedure, find an opportunity to

38

Origins of the ‘Taiwan issue’ 1949–50 say for themselves whether they wish to go back to the Chinese from which they have been separated for 50 years; whether they prefer a trusteeship, or whether they prefer independence, and whether or not in your opinion there is useful possibility to be explored in those directions.93

In his answer, Acheson emphasised the integrity of US foreign policy as ‘a basis for exploring any kind of proposition’ and stated that [o]ne of the fundamental principles of equity and of our position in the world is that we must do this exploring with absolute clean hands. It is one question that the US should be concerned about the future of the Formosans. However, the Formosans were not the subject of worry in the US or elsewhere in the world, although they had a tough time after the war. If our concern about the Formosans is a cloak for considering strategic interests in the US, you have a wholly different matter.94 Accordingly, what Acheson was ‘deeply concerned about in Asia’ was that the US should ‘not take legalistic attitudes which will be interpreted by everyone else in the world as hypocritical, merely to serve some other interests than the one that we profess. No one in Asia would believe that US has benign intentions if the US separates Taiwan from China. Not a soul in the world would believe that is true. Nobody would ever believe that.’95 Acheson, therefore, reminded the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that the administration had ‘explored all of those suggestions, of which there have been a great many, and we have rejected them all on the ground that the cost of doing something of that sort in terms of loss to the United States’ position in Asia is far greater than any benefit’.96 Thus, as the leading figure within the administration, Acheson relentlessly steered a course whereby the US would not intervene militarily in Chinese affairs. The ‘red menace’ discourse The ‘red menace’ discourse identified self and other(s) in terms of the evolving representation of Cold War international politics. As the champion of resisting Communist expansion in the late 1940s and with the nation’s unique historical traditions, the US, of course, bore a particular responsibility. As Truman noted in his Inaugural Address, ‘[t]he peoples of the earth face the future with great uncertainty, composed almost equally of great hopes and great fears. In this time of doubt, they look to the United States as never before for good will, strength, and wise leadership.’97 A year later in his State of the Union Address Truman argued that there were no changes ‘more important than the change in the position of the United States in world affairs … Our tremendous strength has brought with it tremendous responsibilities.’98 Acheson explained this succinctly to an audience at Harvard University on 22 June 1950: ‘[i]n accordance with our American traditions and the

Origins of the ‘Taiwan issue’ 1949–50 39 responsibilities which our times have thrust upon us, we have exercised a position of leadership in strengthening the free world’. Two months earlier, Acheson had ‘in all sober truth’ told an audience of newspaper editors that ‘we are faced with a threat not only to our country but to the civilization in which we live and the whole physical environment in which that civilization can exist. This threat is the principal problem that confronts the whole United States in the world today.’99 Accordingly the United States was ‘opposed to the spread of Soviet Communism because it is the means, the tool, by which Soviet Russia is attempting to extend its absolute domination over the widest possible areas of the world’.100 Such ideas were not only articulated in the public sphere but also clearly manifested in a number of post-war strategy documents. In March 1948, NSC 7 on the position of the United States with respect to Soviet-directed world Communism, asserted that ‘the United States is the only source of power capable of mobilizing successful opposition to the communist goal of world conquest’. The report recognised that ‘in these circumstances the USSR has engaged the United States in a struggle for power, or ‘cold war,’ in which our national security is at stake and from which we cannot withdraw short of eventual national suicide’.101 The NSC 7 opinion that the ‘ultimate objective of Soviet-directed world Communism is the domination of the world’ and ‘the defeat of the forces of Soviet-directed world Communism is vital to the security of the United States’, was forcefully reasserted in the pivotal document on US post-war security strategy, NSC 68, presented to Truman on 7 April 1950. This document emphasised the fundamental and apocalyptic struggle against Soviet domination which ‘imposes on us [the US], in our own [US] interests, the responsibility of world leadership’.102 Emily Rosenberg has identified three principal discursive strategies important to the post-war US security imagery, and central to the assessments in the US national security documents: an implied narrative, warning that inaction in foreign policy could bring imminent destruction; a binary framework of symbolic representation; and an appeal to the authority of history.103 To begin with, the documents describe unrivalled danger demanding instantaneous action, as NSC 68 alerts us: ‘The issues that face us are momentous, involving the fulfilment or destruction not only of this Republic but of civilization itself.’104 Second, the NSC documents of the early post-war period rely on binary opposites and notions of self and other to construct a particular worldview. In NSC 68 and other post-war security strategy documents the world was drafted in two colours – America and her allies wore the white hat and Communists the black. There was no alternative between ‘freedom under a government of laws, and the idea of slavery under the grim oligarchy of the Kremlin’ or an ‘alternative to the opposing categories “we” and “them”, “freedom” and “slavery”, “good” and “evil” ’.105 Finally, American leadership and the recommendations contained in the national security documents are located within America’s historical traditions. As Kuklick has argued, American state papers have ‘over three hundred years expressed a consistent vision of a certain kind of social order and the relation of

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this order to other nations around the world’, entrenched in ‘the ideas of Reformed Protestantism and the Enlightenment’.106 Citations from the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution and The Federalist Papers appear repeatedly in NSC 68 but can also be found in other post-war documents such as NSC 20/1.107 By drawing on the authority of these pivotal texts in American history, US national identity and purpose fall within a cultural context of moral righteousness anchored in ‘conservative ends and unfathomably evil enemies’.108 Within a discourse which emphasised the pivotal struggle against Communist expansion, it became increasingly more difficult to differentiate between Moscow and Beijing. In other words, even though Acheson warned about the dangers in following a policy that would solidify the Chinese people behind the Communist regime and strengthen the ties between Beijing and Moscow, Acheson also argued that ‘[t]his Chinese Government is really a tool of Russian imperialism in China. That gives us our fundamental starting point in regard to our relations with China.’109 In addition, the Truman administration clearly viewed the Chinese Communists as hostile. The Chinese Communist regime had singled out American citizens and interests as special objects of hostility, it had made no pretence of accepting and carrying out the international obligations of China and it had violated diplomatic codes and modes of behaviour. Furthermore, the PRC had decided to ‘lean’ towards the Soviet Union, it concluded a military assistance pact with the Soviet Union, made no attempts to disguise its intentions of taking Taiwan through the use of force and continuously denounced the imperialist US in its official rhetoric.110 Thus the Chinese Communists had indicated by their own actions that they were part of a world-wide Communist conspiracy, organised and directed from Moscow.

US identity and the ‘impartial neutralisation’ of the Taiwan Strait In the last section, I draw upon the discursive representations identified above in order to illustrate some ways in which discourses affected the formulation of US Taiwan policy in the aftermath of the outbreak of the Korean War. By examining the discursive representations and their internal logic and conditions for possibility, we can ask what course of action would seem commonsensical and intelligible when statesmen viewed the bellicose events on the Korean Peninsula in late June 1950. Put differently, we can assess the limits, the scope and the power of discourses. One policy option, the continued adherence to the ‘determined’ discourse, seemed unthinkable in the aftermath of the outbreak of the Korean War. As Acheson saw it in July 1950, ‘[w]e do not believe Formosa can be limited to a facet of the Chinese problem; it involves our attitude toward present Communist determination to seize Asia, a determination which US feels we must oppose in the interest of our own national as well as world security’. Acheson further recognised that a ‘seizure of Formosa by [Chinese Communists] at [an] hour when UN

Origins of the ‘Taiwan issue’ 1949–50 41 forces [are] resisting aggression in Korea [would] be [a] considerable stimulus to [the] morale of destructive forces in Asia and thus work to [the] detriment [of] US interests’. Preventing Taiwan from falling into the hands of the Chinese Communists was, under the circumstances, ‘an attempt which we had to make as matter of elementary precaution at time of grave uncertainty’.111 Looking back at the decision in June 1950 to intervene in Korea and to interpose the Seventh Fleet, Acheson maintained that ‘the attack on Korea makes exactly 180 percent difference’. As Acheson explained to the group of influential policymakers and historians during the Princeton seminar meetings in 1953 and 1954, ‘I don’t think that there was a question in anyone’s mind or that it entered into the discussion that took place – as to whether we would or would not stand up … to this issue that had been presented to us. I think it was just sort of clear to us without discussion, that we were going to … [C]ertainly there was nobody there who took the view that we should not regard this as a crisis to which we had to respond.’112 In the crucial dinner meeting at the Blair House, after Ambassador Muccio’s telegram 925 reporting the North Korean attack on 25 June 1950, the consensus was that the US could not simply sit idly by. North Korea, ‘completely under Kremlin control’, could not get away with its bellicose action and the US needed to ‘draw a line’ against Communist aggression.113 However, the US did not only embark upon prompt action in Korea. Truman’s decision, taken on 26 June 1950, to intervene in the Taiwan Strait appeared to contradict repeated judgements by the State Department and the military establishment that Taiwan was not essential to American security. But Truman simply could not countenance a Communist attack on Taiwan while considering sending American soldiers to defend South Korea from a Communist onslaught. Communism, it seemed, had proved its monolithic nature and splintering China from the Soviet sphere was no longer considered possible. The JCS assessed the situation no differently. General Vandenberg pointed out that in regard to Formosa ‘all places were interrelated’ and ‘Formosa was therefore important only in relation to other places’. Thus, the military establishment continually referred to the Soviet menace, China as Moscow’s lackey in Asia and articulated its world view in dichotomised terms.114 The diplomatic corps concurred with Washington’s interpretation. Walworth Barbour, Counsellor of the embassy in Moscow, and Chargé d’Affaires in the absence of Ambassador Kirk, advised Acheson on 25 June 1950 that if the estimates in Muccio’s report were correct, ‘this aggressive NK military move against ROK represents clearcut Soviet challenge which in our considered opinion US should answer firmly and swiftly as it constitutes [a] direct threat to our leadership of [the] free world against Soviet Communist imperialism’.115 Ambassador Kirk saw the events in no less stark terms than his Counsellor: ‘[T]he Embassy assesses the invasion in its broadest implications as a direct challenge to the free world and US leadership thereof …’.116 Confronted with the North Korean attack, the US Government believed that it was faced with an imperative for action. But surely this raises some questions.

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Why was the decision to dispatch the Seventh Fleet to the Taiwan Strait ‘sort of clear to us without discussion’? How did the events on the Korean Peninsula become defined ‘as a crisis’ to which ‘we had to respond’? What was the source of this obvious representation of emergency, shared by US decision-makers, which made continued commitment to the ‘determined’ discourse unacceptable and embracement of a military course of action commonsensical? In the case of US Taiwan policy, to paraphrase Weldes, this means explaining how, that is, through which concrete discursive processes or textual mechanism, the North Korean attack came to mean an intolerable threat to the US so that there emerged an unquestioned national interest in preventing the Chinese Communists from occupying Taiwan.117 The justification for intervention in the Taiwan Strait was to prevent another war and was contained in the following statement from the announcement by the President on 27 June 1950: The attack upon Korea makes it plain beyond all doubt that communism has passed beyond the use of subversion to conquer independent nations and will now use armed invasion and war. It has defied orders of the Security Council of the United Nations issued to preserve international peace and security. In these circumstances the occupation of Formosa by communist forces would be a direct threat to the security of the Pacific area and to United States forces performing their lawful and necessary functions in that area. Accordingly, I have ordered the Seventh Fleet to prevent any attack on Formosa. As a corollary to this action I am calling upon the Chinese Government on Formosa to cease all air and sea operations against the mainland. The Seventh Fleet will see this is done. The determination of the future status of Formosa must await the restoration of security in the Pacific, a peace settlement with Japan, or consideration by the United Nations.118 In the above statement the predicates can be extracted from the text by the descriptive characters, adjectives and capabilities attributed to various subjects. Communism is endowed with the following attributes which share a certain resemblance: it had deployed tactics ‘of subversion’ and attempted to ‘conquer independent nations’ through the use of ‘armed invasion and war’, thereby ‘defying orders of the Security Council of the United Nations’ and endangering ‘international peace and security’. The predicates and attributes that defined the United States were not identical with the cluster that defined the Communists. The United States instead performed ‘lawful and necessary functions’ to protect the Pacific area and United States forces in response to a ‘direct threat’. Consequently, steps had to be taken to ‘reinforce areas exposed to Communist pressure’.119 According to the Truman administration, the US was merely fulfilling altruistic commitments in virtue of its leadership in response to Communist aggression for the sake of self-interest and domination. ‘What we are doing in other areas’, Acheson told the press on 28 June 1950, ‘is to take action which is made necessary

Origins of the ‘Taiwan issue’ 1949–50 43 by the obvious determination of Communist Governments in the Far East to progress beyond subversion to direct military attack.’120 In a memorandum transmitted to senior officials in the State Department (Deputy Under Secretary Matthews, Assistant Secretaries Rusk and Hickerson and Counselor Kennan) in the summer of 1950, Dulles, Consultant to Acheson, explicitly summarised what Kennan thought was an excellent analysis, the distinction between the American and Soviet actions: ‘we are defending the independent nationalism of the new Asiatic states, whereas Russia is seeking to destroy that independence, using communism as the device’.121 Although the Truman administration remained concerned about the support for its Far Eastern policy from Asian countries, by defining its adversary as a totalitarian Communist regime, it was implied that the US was acting for the protection of self-determination and independence ‘from whatever quarter it is threatened’, while Soviet actions were ‘little more than a recrudescence in a new guise of the aggressive ambitions of the Czars’.122 Accordingly, what might otherwise be understood as US intervention was being described in terms of US commitments. In virtue of its leadership, the United States contracted commitments to defend freedom, to protect its allies and to counter Communist aggression. Weldes reminds us, however, that the implications of such distinctions are clear: ‘Commitments made by leaders such as the United States are legitimate; the power involvements of Communists are not.’123 In addition, American traditions of freedom and liberty meant that the US had a ‘sense of moral and political direction’, which conferred on it a leadership role of the free world.124 This was not a small obligation, as Truman stated in a luncheon with the Society of Newspaper Editors in April 1950: ‘We have no purpose of going to war except in defense of freedom.’125 Indeed, the necessity to protect freedom globally stemmed from the axiom that freedom is indivisible: a threat to freedom anywhere is a threat to freedom everywhere. ‘We cannot hope to maintain our own freedom’, Truman told a national radio and television audience in September 1950, ‘if freedom elsewhere is wiped out’.126 Referring to US actions in response to Communist aggression, Acheson was convinced that ‘the overwhelming support from the free nations of the world is precisely due to their recognition that the whole future of the free world is at stake’.127 Averell Harriman, President Truman’s special assistant, thought it was ‘vitally important for everyone to realize that we were basically concerned with the morale of the free world. If we gave in to Communism, morale would slip badly.’128 By acting in the defence of freedom, the US was confronted with a perpetual struggle for survival between the ‘free world’ and the ‘international Communist conspiracy’. The North Korean attack represented the proof that Moscow-oriented Communists were on the march worldwide. As Truman stated ‘[t]he attack upon Korea makes it plain beyond any doubt that Communism has passed beyond the use of subversion to conquer independent nations and will now use armed invasion and war’.129 Confronted with such a manifestation of Communist hostility, the

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US, in defence of its identity, was not able to separate actions in Korea from commitments elsewhere.130 In an exchange with Thomas E. Dewey, Governor of New York and Republican Party leader, on 27 June 1950, Truman laid down the basic principles of US support for South Korea: ‘Our pledge of faith to that nation is a witness to all the world that we champion liberty wherever the tyranny of communism is the aggressor.’131 Acheson concurred, arguing that ‘we are profoundly convinced that we are acting for the protection of the entire free world’ when he wrote to Britain’s Prime Minister, Ernest Bevin, explaining ‘certain fundamental aspects of the US position’.132 Taken together, as Truman explained in his memoirs, all these actions were based on the premise of upholding the rule of law and US obligations.133 Thus, the various predicates construct social realities, inform social interaction and influence the meanings and representations that are indispensable for social action. Put another way, representations of the outbreak of the Korean War and US responses to the situation in the Far East in the summer of 1950 only become meaningful within a discursive realm in which meaning is constantly renegotiated. Predicates therefore, function as background capacities for producing meaning within discourse, but also serve as a frame (most often hierarchical) for defining subject identities.134 Communist identity was constructed around its aggressiveness, totalitarianism and untrustworthiness, while US identity was seen as encompassing the leadership of the free world which legitimated certain actions with attendant obligations and commitments. The presuppositions can be located in the statement by examining how meaning is dependent upon binary oppositions and notions of self and other which construct a particular worldview. Binary constructions of meaning were structured around opposites such as good/evil, order/chaos. These techniques of articulating the US foreign policy discourse served to construct a single point of vision as ‘reality’. Within the struggle between good and evil it served to construct two kinds of subjects. The Communist camp was seen as a monolithic bloc and the US as the leader of the free world. Accordingly, the United States had moral obligations and was fulfilling altruistic commitments in response to Communist aggression, while the Communist world was totalitarian and seeking domination. The Pacific area also encompassed the opposition of order/chaos. The situation was constructed as a place threatened by disorder, whose very definition as well as the strategy by which it should be managed was established by the US. The US would ‘prevent any attack on Formosa’ and ‘called upon’ the Kuomintang Government to ‘cease all air and sea operations against the [Chinese] mainland’. This opposition worked to objectify Taiwan as an object at stake in the worldwide struggle between good and evil, order and chaos. The parent–child analogy becomes prominent. The Taiwanese and the KMT were seen as childlike subjects and the parents in this relationship could not simply turn them loose in a dangerous world of competing forces of good/evil, order/ chaos. ‘Rather, they need to be nurtured, guided, and aided until they are capable of handling their own affairs and make their own decisions.’135 Taiwan, therefore, became an essential part of the Asian off-shore island chain of bases, a possible

Origins of the ‘Taiwan issue’ 1949–50 45 key to Soviet control of the Far East and a testing ground for American leadership. This made re-intervention in the Civil War between the Chinese Communists and the Nationalists thinkable and interposing the Seventh Fleet in the Taiwan Strait possible. US Taiwan policy, therefore, became located within the boundaries defined by the ‘undetermined’ and ‘red menace’ discourses. Moving away from the perception that the PRC was distinct from the Communist bloc, the dominant discourse in the aftermath of the North Korean attack saw the Chinese Communists instead as a relentless threat and a ‘red menace’. This is not to say that one discourse was universally agreed upon or that it went unchallenged, but it was the case that most policymakers within the Truman administration turned to these meanings and representations to order their understanding of US Taiwan policy. Although these discourses differed on policy options and predicates, most of the discourses agreed that the US had a certain identity which affected social practices and policymaking. As the leading Western power in the post-war period, the United States, of course, bore a particular responsibility to respond to Communist aggression. The ‘red menace’ discourse therefore shares many similarities with traditional accounts that have situated US Taiwan and China policy within a Cold War context. As the champion of resisting Communist expansion in the late 1940s and with its nation’s unique historical traditions, capacity, values and moral exceptionalism, the American leadership role constituted a warrant for action: a will, an expectation, a right and an obligation. A key characteristic associated with ‘red menace’ discourse, then, was the need for a leader to show firmness and determination. The US could not simply yield to pressure at the same time as the morale of the free world was in danger. US prestige and status as a superpower were clearly being tested in the face of world opinion. As Truman claimed, ‘we consider the Korean situation vital as a symbol of the strength and determination of the West. Firmness now would be the only way to deter new actions in other portions of the world.’136 George Kennan, acting as Counselor to Acheson, believed that ‘[o]ur own national prestige is at stake in the most obvious way and no one is going to help us initially with its defense in this area’.137 Moreover, the North Korean attack threatened the US with the appearance of a situation of appeasement in which, if a small step by the aggressor were permitted to pass without challenge, further aggression was sure to follow. With the entire world watching and anxiously awaiting the result, the US could not succumb to any pressure or exhibit any sign of weakness.138 Truman elaborated on this analogy in a conversation with George M. Elsey on 26 June 1950. ‘Korea’, Truman said, ‘is the Greece of the Far East. If we are tough enough now, if we stand up to them like we did in Greece three years ago, they won’t take any next steps. But if we just stand by, they’ll move into Iran and they’ll take over the whole Middle East. There’s no telling what they’ll do, if we don’t put up a fight now.’139 Interpreted through the manifest lessons of appeasement, the US could not succumb to any pressure. Although Taiwan was considered a strategically

46

Origins of the ‘Taiwan issue’ 1949–50

peripheral area and American forces were thought to be better utilised elsewhere, the US could not tolerate a Communist assault of Taiwan at a time of great uncertainty. Passivity was synonymous with appeasement and an acceptance of US declining power indicating that the US was not able to eradicate a threat to its position as the leader of the free world. Consequently, the Truman administration was eager to show its resoluteness, demonstrated through resounding military success and achieved by the display of overwhelming power.140 On a global stage, then, signalling acquiescence in the face of the North Korean attack would have unfavourable repercussions for US commitments to contain Communism and would undermine the credibility of the Truman administration by directly challenging explicit presidential promises. As Kennan pointed out, ‘[a] Communist conquest of Formosa, either by political or military means or both, coming in the wake of the President’s statement, would be gravely damaging to our political position not only in Asia but possibly throughout the world. I believe that it would be comparable in its effects to a complete military defeat in Korea.’141 In short, the rising preoccupation with Communist aggression created an understanding where American leaders made frequent reference to the Chinese Communists’ untrustworthiness and their role as lackeys of a Moscow-directed Communist conspiracy in Asia. Accordingly, the strong emotions evoked among American leaders by defining the North Korean attack as Communist aggression instigated an obligation to interpose the Seventh Fleet in the Taiwan Straits if the US was to preserve its identity. Although the Truman administration felt it necessary to respond to Communist aggression and protect ‘the left flank of the whole UN position’, a focus on the ‘red menace’ discourse alone cannot adequately explain US Taiwan policy.142 Arguably, no matter how deeply the White House wanted to take a firm position in Korea and prevent any Communist landing on Taiwan, the decision to ‘neutralise’ the Taiwan Strait was profoundly embedded in both the ‘undetermined’ and the ‘determined’ discourses. The US decision to dispatch the Seventh Fleet to the Taiwan Straits was seen as ‘an impartial neutralizing action addressed both to the forces on Formosa and to those on the mainland’.143 Thus, Truman’s authoritative statement on 27 June 1950 was directed at deterring the mainland as much as it was directed at constraining Taiwan, and Truman drew heavily on the assumptions entrenched in the ‘undetermined’ discourse when he argued that the ‘determination of the future status of Formosa must await the restoration of security in the Pacific, a peace settlement with Japan, or consideration by the United Nations’. The ultimate deposition of Taiwan, therefore, rested on two essential features of the ‘undetermined’ discourse: first, the legal ambiguity that the PRC Government was not a signatory to the Cairo and Potsdam declarations that restored the territory of Taiwan to the ROC, and second, that the US occupied a special responsibility to settle the legal status of Taiwan through the conclusion of the Japanese Peace Treaty. This rendered the decision to ‘neutralise’ the Taiwan Strait and US interests in the status of Taiwan sensible and legitimate.

Origins of the ‘Taiwan issue’ 1949–50 47 Although Truman declared that ‘[o]ur desire is that Formosa not become embroiled in hostilities disturbing to the peace of the Pacific and that all questions affecting Formosa be settled by peaceful means as envisaged in the Charter of the United Nations’, he had in a private meeting with Congressional leaders on 27 June 1950 acknowledged that US actions with regard to Taiwan, the Philippines and Indochina were not taken under the UN.144 Thus, in order to justify US actions in the Taiwan Strait, the Truman administration emphasised that guarantees against military action were applied both ways, ‘that is to prevent attacks from Formosa as well as on Formosa’. Consequently, the US moved cautiously in ‘handling the Formosa question not to divert attention from Korea’.145 Later, in a keynote address before Congress in July 1950, Truman clarified US actions with regard to Taiwan. In reminiscence of the ideas articulated within the ‘determined’ discourse by Acheson in his background press conference on 5 January 1959, Truman told his audience that ‘[i]n order that there may be no doubt in any quarter about our intentions regarding Formosa’, the US had no ‘territorial ambitions’ nor did the US seek ‘any special position or privilege on Formosa’. He continued, insisting that ‘[t]he present military neutralization of Formosa is without prejudice to political questions affecting that island’.146 Truman also forcefully instructed General MacArthur to convey to the Chinese Nationalist Government that any attack on the Mainland ‘will be considered an unfriendly act’.147 However, any attempts to reassure the Chinese Communists that ‘we are taking no aggressive or provocative step which would lead the Chinese to believe that there is any hostile feeling against them on our part’ rested on flawed assumptions.148 To the Chinese Communists, the decision to interpose the Seventh Fleet confirmed the treacherous and imperialistic nature of America, a state that had repeatedly vowed to avoid involvement in Chinese affairs. Furthermore, by acting outside the mechanisms of the UN, the proclaimed intentions of the Truman administration did not satisfy the legitimate demands of its allies or Asiatic states which had recognised the PRC. The subject position of the US as a leader of the free world with attendant responsibilities and obligations was simply taken for granted. As Weldes has pointed out, ‘[s]pecific subject positions are created when social phenomena are depicted … Each subject position or identity carries with it particular ways of functioning in the world, is located within specific power relations, and is characterized by particular interests’.149 Situating the US as with a particular identity makes a material difference, since how we act in certain situations depends on how both self and other(s) are negotiated and what our definitions of the situation are. Certain practices might be similar, but ascertaining how actions constitute threats, aggression, obligations or commitments, is determined by the kind of subject engaging in it.150 For instance, when the US interposes the Seventh Fleet in the Taiwan Strait, this action is certainly ‘real’, though the interposition of marine vessels into a particular sea area is in itself uninteresting and socially irrelevant outside of representations that produce meaning. To paraphrase Doty, it is only when ‘America’ is attached

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Origins of the ‘Taiwan issue’ 1949–50

to the troops and ‘Taiwan Strait’ to the geographical space that meaning is created. What the physical behaviour itself is, however, is still far from certain until discursive practices constitute it as an ‘invasion’, a ‘neutralisation’, a ‘show of forces’, a ‘training exercise’, a ‘protection of peace’, or a ‘rescue’, and so on.151 In other words, the actual behaviour and physical content of providing economic and military aid might be identical, but the meaning attached to these practices is constituted through discursive representations. Consequently, America’s closest ally, the United Kingdom, did not share the view that US action with regard to Taiwan was necessary or obligatory. As Bevin explained in a lengthy telegram to Acheson on 14 July 1950, the British government and in particular the Asiatic states in which India was a major representative, could not understand ‘why the US should intervene by stationing its fleet in a certain position to prevent a lawfully established and recognised government from performing its normal functions over the island of Formosa and its inhabitants’.152 Thus, the British Government repeatedly reminded the Truman administration that although the US was strongly supported for its ‘prompt’ and ‘determined’ action in Korea, which was the ‘binding and cementing influence’ for the support among free Asiatic nations, the action in regard to Taiwan ‘was disturbing and was viewed with grave alarm by the entire Oriental free world’. Bevin emphasised this view in a conversations with Douglas, the American ambassador to the UK, when he argued that, ‘[v]iewed through Asiatic eyes, Formosa belongs to China, quite irrespective of what sort of government China may or may not have. Under the pronouncement of Cairo, confirmed by the terms of the Potsdam Declaration, Formosa is legitimately part of the area over which the Chinese Government, howsoever composed and of whatsoever political complexion, should lawfully exercise jurisdiction.’153 The US Government, however, had not recognised the People’s Republic and would therefore not subscribe to the view that its own conduct was illegitimate or breaching the sovereignty and territorial integrity of the PRC.

Conclusion As I have sought to demonstrate in this chapter, foreign policy crises, and especially acute crises like the North Korean attack, present important opportunities for the (re)production of state identities.154 Despite the liability Chiang and his KMT Government posed to US China policy, once the bellicose actions in Korea became defined as a Communist conspiracy, any further Communist aggression had to be prevented as it threatened precisely what the US represented in the early 1950. Hence, the means chosen to combat the threat to US identity as the leader in a worldwide struggle with Communism undermined the ends the Truman administration was seeking in its China policy and it became increasingly more difficult to differentiate between vital and peripheral areas to US national security and to maintain a nuanced view of the Communist bloc. Such a starting point can throw new light onto the decision that it ‘appeared compulsory’ to protect Taiwan and some of the ‘underlying elements’ and ‘hidden

Origins of the ‘Taiwan issue’ 1949–50 49 factors’ that supposedly influenced US Taiwan policy according to traditional accounts. This analysis also suggests some reservations about the emphasis on strategic calculations as the guiding premise behind the decision to interpose the Seventh Fleet in the Taiwan Strait. Because there are no objectively correct descriptions of the ‘national interest’ apart from the way decision-makers discursively constitute and interpret interests, it has been argued that a more nuanced understanding of US Taiwan policy would inquire into how identities fundamentally shape state interests. In accounting for the American response to the North Korean crisis in June 1950 we find a discursively constructed subject, the US, with a particular discursively constituted identity construed around US leadership of the free world, its strength, commitments and obligations, and its belief in binary oppositions. This evolving Cold War identity, which I identified as the ‘red menace’ discourse, was defined in opposition to aggressive totalitarian others and conferred onto the US the task of containing Communist aggression. In other words, the way in which US decision-makers understood events in East Asia after the outbreak of the Korean War, and the reasons why the US national interest in that crisis seemed so obvious, as Acheson argued, cannot be explained without understanding the identity of the US as a leader of the free world in a worldwide struggle against the Communist movement. The decision to ‘neutralise’ the Taiwan Strait, then, was produced in representations of the North Korean attack as a serious threat to the precarious Cold War identity of the US and as an opportunity to reassert that identity. Focusing on the ‘red menace’ discourse, therefore, provides additional insight to traditional accounts on the origins of the Taiwan issue in US–China relations and comprehends mainstream approaches by focusing analysis on how particular background meanings, subject positions and interpretive disposition were socially constructed so that certain practices were made possible. However, this chapter has illustrated that a more comprehensive understanding of US Taiwan policy also needs to explore the role of competing discourses. Discourses are always in the process of being articulated and their exterior limits are constituted by other discourses that create the conditions for meaning which is indispensable for policy action. The two most significant alternative representations to the ‘red menace’ discourse were the ‘determined’ and the ‘undetermined’ discourses and they both had a significant impact on US Taiwan policy in 1949–50. I have established that the ‘determined’ discourse had a predominate role in shaping US Taiwan policy prior to the outbreak of the Korean War, which supports the view that Acheson had no intentions of reversing his ‘hands off’ and ‘let the dust settle’ approach. Although we can trace aspects of the ‘determined’ discourse in policy documents and official statements in the aftermath of the Korean War, eventually it became marginalised and the intervention of PRC ‘volunteers’ in the Korean War in late October 1950 shattered any prospect of reconciliation in US–China relations. Thus, in order to fully understand how ‘neutralisation’ of the Taiwan Strait became the appropriate US Taiwan policy it is essential to explicate how

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Origins of the ‘Taiwan issue’ 1949–50

the authoritative statement on 27 June 1950 was entrenched in the ‘undetermined’ discourse. The ‘undetermined’ discourse illuminates not only why Taiwan was construed as an important asset to US military operations in East Asia but also how the US was licensed to judge that ‘neutralisation’ of the Taiwan Strait was a reasonable, appropriate and intelligible response to the outbreak of the Korean War. In other words, an emphasis on the discourses that guided US decision-makers’ response to the North Korean attack shows how unthinkable it would be for any decisionmakers to say that America was engaging in aggression against the PRC. That is, the decision to ‘neutralise’ the Taiwan Strait made sense if one occupied the subject position of the US, albeit the UK, America’s closest ally, could not understand ‘why the US should intervene’. Regardless of the potential dangers that US action in the Taiwan Strait would envenom Anglo-American relations, alienate Asian states and jeopardise US aims to mobilise regional forces for the task of containment, the discursive representations embedded in the ‘undetermined’ and the ‘red menace’ discourses made it possible to intervene in order to save a discredited but anti-communist regime on Taiwan. As the Truman administration’s China policy eventually became entrenched in the overall struggle against worldwide Communism, the Chinese Communists, construed as a tool of Moscow-oriented Communist aggression in Asia, had to be denied control of Taiwan if the US was to secure its identity.

3

Opening space on the Taiwan question 1969–72

In the previous chapter, I scrutinised how, when judging the situation on the Korean Peninsula in June 1950, the Truman administration decided that interposing the Seventh Fleet in the Taiwan Strait was the only reasonable course of action in dealing with the Chinese Communists. In other words, I examined how a policy of intervention in the Chinese Civil War, first regarded by the Truman administration as counterproductive to American interests, came to be deemed necessary and non-intervention unthinkable. Now we turn to the period when President Nixon capitalised on many of the ideas first advanced by Dean Acheson in 1949 and 1950. The main objective, however, is not to provide a comprehensive analysis into the process of rapprochement in US–China relations.1 Instead, by using recently available documents from the Nixon Presidential Materials, this chapter seeks to examine how the Nixon administration was able to open up space on the Taiwan issue to consider alternatives which had previously been understood to be unrealistic. In preparing for and following Nixon’s visit to Beijing in February 1972, the contested and unsettled Taiwan issue in US China policy again shifted. Although the United States did not publicly recognise the PRC’s sovereignty over Taiwan in the Shanghai Communiqué, Nixon and Kissinger had clearly indicated in their secret discussions with the Chinese leaders that the status of Taiwan was no longer considered ‘undetermined’.2 Indeed, the ‘five principles’ concerning Taiwan, advocated by Nixon and Kissinger in their talks with Chairman Mao and Premier Zhou, would later provide important leverage for President Carter when his administration moved toward a normalisation of relations between the US and China in December 1978.3 The analysis that follows illuminates this contested process by which the architects of a new US Taiwan policy constituted identities, produced new knowledge and pursued new meanings in order to construct and maintain new representations of the Taiwan issue. By scrutinising the competing discourses about the status of Taiwan within official circles during the Nixon administration, the principal aim is to show how US Taiwan policy is historically contingent, contested and unstable and tied to US identity and American representations of China and Taiwan. Paraphrasing Wendt’s argument about the end of the Cold War, it may be that ‘objective conditions’ were such that representations ‘had’ to

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Opening space on the Taiwan question 1969–72

change in US Taiwan policy but that does not change the fact that in an important sense those representations constituted the Taiwan issue, and as such changing them by definition changed the reality.4 Thus, the argument developed is concerned with the ‘type of political context in which these changes could be meaningfully introduced and, therefore, embraced’.5 Actors are always already embedded in discursive conditions of possibility that shape and constitute the parameters for action. However, within these structures of historical meaning actors are capable of a degree of agency. ‘In a context of contestation, the room for manoeuvre may be enlarged’ and actors can make ‘their own history’.6 Questions about identity and a state’s vision about itself, ‘who we are and where we are going’, are central when actors struggle ‘to make their own world’.7 ‘Since all identity is relational’ a critical aspect in understanding the contingent construction of the status of Taiwan depends on how both self and other(s) were constructed within US China policy discourses.8 Thus, the pattern governing interaction with the PRC which was understood as a threat and an illegitimate aggressive power differs from that of interaction with a legitimate major power essential to peace and prosperity in Asia. In other words, US Taiwan policy becomes contested as certain practices were made possible, as the US rearticulated the identities of self and other(s) through discourses whereby these identities seemed reasonable, commonsensical and appropriate. An important aspect, then, is to identify the larger intersubjective context within which changes in US Taiwan policy would be seen to be sensible and therefore justifiable. As Fierke maintains, ‘possibilities and power are intersubjectively constituted and made meaningful through language’ and intentions and decisions have to be made ‘in a framework within which it could be justified to others’.9 Alteration in the Nixon administration’s Taiwan policy will therefore be examined by focusing on the changing discursive representation of the Taiwan issue and US China policy within bureaucratic forums, the public, alliances and bilateral relationships. The opening section illuminates the sequence of events leading to Kissinger’s secret trip to Beijing in July 1971. I then briefly account for the conventional view on rapprochement in Sino-American relations. Counter to the traditional account, which has emphasised the position of the US in the international constellation of power and sought explanations for America’s opening to China through the concept of ‘national interest’, this study problematises the implicit assumptions of rationalist approaches that an independent reality is directly accessible to policymakers. As Weldes notes, the way in which the neorealists have conceptualised the ‘national interest’ remains inadequate. Neorealists assume that the distribution of material capabilities can be ‘objectively’ calculated and that threats to a nation’s national interests can be accurately recognised. This notion ignores the centrality of processes of interpretation. Accordingly, ‘dictates of power are never clearly manifested’.10 Instead, we need to rethink how all interests are particular historical constructions embedded in a shared language that remain contingent and inextricably linked to discursive representations and identities.

Opening space on the Taiwan question 1969–72 53 Before policymakers act, they engage in an interpretive process whereby shared meanings construct the situation faced by the state and how statesmen make sense of the world. This process ‘makes threats and opportunities, enemies and allies, intelligible, thinkable, and possible’.11 Moreover, it is commonplace for traditional approaches to focus on ‘why’ questions which, as Doty has pointed out, generally take ‘as unproblematic the possibility that particular policies and practices could happen’.12 My aim is not to jettison ‘why’ questions or argue against their utility. Neither is the objective to establish whether ‘how’ questions matter more than ‘why’ questions. But, as Wendt’s discussion about the central role of ideas versus material factors makes clear, ‘the ‘what matters more’ question is important at the ontological level, because of the a priori assumptions that are made’.13 ‘Why’ questions presuppose the identity of social actors and take core concepts such as anarchy, state, power, rational actor, national interest and sovereignty for granted. In contrast, as Doty emphasises, ‘how questions examine how meanings are produced and attached to various social subjects and objects, thus constituting particular interpretive dispositions that create certain possibilities and preclude others’.14 Thus, such an approach opens the possibility for new kinds of questions and answers about US Taiwan policy and the process of rapprochement in US– China relations. Following this discussion I argue that few studies have focused on the Taiwan issue during the process of reconciliation in US–Chinese relations and hardly any work has been done exploring this issue from a discourse and language-based reading of recently declassified archival material from the Nixon administration.15 It is in this context that this chapter seeks to make a contribution. The remaining two-thirds of the chapter, therefore, endeavour to put this approach into practice. Divided into two sections, the analysis begins by investigating the changing discursive representations of the Taiwan issue through four discourses about the status of Taiwan within US China policy: Taiwan as representing all of China (the ‘red menace’ discourse), the status of Taiwan as ‘undetermined’, Taiwan as ‘independent’, and the status of Taiwan as ‘determined’ (meaning that there is one-China and that Taiwan is part of China). Related to this analysis, I explore the predicates, presuppositions and categorisations attributed to the various subjects within each discourse. The discussion, then, highlights the textual mechanisms that create background knowledge by examining how articulation and presupposition construct particular kind of meanings, identities and subject positions. The second section, in turn, shows how these meanings and representations play an important part in the process of discursively constructing the status of Taiwan, by rendering some courses of action possible while excluding others as inappropriate or unthinkable. Rather than framing the Taiwan issue according to a state-centric geopolitical ordering of world politics, it is argued that the question about the status of Taiwan is better understood through a theoretical framework that considers the political consequences of adopting one mode of representation over another. These discursive representations, therefore, carried concrete policy consequences – notably in relation to American military presence on Taiwan and

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Opening space on the Taiwan question 1969–72

in the acknowledgment of the one-China principle, which has been the foundation for US–China–Taiwan relations until today.

Signalling rapprochement As we have seen, between 1945 and 1950 the US acted as though it considered Taiwan to be part of China. With Truman’s statement on 27 June 1950, however, the US ‘neutralised’ the Taiwan Strait and considered the status of Taiwan as ‘undetermined’, thereby maintaining that the question of sovereignty over Taiwan ‘remained to be determined by some form of appropriate international action’.16 The ‘undetermined’ status of Taiwan was reiterated in the Japanese Peace Treaty, signed at a conference in San Francisco on 8 September 1951. Without the representation of either the ROC or the PRC, Japan ‘renounced all right, title and claim to Formosa and the Pescadores’ but did not cede this area to any particular entity and intentionally omitted any mention of the future fate of these territories.17 In response to the September 1954 PRC attack against Quemoy and other Offshore Islands, Taiwan was brought formally into alliance with the US through the signing of the US–ROC Mutual Defense Treaty (MDT) on 2 December 1954. Congress passed the Formosa Resolution on 29 January 1955, giving the President the authority to defend Quemoy and Matsu if he felt it necessary for the security of Taiwan and the Pescadores. During the second Taiwan Strait crisis in October 1958, President Eisenhower allowed the Seventh Fleet to escort ROC shipping engaged in re-supplying Quemoy and President Kennedy reaffirmed US commitments to defend the Offshore Islands following a new build-up of Chinese forces opposite Taiwan in June 1962.18 The Vietnam War further consolidated the close ties between Taipei and Washington and increased the level of US troops on the island considerably. Total US aid from 1949 exceeded $5.9 billion, with $1.7 billion in economic assistance and $4.2 billion in military assistance. The US terminated economic assistance in 1965 and military assistance ended in the mid-1970s. In sum, however, America’s economic, political and military assistance to the government of the ROC played a conspicuous centrality in Taiwan’s attainment of survival and prosperity throughout the 1950s and 1960s.19 The announcement on 15 July 1971 that Kissinger had been visiting Beijing preparing for a presidential trip to take place sometime before May 1972 was, therefore, sudden and dramatic. However, it was preceded and produced by a carefully developed series of steps. As Nixon argued, in fact, no other US foreign policy move during his first term in office had been approached more meticulously.20 Although Nixon had a reputation of being a hard core anti-communist within the right wing of the Republican party, his ideas about China during the 1950s and 1960s also reflected the view that China was too important to the United States to be ignored or isolated and that Washington simply had to engage with the issue of China in its Asian strategy.21 In his much-quoted article in Foreign Affairs in October 1967, Nixon still portrayed China as a threat and danger in Asia, however,

Opening space on the Taiwan question 1969–72 55 in the long run Nixon asserted that: ‘… we simply cannot afford to leave China forever outside the family of nations … There is no place in this small planet for a billion of its potentially most able people to live in angry isolation.’22 Only weeks after entering the White House in January 1969, Nixon revealed his intentions of seeking better relations with the PRC. In early February 1969, in response to a report indicating some East European concern about possible Sino-American contacts, Nixon emphasised in a memorandum to Kissinger that ‘I noted in your January 31 report the interesting comments from [the East European] source. I think we should give every encouragement to the attitude that this Administration is exploring possibilities of rapprochement [sic] with the Chinese.’ Nixon instructed Kissinger that ‘this, of course, should be done privately and should under no circumstances get into public prints from this direction’. Finally, Nixon recommended that Kissinger should continue to plant the idea that the administration was exploring a move toward China ‘in contacts with your friends, and particularly in any ways you might have to get to this … source’.23 Drawing on these instructions, Kissinger initiated a policy review by directing an interagency study of US policy toward China. The National Security Study Memorandum (NSSM) 14 asked for a broad policy review.24 Assuming that total withdrawal from involvement in Asia, where US and Chinese interests impinge on one another, ‘would be detrimental to US interests and objectives’, the NSSM 14 concluded: While it is agreed that a more active and moderate China participating in the World Community could present a more effective, long-range challenge to US interests, which would require close attention, there is on the other hand the concern that an isolated and excessively insecure China increases the probability of major miscalculation and irrational behaviour. Therefore, while a more moderate China is surely not necessarily less a threat per se, the threat does become more manageable and predictable under more normal conditions. Simultaneously, State Department officials were continuously compiling a variety of policy options designed to reduce bilateral tension and signal US willingness to initiate a new direction in US–PRC relations during Nixon’s first year in the White House. Drawing on Assistant Secretary of State Marshall Green’s report back in October, Secretary of State William Rogers recommended to Nixon in December 1969 that ‘we should take the opportunity presented by the advent of our adm, the subsidence of the Cultural Revolution, the intensity of the SinoSoviet antipathy, and the prospect of a negotiated settlement in Vietnam, to try and move our relationship with the Chinese Communists off dead center … We will have to face the problem some day, and we feel it is better to move when we can exercise some control over the manner of moving rather than waiting until we are forced to take action at a time and in a manner not of our own choosing’. 25 Throughout 1969 and 1970, therefore, the Nixon administration inaugurated a series of measures which underlined a growing willingness to develop a more

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Opening space on the Taiwan question 1969–72

constructive relationship with the PRC. Upon completion of the review of China policy, trade and travel restrictions were progressively relaxed.26 On 16 November 1969 the Seventh Fleet’s Taiwan Strait Patrol was modified.27 The phased sequences of unilateral measures were of such a nature that they did not require a response from Beijing, nor did they place the Chinese Communists in an awkward position. At the same time, they were designed to signal to Beijing that the administration was ready for serious dialogue. These steps were accompanied by a series of public statements which delineated the changing attitude of the Nixon administration. On 20 January 1969, in his Inaugural Address, Nixon clarified the administration’s approach towards potential adversaries: ‘After a period of confrontation, we are entering an era of negotiation … We seek an open world – open to ideas, open to the exchange of goods and people – a world in which no people, great or small, will live in angry isolation … We cannot expect to make everyone our friend, but we can try to make no one our enemy.’ In preparing for his visit to Beijing, President Nixon argued that ‘[w]hen I spoke those lines, I had the PRC very much in mind. It is this attitude that shaped our policy from the outset and led to the 15 July, 1971 announcement. It is in this spirit that I go to Peking.’28 Conversely, Kissinger characterised Nixon’s China policy in the early days in the White House as ‘schizophrenic’ and ‘full of contradictory tendencies’. According to Kissinger, Nixon ‘poured […] cold water on the prospect of Sino-American rapprochement with his statements on US China policy in press conferences on 27 January and 4 March 1969’.29 Knowing that his visit to Beijing would represent a breakthrough in Sino-American relations, Nixon might have been predisposed to look favourably on his statements during his first months in office. Unable to identify clearly the scope or nature of the developments in China and uncertain about China’s aims, Nixon was naturally somewhat ambivalent when it came to formulating proposed solutions to how the administration would end the estrangement of relations. As seen above, however, Nixon had for a long time been interested in establishing ways of bringing the Chinese Communists into a more constructive role in international affairs. With this in mind, he had instructed Kissinger to explore possible ways of contact with the Chinese and to initiate a policy review of China policy. After receiving some signals that the Chinese might be interested in reconciliation, Nixon went further. In his first foreign policy report in February 1970 he stated that ‘… it is certainly in our interests and in the interests of peace and stability in Asia and the world, that we take what steps we can toward improved practical relations with Peking … we will seek to promote understandings which can establish a new pattern of mutually beneficial actions’.30 By the time Nixon presented his second foreign policy report in February 1971, he cited the importance of China’s participation in world affairs, reiterated that the US was ready for a dialogue with Beijing and stated that the administration hoped to see the PRC assume a constructive role in the family of nations. Looking towards the immediate future, Nixon argued, ‘[i]n the coming year, I will carefully examine what further steps we might take to create broader opportunities for

Opening space on the Taiwan question 1969–72 57 contacts between the Chinese and American peoples, and how we might remove needless obstacles to the realization of these opportunities. We hope for, but will not be deterred by lack of, reciprocity.’31 The State Department was concurrently signalling Washington’s desire for advancing relations. After the Chinese had cancelled the Warsaw talks in February 1969, Rogers stated that the US regretted the decision. He further announced that the US government was ready to meet at any time. On his Asian trip in August 1969 he urged renewal of Warsaw talks. In a speech in Canberra, Australia, on 8 August 1969, Rogers noted the barriers between the two countries but added, ‘[w]e nonetheless look forward to a time when we can enter into a useful dialogue and to a reduction of tensions’.32 After planting the idea that the administration was willing to engage with the PRC for almost a year, diplomatic talks resumed in Warsaw in 1970. Walter J. Stoessel Jr., the American ambassador to Poland, finally managed to convey to Lei Yang, the PRC ambassador to Poland, Nixon’s desire to discuss improvement in relations.33 Five days later, on 8 January 1970, the Chinese ambassador invited Stoessel to the PRC embassy in Warsaw. Knowing that more than 134 meetings had taken place since 1955, and clearly annoyed about leaks from the State Department in preparation for the talks in Warsaw, Nixon and Kissinger agreed that communication with the Chinese needed to be handled on a confidential basis.34 As Nixon later explained, by using formal diplomatic channels the two sides’ representatives had minimum flexibility; they could do little more than read prepared statements and refer back to their capitals for instructions for the next meeting. Accordingly, this cumbersome exchange between wary adversaries reinforced the need for a new approach and Nixon and Kissinger instructed Stoessel to inform the Chinese that the President was interested in sending a US special representative to Beijing or receiving a representative from the PRC in Washington.35 Developments in Warsaw not only made it clear to Beijing that the Nixon administration was prepared for a serious dialogue, but also instigated the process whereby secret back channels became an important feature in communication between the White House and the Chinese Communist leaders.36 Nixon reiterated his preference for establishing direct secret communications, either in Beijing or another capital, through President Yahya Khan of Pakistan on 25 October 1970. The next day the Romanian President Ceausescu told Nixon that he believed the PRC wanted to improve relations, and Nixon reaffirmed US willingness in a meeting between high level special representatives. In December, the Chinese finally responded to US initiatives. After consultations with Chairman Mao and General Lin Biao, the Defence Minister, Premier Zhou’s mid-November reply reached the White House on 9 December 1970. Emphasising the importance of the Taiwan issue, Zhou stated that ‘in order to discuss this subject [US vacating Taiwan], a special envoy of President Nixon’s will be most welcome in Peking’. After an affirmative reply from Nixon on 16 December, Ambassador Corneliu Bogdan of Romania

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delivered a message from Zhou on 11 January 1971 which restated the weight Beijing placed on the Taiwan issue. Zhou, however, added the comment that since President Nixon had visited Bucharest and Belgrade, he would also be welcomed in Peking.37 Throughout the next months, both sides reaffirmed their interest in talks, and in May 1971 Nixon proposed that a preliminary secret meeting be held between Kissinger and Zhou to exchange views and explore the possibility of a presidential visit to Beijing. In a formal response on 29 May 1971 (received on 2 June), Zhou wrote ‘with much pleasure’ of Chairman Mao’s acceptance of a presidential visit and welcomed an advance party to prepare and make necessary arrangements for President Nixon’s visit. It was this assiduous process which culminated in Kissinger’s secret trip to Beijing in July 1971. The theme that has enjoyed prominence in memoir accounts and has been supported by a large quantity of secondary literature has emphasised that US rapprochement with China was stimulated by balance of power logic.38 According to Kissinger, the new administration had the general intention of making a fresh start in its relation with China, but during the first few months no precise idea of how to reconcile with the Chinese existed. Caution and ambivalence, however, were replaced by determination to improve US–Chinese relations when SinoSoviet antagonism developed into armed assaults along, at that time, the longest inland border in the world. Drawing on the insight of realist propositions, Kissinger maintained that the clashes on the Sino-Soviet border in March 1969 signalled that the structural imperatives of the international environment had changed, which further prompted the rationale to overcome conflicting interests and values in US–China relations.39 Once convinced about the seriousness of Sino-Soviet hostility, the White House saw an opportunity in opening up to China that would serve extensive strategic interests and could make a significant contribution in dealing with the Soviet Union. As Kissinger argued in White House Years, ‘[w]e moved toward China not to expiate liberal guilt over our China policy of the late 1940s but to shape a global equilibrium. It was not to collude against the Soviet Union but to give us a balancing position to use for constructive ends – to give each Communist power a stake in better relations with us’.40 The primacy of realpolitik has remained the dominant explanation within the literature, even today. The strategic rationale behind rapprochement, whereby the US and the PRC developed cooperative relations in order to enhance their security against the threat to both from the Soviet Union, ‘was clearly the case’, argued Ross. Not only were the main architects in Washington behind a ‘marriage of convenience’ guided by strategic calculations but also the ‘Chinese leaders faced a similar strategic imperative’.41 Nevertheless, as Evelyn Goh has pointed out in her impressive account of Sino-American rapprochement, even if one accepts the primacy of the realist explanation, there remain two key shortcomings. First, the strategic implications of the Sino-Soviet split became public in 1962, so how can we account for the timing of the rapprochement and why did reconciliation not take place on an earlier

Opening space on the Taiwan question 1969–72 59 stage? Using a constructivist, discourse-based approach, Goh’s main interest lies in the rapprochement as a process of change. As Goh has observed, the reversal of US China policy ‘illuminates the indeterminacy of realist power-balancing logic as applied to this apparently clearcut-case. In response to the Sino-Soviet war of 1969, the Nixon administration had four policy options, all of which would have been consistent with realist reasoning. It could have (1) done nothing and allowed the two communist rivals to weaken each other; (2) supported the Soviet Union against China; (3) improved relations with both Beijing and Moscow; or (4) supported the Chinese against the Soviets.’42 In contrast to the existing literature and far from constituting a drastic departure, Goh situates the prevailing realpolitik account of US rapprochement within the context of other ideas about reconciliation with China covering the landscape from 1961 to 1974.43 Second, as Goh’s thoughtful analysis shows, traditional accounts have paid insufficient attention to how discursive representations affect the policymaking process and how the rapprochement could have happened. Put differently, traditional approaches have characteristically been occupied with explaining why but not how reconciliation was achieved. Thus, Goh asks, ‘[h]ow was it possible that under Nixon, China shifted from being the United States’ worst enemy to being its friend and even tacit ally?’ According to Goh, this is a process with which available accounts do not engage in a sustained manner and she directs our attention to a serious alteration in representations of China in US China policy.44

The Taiwan question A topic that has rarely been researched concerns the avenues of the impact of the rapprochement on the Taiwan issue. As pointed out previously, Tucker provides the best overall picture of US–Taiwan relations, but it should be noted that her work does not rely upon any extensive access to archival material from the Nixon administration.45 Robert Ross’ Negotiating Cooperation is a useful starting point on the process of rapprochement in US–China relations, and also contains an emphasis on how, through ‘continuous negotiations and mutual adjustments’, the two sides finessed the divergent Taiwan issue ‘in the interest of developing cooperation against the Soviet threat’.46 More recently, detailed accounts based on recently available documents have supplemented Tucker and Ross’s analysis into what Bush has identified as ‘relatively unstudied issues’.47 What has not been previously examined, however, is the way in which discourses work to construct a particular US Taiwan policy.48 Inspired by Goh’s new insights and a growing acceptance of studies that focus ‘direction away from the steady-state conceptual universe of power and interests’, the analytical question addressed below is concerned with how discourse(s) construct a particular reality.49 Drawing on the work of Michael Shapiro, Doty has argued that policymakers ‘function within a discursive space that imposes meanings on their world and thus creates reality’.50 Accordingly, rather than seeing the changes in US Taiwan policy as the effects of unitary, rational and

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intentional agents wielding a strictly bounded geopolitical logic to determine US China policy, we need to problematise ‘how this “reality” is produced and maintained and how it makes various practices possible’.51 In developing this approach, I have divided the remaining part of this chapter into two sections. The first step is to explicate the various discourses about US Taiwan policy. As argued in Chapter 2, discourses are fundamentally social and intersubjective. Thus, discourses should not be seen as individual possessions or simply ideas, but instead understood as shared representations whereby certain kinds of moves are possible. At the same time, though, discourses constrain. Making some kind of meaning and action possible may preclude other types of meaning and action.52 Thus, the following analysis emphasises both continuity and change, where one discursive formation is dislocated and new discursive formations are constructed.53 The various discourses about the status of Taiwan – i.e. Taiwan as representing all of China, the status of Taiwan as ‘undetermined’, Taiwan as ‘independent’, and the status of Taiwan as ‘determined’ – identified within official circles during the Nixon administration during the years 1969 and 1972, can be compared and contrasted by examining the descriptive characteristics, adjectives, adverbs and capabilities attributed to the various subjects. Each of the competing discourses, then, carried particular predicates and representations of the identity of the US, China and Taiwan. These structures of significations – intersubjectively constructed and constituted in language – presuppose and construct social realities that create background knowledge and confer meaning on social phenomena and political events.54 Moreover, predicates and presuppositions attributed to the various subjects within the discourses about the status of Taiwan were reinforced by the articulation of new identities and the distinct subject positions developed. An articulatory practice is defined by Laclau and Mouffe as ‘any practice establishing a relation among elements such that their identity is modified’. However, discursive positions cannot be totally fixed or ‘implement a final suture … The practice of articulation, therefore, consists in the construction of nodal points which partially fix meaning …’.55 The partial fixation of meaning, then, suggests that appeal to other discourses is always possible. The second section is concerned with how discursive productivity produces the categories and boundaries of knowledge and possibility, which regulate what can be said, how it can be said and what kind of strategies can be realised at the level of discourse.56 Discourses, then, differentiate and orientate, and perform a constraining and enabling function with regard to state action. As such, I want to pursue what these discourses that were identified about US Taiwan policy entail for the US stance regarding the PRC representation at the UN, the potential withdrawal of US troops from Taiwan and US acceptance of the one-China principle.

Opening space on the Taiwan question 1969–72 61

Competing discourses In the aftermath of the Korean War, the United States came to recognise the ROC as the sole legitimate government of China, a policy reinforced by the nonrecognition, containment and isolation of the PRC. Throughout the 1950s and 1960s, this policy can be identified in terms of the prevailing representations of China within what Goh has called the ‘red menace’ discourse.57 With its ‘fundamentalist, violent, and revolutionary power’, demonstrated by its behaviour on the Korean Peninsula between 1950 and 1953, there were even voices in the US that wanted to distinguish between a more cautious Soviet Union as its ‘reasonable adversary’ and China as its ‘irrational foe’.58 Despite these sentiments, the ‘red menace’ discourse identified the PRC in ‘terms of the prevailing American representation of Cold War international politics’. As Goh explains, ‘China’s identity was now attached to that of the Soviet Union: it was an active member of the Soviet bloc, propagating a renegade ideology, exercising domestic tyranny, and launching external military aggression – all of which threatened the established postwar international order.’59 Although the Chinese menace was an evolving entity and American China policy thinking during the 1960s was not a simple continuation of that of the 1950s, the image of China as a ‘red menace’ was prominent among American policymakers. This discourse, then, portrayed Communist China as both a domestic and an international threat. As Goh notes, ‘[i]nternally, the communist regime was illegitimate and despotic; while externally, it was a proven expansionist aggressor developing ever more lethal offensive military capabilities’.60 Saturated in a particular set of meanings about the Cold War, Taiwan represented an object at stake in the worldwide struggle between the US-led free world and the Communist conspiracy. Among key decision-makers in Washington, it was believed that the US was engaged in a global battle with an international Communist movement pursuing world domination. As the defender of the free world, Taiwan was seen as a notable source of prestige for the US and represented an important symbol of credibility to US leadership with its attendant obligations and responsibility towards its allies. The opposites of order and chaos, good and evil, meant that Taiwan was an essential part of the Asian off-shore island chain of bases and a testing ground for American leadership. Almost by its mere geographical location, Taiwan was represented as an absolute strategic ‘other’, a discursive construct from which it could not escape. Simultaneously, however, the representation originating in Truman’s statement on 27 June 1950 that the status of Taiwan remained ‘undetermined’, developed and became more prominent among decision-makers in Washington. When pressed, US officials drew more and more upon the ambiguity presented in the ‘undetermined’ discourse about the status of Taiwan, refusing to take any position on whether Taiwan was part of China or an entity of some other kind, stressing instead that the US regarded the Government of the Republic of China (GRC) as legitimately exercising jurisdiction over Taiwan since the US government ordered Japanese forces to surrender to the GRC. On practical matters, therefore, various

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US administrations had ‘recognised that each government exercise effective control over a defined territory and that we are prepared to deal with each on such matters affecting our interests as fall within their respective competence’.61 Such a pragmatic position was reiterated under the Nixon administration and clearly summarised in a key policy paper assessing US China policy in 1971. Discussing the ‘Taiwan issue’ the NSSM 106 stated, ‘[f]or our part, we have taken the position since the Korean War that sovereignty over Taiwan is an unsettled question subject to future international solution. We have therefore avoided stating that we regard Taiwan as a part of China, while similarly avoiding statements implying separate sovereignty for the island. We recognize the GRC as legitimately occupying and exercising jurisdiction over Taiwan, with a provisional capital at Taipei.’62 This alternative formulation, which avoided any reference to the GRC’s claim to be the sole legitimate government of all of China, also presented a more sanguine view of the PRC and the Communist bloc. No longer seen as an implacable enemy, the PRC was intended to play a vital role in securing peace and stability in Asia, and the PRC only represented a ‘limited military threat’.63 One of the major secret national security papers on US China policy even argued that a ‘[r]eturn to a strategy of attempted isolation does not seem to be appropriate, or perhaps even feasible … [and] is not treated as a policy alternative in this paper’.64 Most working papers, within the NSC or the State Department, therefore ‘assumed that the US strategy of the past few years toward a reduction of the PRC’s isolation and of points of US–PRC conflict will be followed and refined’.65 Accordingly, Rogers wrote to the President that ‘the seemingly monolithic Asian Communist bloc of ten years ago has split …’.66 At the same time, though, Communism and the PRC remained untrustworthy. The interdepartmental NSSM 106 noted that ‘[o]ur experience in negotiating with the Asian communists affords ample proof of the necessity for strict and enforceable quid pro quos’. Both the State Department and the White House feared that ‘it may be that the PRC only wants the image of negotiating with the US, not the substance …’. It was therefore recognised that ‘Peking might wish to give the appearance of movement in its discussions with us in order to serve its own purpose vis-à-vis the Soviets, to damage our relations with the GRC and others, and to weaken support for the GRC in the UN without giving us anything in return’.67 More importantly, the essential objective of US policy was to create a modus vivendi with the PRC, without (a) abandoning commitment to defend Taiwan, (b) foregoing the possibility of maintaining diplomatic relations with a government in Taiwan and enabling Taiwan to develop a viable international status not dependent upon the GRC’s claim to be the only legitimate government of all China, or (c) destroying the confidence of other allies in the dependability of explicit defence commitments from the US.68 Consequently, the US would not waver in its support for a long-term ally. As the NSSM 106 argued, ‘[i]t is one thing for Canada, France, the UK or a host of other nations to recognize the PRC and support it in the UN; it is quite another

Opening space on the Taiwan question 1969–72 63 thing for the US to do so. We are largely responsible for the very existence of the GRC; we have defense treaty commitments to it (though we would not stand in the way of a peaceful resolution of the “Taiwan problem”); and we have a degree of responsibility for the people of Taiwan. We therefore have a moral obligation as well as political, economic and military interest arising from our long association with the GRC.’69 By invoking the uniqueness of the United States’ position in the world, US identity was distinguished from others. To be sure, there was still a need for a strong American presence in the world and as a Pacific power the US had a legitimate role to play in Asian affairs. As Nixon argued in a memorandum to Kissinger, ‘the United States recognizes that because of our economic and military position the fate of freedom and peace in the last third of this century will depend upon how we meet our responsibilities in the world. We did not ask for this role but now because the force of circumstances has imposed it upon us we shall meet our responsibilities.’70 With a firmly established identity, a ‘sell-out’ on the Taiwan issue would have unfavourable repercussions for the US pledge to defend allies and its leadership of the free world. Accordingly, the Chinese Communists would have to ‘recognise American necessities’ and Kissinger would take a ‘principled’ approach to the problem of Taiwan in his discussions with Zhou.71 As Kissinger pointed out, ‘I will make it plain to the Chinese that the US ties with the ROC on Taiwan have been established over a long period of time, involve deep emotions as well as political considerations, and cannot be lightly set aside. Regardless of what the PRC attitude is toward Taiwan, the US as a great nation simply will not sell out its friends.’72 The discourse about the ‘undetermined’ status of Taiwan not only formed an important basis for US defence commitments to the GRC, but also constituted a potential for Taiwan’s independence ‘if that should ever become a realistic possibility’.73 Thus, US ambiguity on the Taiwan issue had been related in part to ‘a desire to hold open the eventual option of some formal separation of Taiwan’.74 The US government had considered several options with regard to Taiwan’s independence in the years 1949–50. However, it concluded that the Taiwanese remained politically impotent and unable to challenge the Chiang government. Taiwan’s prosperity, combined with its successful protection of its de facto independence in collaboration with US forces during periods of tension in the Taiwan Strait in the 1950s and 1960s, had advanced the prospects of a two-China solution or an independent status for Taiwan. Discussing the future status of Taiwan, the NSSM 106 recognised that ‘[a]lthough it has not been US policy to encourage this trend, the practical effect of many of our major programs and policies during the past twenty years, in combination with Taiwan’s economic success, has been to create the potential for Taiwan’s continued viability separate from the mainland …’.75 On the other hand, the Nixon administration clearly recognised that a policy that advocated the position that Taiwan was an independent entity with the GRC as the de facto government ‘would be regarded by the GRC and the PRC as an

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unfriendly act, seriously damage our relations with the former and preclude improvement in our relations with the latter …’.76 Nevertheless, the emphasis on the possibility of Taiwan’s independence demonstrated that Taiwan represented something more than an object in America’s battle to contain Communism. As Secretary of State Rogers told the UN in a speech on 2 August 1971, ‘[t]he Republic of China has played a loyal and conscientious role in the UN since the organization was founded. It has lived up to all of its charter obligations. Having made remarkable progress in developing its own economy, it has cooperated internationally by providing valuable technical assistance to a number of less developed countries, particularly in Africa …’.77 Kissinger saw Taiwan’s development and modernisation no differently than Rogers, maintaining that ‘Taiwan’s economic growth is a model for much of the world. We are proud of the role we played in it, but the real credit goes to the GRC’s leadership and the industry of the people.’78 Underlying such arguments was a series of binaries that helped to accentuate differences. When a number of US officials emphasised Taiwan’s model of economic development and adherence to the norms of international behaviour, they often invoked commonsensical arguments about Taiwan’s role as a ‘normal’ state within the international community with its attendant rights to selfdetermination. The PRC, on the other hand, was constructed as a threatening other. With its unwarranted transgression of norms of behaviour, the PRC diverged fundamentally from Taiwan in its Communist, totalitarian and revolutionary ways. The binary oppositions between good and evil, normal and abnormal, therefore, structured the discourse about the potential for Taiwan’s independence and served as an important element to construct the ROC and the PRC as two distinct kinds of subjects. The interpretation of the PRC, then, was predicated on the assumption that the PRC was different. As several policy papers noted, the Taiwanese seemed almost unanimous in their desire to remain free of Communist China and the studies emphasise that for almost three-quarters of a century (i.e. since annexation by Japan) Taiwan has had a political experience distinct from that of mainland China.79 As such, the State Department believed ‘the world is changing insofar as it relates to Taiwan’ and that ‘Taiwan is already well launched on a course of economic, sociological and demographic evolution that makes it less China with every passing year’.80 Given these ‘facts’; the trend of economic, social and cultural change on Taiwan, America’s historic relations with the GRC on Taiwan and the US’s firm belief in the right of self-determination, US security commitments toward Taiwan were ‘based on reality – the moral and legal obligation to defend 14 million people against any external effort to change their way of life by force’.81 Accordingly, Taiwan had every right to self-determination and the ‘drift of events, notably Taiwan’s progressively greater viability, increases the possibility of a one China/ one Taiwan solution’.82 Advocating the position that Taiwan was part of the PRC, or that its status was no longer ‘undetermined’ as Nixon told the Chinese leaders, was the main revisionist discourse during Nixon’s presidency. While some of the elements of

Opening space on the Taiwan question 1969–72 65 this position were akin to the policy advocated by Acheson and Truman prior to the Korean War, different clusters of attributes were now linked to the various subjects. Not unlike the previous findings, the predicates attached to the US were relatively fixed and also exhibited the strongest coherence across the various discourses about US Taiwan policy. Consequently, America was still represented with an indispensable and legitimate role in world affairs. It had moral obligations, benign intentions and commitments attached to its role as a Pacific power. In his statement about American foreign policy for the 1970s, Nixon declared that ‘all Americans must understand that because of its strength, its history and its concern for human dignity, this nation occupies a special place in the world. Peace and progress are impossible without a major American role.’83 The manifest destiny was obviously still present; the ‘mantle of leadership’ and ‘the world role in which history had cast us’ had fallen on American shoulders.84 Put differently, the United States intended ‘to play the responsible international role that is incumbent upon a great world power that is dedicated to peace and to freedom of choice for the peoples of the world’.85 This identity permitted the US to engage in certain practices, such as the pursuit of world peace and the building of a new world order. Although the US was dropping tons of bombs over South East Asia and was deeply involved in atrocities against the Vietnamese people, the US had benign intentions and its practices were often represented as ‘noble causes’ or as ‘protection’. Conversely, Communist behaviour was often represented as ‘aggressive’, ‘oppressive’ and as a ‘conspiracy’ to enslave the ‘free world’. As Doty points out, then, the ‘physical content of these practices, e.g. providing economic or military aid and training troops, might be identical, but what the practice was was determined by the kind of subject engaging in it’.86 How meaning and social practices become intelligible is through discursive representations. At the same time, the Nixon administration portrayed a new image of the US as an attempt to redefine America’s role in the world. The first annual review of American foreign policy drafted in accordance with the NSSM 80 in December 1969 declared that ‘[i]t has fallen to this Administration to accept the challenge and opportunity of defining a new American role (but not a single new organizing concept of policy) that is compatible with changed conditions and changed American outlook. It has begun this process in words and acts …’87 In a ‘new era’ of world politics, the revised representation of American foreign policy found its popular expression in the Nixon Doctrine and was highlighted in the numerous foreign policy reports published by the administration. As Nixon explained, ‘we could see that the whole pattern of international politics was changing. Our challenge was to understand that change, to define America’s goals for the next period, and to set in motion policies to achieve them’.88 The central principles of the new American foreign policy for the 1970s were identified as ‘partnership, strength, and the willingness to negotiate’.89 Nixon argued that the United States found itself in a period of transition. ‘The postwar order of international relations’, characterised by American leadership

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and relative superiority, ‘is gone’ and a new era of partnership and relative equality required that ‘the responsibilities once borne by the United States at such great costs can now be shared’. The assertion was that the changes taking place in the world enabled the US to change the character of its involvement to a more sustainable level.90 As Kissinger recognised, ‘if we had continued to act on the same presuppositions, we would have reached the point of exhaustion – exhaustion of our physical resources perhaps, but more certainly of our psychological resources’.91 This ‘new sharing of responsibilities’ required not less American leadership than in the past, but rather a new, more subtle, form of leadership.92 ‘The United States can and will participate, where our interests dictate, but as a weight – not the weight – in the scale’, Nixon insisted.93 Maintaining that other nations should take up some of the burden of leadership of the free world, was not a retreat from responsibility but ‘a sharing of responsibility’.94 As Kissinger succinctly summarised the new initiatives to Nixon: ‘the Nixon Doctrine is your way of staying in the world – not getting out’.95 Although the US encouraged its allies to assume ‘their own burdens commensurate with their ability to shoulder these burdens’, the US would ‘respect the commitments we inherited’ and ‘maintain sufficient strength to deny other countries the ability to impose their will on the United States and its allies’.96 As Nixon explained in a telephone conversation with Kissinger: ‘we can’t be here in the position of appearing to be backing off the world … We must be sure to state that we are keeping our commitments. The Nixon Doctrine is not withdrawing from commitments. If our interests are involved we will fight any place.’97 ‘Indiscriminate and precipitous’ abdication of US responsibilities would ‘unleash unpredictable and dangerous current in the world’.98 Moreover, any suggestions that the defences of America were weak ‘could lead others to make dangerous miscalculations’.99 Thus the United States would maintain its ‘peacetime land, sea and air deployments in Asia at a level which provides assurances to our allies of continuing US support and demonstrates our ability and determination to meet our commitments’.100 The final pillar of Nixon’s redefined American foreign policy in the 1970s was a vision to ‘work with other nations to build an enduring structure of peace’. America’s commitment to peace was, according to Nixon, ‘most convincingly demonstrated by its willingness to negotiate points of difference with adversaries as well as with friends …’. Accordingly, Nixon declared that ‘no nation needs to be our permanent enemy’.101 In Nixon and Kissinger’s view ‘Asian and global peace requires Chinese cooperation’ and it became a ‘truism that an international order cannot be secure if one of the major powers remains largely outside it and hostile toward it’.102 In this decade, Nixon argued, ‘there will be no more important challenge than that of drawing the People’s Republic of China into a constructive relationship with the world community, and particularly with the rest of Asia’.103 Re-representing China as a legitimate major power with which the US would deal on a basis of ‘equality and mutual respect’ in ‘all matters affecting the peace

Opening space on the Taiwan question 1969–72 67 of Asia’, indicated that the attributes and qualities linked to the PRC were being differentiated from the particular discursive understanding of the PRC in 1950.104 The most obvious differences can be seen in the practices of referring to the Chinese mainland by its official title, the PRC.105 Although far from any formal recognition, this initiative signalled the administration’s willingness to deal with Beijing on equal terms. More importantly, the predicates attached to the PRC within the ‘determined’ discourse were indicative of a very distinct subject from that previously seen. In distinguishing between the post-war era and a new era of international relations, America was no longer confronted by a monolithic Communist world. Once a unified bloc, Nixon argued, Communist ‘solidarity has been broken’ and its ‘unity has been shattered’.106 ‘In the last twenty years, the nature of the Communist challenge has been transformed. The Stalinist bloc has fragmented into competing centers of doctrine and power … the emerging polycentrism of the Communist world presents different challenges and new opportunities.’107 Hence, the Nixon administration would ‘not accept the proposition that one country can speak for all socialist countries’.108 According to Kissinger, the inaptness of the view that ‘the Communist world was inherently aggressive in a manner comparable to Nazi Germany, and as responding to unified direction from central authority’, required a new ‘subtlety and sophistication in our own foreign policy’.109 Kissinger elaborated on the Nixon administration’s more nuanced and sophisticated view of Communism in his first meeting with Zhou in July 1971. During the 1950s, Kissinger argued, the United States ‘believed it was America’s mission to fight communists all around the world and for the US to be the principal force, to engage itself in every struggle at every point of the world at any point of time’. Nixon, Kissinger continued, ‘operates in a different philosophy. We do not deal with communism in the abstract, but with specific communist states on the basis of their specific actions towards us, and not as an abstract crusade …’.110 Moreover, the Chinese Communists were ‘sharply different from other communists’ as well as from the US.111 Most important, was the ‘exceptional character of the Chinese leaders themselves’. In Kissinger’s view, Mao was ‘clearly a figure for the ages’, and Zhou did not rank far behind.112 Emphasising the fact that the US was dealing with the people who participated in the Long March and made the revolution meant that the PRC was a ‘different phenomenon from the Communist Parties and countries in Eastern Europe’.113 The first generation of PRC leaders were ‘men of great philosophical, almost religious motivation’ and Kissinger understood, as he told Zhou in October 1971, that ‘Chairman Mao did not fight for 50 years to change his opinion because an American President is visiting China for six or seven days’.114 Acknowledging that China played a vital role in international affairs and with a legitimate claim to Taiwan’s sovereignty also necessitated a refusal to come to terms with the disturbing effects of the Communist dictatorship. As Kissinger argued, ‘[w]e are not concerned with internal systems but rather with the state of our interrelationships on the international scene’. Instead, Kissinger would recall

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the uniqueness of the Chinese civilisation in order ‘to establish the right climate’ when attempting ‘to define a new relationship for the future’.115

US Taiwan policy discourses and the status of Taiwan A focus on discursive representations and their articulatory practices alerts us to how, through four sets of high-level meetings in 1971 and 1972, the Nixon administration re-represented the identities of self and other(s). In differentiating between discourses one asks how representations are produced and how texts argue. Representations are made by social actors through such practices as the drafting of briefing papers, memoranda of conversations, speeches, cables in foreign policy bureaucracies and foreign policy actions. In examining texts, one strategy is to search for the powerful categories on which the argument rests – not who takes what position or what it says – but how they argue their case. If some subject positions are presented as, by necessity, similar and complimentary (for example, ‘we’ – the US, peaceful, indispensable and having obligations), others are presented as self-evident opposites (for example, the PRC and peace, the ROC as a model for development and the PRC as a dangerous totalitarian state).116 An assessment of the specificity of discursive texts must relate to the limits, the scope and the possibilities of discourses.117 The analysis, however, is not purely textual. Instead, it also focuses on a number of non-linguistic practices. A seen above, social practices, such as ambassador talks in Warsaw, back-channel diplomatic manoeuvring, secret visits to Beijing, and the lifting of travel and trade restrictions with the PRC, facilitated the dislocation of the ‘red menace’ discourse. Moreover, changing voting practices at the UN, withdrawal of troops from Taiwan, official visits to Beijing, referring to mainland China by its official title and publicly announcing the acknowledgement of the one-China principle, produced new identities and representations of self and other(s). The next step is to analyse more closely the representations themselves, their internal logic and conditions of possibility and effects. What then became possible within these discourses? As Doty asks, ‘given these configurations of subject positions and the resultant “reality”, we can ask what courses of actions would seem natural’.118 One alternative, the isolation and continued containment of the PRC, would hardly be a reasonable option. Back in his Inaugural Address in January 1969 Nixon had said, ‘let all nations know that during this administration our lines of communications will be open’ and in describing relations with the Communist world, Nixon argued in his first Foreign Policy Report that ‘we have made it clear that we are prepared to negotiate intensively, concretely and unemotionally on a wide range of issues’. He then continued, ‘this is also the spirit in which we have resumed formal talks in Warsaw with Communist China’.119 Briefing Nixon on his secret visit to Beijing in July 1971, Kissinger argued that the groundwork had been laid for ‘you and Mao to turn a page in history’. Isolation of the PRC was therefore seen as ‘unacceptable’.120 In short, continuing

Opening space on the Taiwan question 1969–72 69 with a policy coherent with the ‘red menace’ discourse was not a possibility and did ‘not seem to be appropriate, or perhaps even feasible …’.121 Notwithstanding the administration’s praises for Taiwan’s progress, it seemed doubtful that any support for Taiwan’s independence was possible. This would undermine Washington’s relations with Taipei and Beijing, as both governments insisted on the one-China principle. Moreover, Taiwan continued to be controlled by the Chiang government through an ‘effective security apparatus’, with the Taiwanese independence movement lacking organisation and leadership.122 In addition, the issue over Chinese representation at the UN shows how the White House adjusted its China policy in accordance with the predominant determined or revisionist discourse in order to construct a new relationship between Beijing and Washington. This issue also demonstrates that Nixon and Kissinger undermined the administration’s policy at the UN. Kissinger’s policy memorandum in preparation for Vice President Agnew’s trip to Taipei in December 1969 elaborated on how the new administration would balance between the competing discourses. As to the UN representation issue, Kissinger noted that ‘you will avoid commitments as to specific US tactics in the future … we do not assert that the GRC has the right to the only seat for China. Our policy now is concentrated on keeping the GRC in, not keeping the PRC out’. Emphasising the ‘necessity of greater flexibility because of our policy of seeking better relations with mainland China’, Kissinger wrote that ‘we will not adopt the GRC line concerning Communist China’ and ‘you will avoid any endorsement of the GRC as the only legitimate government of China’. ‘While avoiding these pitfalls’, Kissinger also pointed out that ‘you will need to avoid the contrary impression, that our search for an accommodation with Communist China exceeds our will to honor our commitments to the GRC.’123 During the UN General Assembly votes on Chinese representation in December 1970, the US formalised Kissinger’s position, which continued to oppose the expulsion of the ROC but no longer objected to the right of the PRC to be represented.124 When the vote came up the year after, it coincided with Kissinger’s second visit to Beijing in October 1971.125 Both Ambassador George H. Bush, who led the US delegation to the UN, and Secretary Rogers worked assiduously to preserve Taiwan’s seat, believing that the timing of Kissinger’s planned second visit to China would undermine the US vote to preserve Taiwan’s seat in the UN. In his memoirs, Kissinger misleadingly wrote that neither he nor Bush thought that ‘the UN vote would be decisively affected’ by the timing of Kissinger’s trip, when Bush in fact considered ‘this thing [Kissinger’s trip] not helpful at all’.126 Bush and Rogers argued that if Kissinger was in Beijing during the UN vote on the seating of the PRC and the expulsion of Taiwan, ‘everybody would think we were deliberately undercutting our own effort’.127 But for Nixon and Kissinger reconciliation with China was now seen as more important than sustaining support for Taiwan’s UN status. Of course, the White House had recognised that the voting patterns at the UN had begun to shift in the PRC’s favour. Kissinger believed that the vote was ‘probably not as close as the State thinks’ and he told Nixon that ‘I have

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always though it was a loser …’.128 Nevertheless, it is important to note that these interpretive possibilities would not have gained the power and acceptance they did had they not been embedded in the identities and representations articulated within the revisionist discourse that emphasised the determined status of Taiwan. Advocating a position that denied the reality of the PRC existence, by preventing its representation in the UN, became unthinkable within a discourse that reflected a ‘new reality’ whereby the PRC was seen to play a constructive role in the international community. As Sharon Chamberlain commented on the documents describing the meetings surrounding the administration’s strategy at the UN, Nixon’s statement ‘[d]on’t tell Bill the truth quite so soon’, was presumably ‘a reference to their earlier discussion on keeping from Rogers their reluctance to ask the Chinese to change the date of Kissinger’s second trip’.129 What became possible in US Taiwan policy, then, was located within the parameters of action defined by the ‘determined’ and the ‘undetermined’ discourses. Moving away from the representation of the PRC as a relentless threat and Communist menace, the Chinese Communists were instead represented as honourable people distinct from the Communist bloc and Nixon and Kissinger argued that the contribution of the PRC to international affairs was ‘vital to the attainment of world peace’.130 These qualities marked China out as a potentially friendly nation with whom America, construed according to the principles of partnership, strength and willingness to negotiate, could take up practices it had never engaged in before. In preparing for Nixon’s China visit, Kissinger elaborated on the attributes of the style and the character of the Chinese themselves. The President would be ‘superbly treated’ by a combination of ‘hospitality, graciousness, delicacy, efficiency, and sense of humor’ whereby Nixon would have to resist ‘being seduced by the charm of the host’.131 The Chinese Communists could be expected to be principled and reliable and ‘meticulous in their diplomacy and in keeping agreements’. These were in the words of Kissinger ‘men of honor’, worthy of respect and admiration, with whom one could make a ‘gentlemen’s agreement’. As Kissinger summarised his report, ‘[t]hey are, in short, Chinese as well as (or despite) being communists …’.132 Unlike Kissinger’s experience in negotiating with the Soviet leaders or the North Vietnamese, the Chinese were not constantly pressing ‘for petty gains’ and Nixon did not have to prepare ‘for tactical elbowing, for haggling over details, for grudging implementation’. As Kissinger put it, ‘[t]he difference between them [the Chinese Communists] and the Russians is that if you drop some loose change, when you go to pick it up the Russians will step on your fingers and the Chinese won’t …’. Consequently, ‘once the Chinese agree on the basic question … the details fall into place gracefully’.133 Thus, as a corollary to the recognition of the PRC as ‘a great power with a legitimate role to play in international affairs and particularly Asian affairs’, the two sides could agree ‘that countries, regardless of their social systems, should conduct their relations on the principles of respect for sovereignty and territorial integrity of all states …’.134 As such, it became thinkable to treat seriously

Opening space on the Taiwan question 1969–72 71 Beijing’s claim to sovereignty regarding Taiwan. Kissinger assured Zhou in their first meeting on 9 July 1971 that ‘we are not advocating a “two Chinas” solution or a “one China, one Taiwan” solution’.135 In his handwritten notes on the various ‘briefing books’ prepared by the NSC staff and the State Department before Nixon’s visit to Beijing in February 1972, Nixon noted that ‘coming to Peking has itself created a new reality’.136 He further wrote that ‘Taiwan will be settled’ and that Taiwan’s ‘status is determined – one China, Taiwan is part of China’.137 In his meeting with Zhou, Nixon declared his commitment to the ‘five principles’ and these assurances, together with the statements in the Shanghai Communiqué, laid the foundation for US adherence to the one-China principle. In addition, Nixon told Zhou that ‘with regard to Taiwan I do not believe a permanent American presence – whatever happens in our meetings – is necessary to American security’.138 Elaborating further, Nixon accounted for US military presence on Taiwan by arguing: ‘And for that reason … my goal is the withdrawal of our remaining forces, not just two-thirds, but all forces, including the remaining one third. Two-thirds will go, hopefully as soon as we can finish our Vietnam involvement.’139 Despite the private assurances that the status of Taiwan was determined and that military troops would be withdrawn from Taiwan, a certain reality had been established which necessitated that Kissinger and Nixon would take a ‘principled approach’ regarding the Taiwan issue. ‘We must be sure to state that we are keeping our commitments’, Nixon told Kissinger a month before his trip to Beijing.140 Reconciliation with the PRC could not ‘cast serious doubt of our commitments’ and the US needed to disengage ‘gracefully from commitments which are largely a Korean War legacy’.141 As Nixon acknowledged in his handwritten notes prior to meeting the Chinese leaders in February 1972, the Taiwan issue cannot be handled ‘in a way that destroys or weakens our position of leadership in Asia and in the world’.142 The US needed to ‘retain ready and quick access to bases and facilities on Taiwan regardless of the level of our military presence’. Accordingly, the White House would reduce US troops on Taiwan, but could only do this as ‘tensions in the area diminish’.143 This was, of course, premised on the war in Vietnam and it gave an incentive to China to expedite an end to the war. Nevertheless, no matter how deeply the White House wanted to broaden security cooperation between Washington and Beijing, normative constraints could not be ignored.144 The close ties with Taipei would be ‘painful’ to readjust and could not easily be set aside. As an indispensable force to its allies of the free world, the US could simply not ‘sell Taiwan down the river’. US commitments, then, rested primarily on the prior commitment to Taiwan and more generally on the credibility generated by the discursively constructed identity of the US. Nixon’s goal was normalisation of relations with the PRC and he realised that solving the Taiwan problem was indispensable to achieving that goal.145 However, he needed ‘running room’ on the Taiwan issue. Unless carefully constructed, any change in US position with regard to the status of Taiwan would undermine

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the legal basis for the MDT. As the Department of State’s legal experts pointed out, ‘it would be anomalous, for example, for the United States to have a treaty commitment to defend one part of a country (Taiwan) against another (the Mainland) if we recognize the government on the mainland as the legitimate government of the whole of China’.146 The manner in which the US potentially extended recognition to the PRC was also a delicate matter. ‘If the United States recognizes Taiwan as part of China, then any action by the United States to help defend Taiwan from attack from China would be intervention in a civil war and could not be justified as collective selfdefence as recognized in Article 51 of the UN Charter.’147 Nixon and Kissinger could therefore ‘do more than we can say’ and they were striving to find a language which met the PRC needs and yet ‘does not stir up the animals so much that they gang up on Taiwan and thereby torpedo our initiative’.148 As Kissinger told Zhou, ‘it is odd that we should spend so little time on substance, and so much on words. We do not differ in substance’, but rather on what can be said: ‘the Prime Minister seeks clarity, and I am trying to achieve ambiguity’.149 Domestic considerations were arguably on Nixon and Kissinger’s minds. The administration was continuously assuring the conservative right wing of the Republican Party that they would not compromise US commitments to the ROC. At the same time, however, fighting off charges from the Democrats that the opening to China was playing with US national interests to advance Nixon’s political gain were also a preoccupation.150 Kissinger argued that ‘if we had rejected the Chinese overtures, the Chinese would have applied the same methods that the North V [North Vietnamese] do, that is a succession of opposition politicians, peace groups, and newsmen would have been invited to Peking’. Expanding on this theme, Kissinger maintained that Taiwan would then have become a public issue and an obstacle to normalisation and ‘our commitment to Formosa would have become that same sort of problem as our commitment to Vietnam has become. The two issues, in fact, would have merged, and Senator Humphrey would be accusing us of not pulling the rug out from Chiang, of not giving a deadline, of tying ourselves once more to a corrupt military dictatorship.’ According to Kissinger, then, the administration did ‘not have much of a choice’.151 As such, the administration would meet domestic opposition, criticism and support from either the political right or left.

Conclusion The identities and representations embedded in the ‘undetermined’ and ‘determined’ discourses were articulated through numerous hours of drafting the Shanghai Communiqué. The US eventually agreed to declare that ‘the United States acknowledges that all Chinese on either side of the Taiwan Strait maintain there is but one China and that Taiwan is part of China. The United States Government does not challenge that position.’152 This was undoubtedly skilful diplomatic manoeuvring. Acknowledging a position is not the same as directly endorsing it. Despite the private assurances and US commitments to the ‘five

Opening space on the Taiwan question 1969–72 73 principles’, the US did not acknowledge the one-China principle publicly, but acknowledged that all Chinese on both sides of the Taiwan Strait maintained this view. The two most prominent discourses in US Taiwan policy, therefore, performed a constraining and enabling function in explaining how change came about when Nixon and Kissinger laid the foundations for a new US Taiwan policy. As the Nixon administration increasingly acknowledged that the PRC had a vital and constructive role to play in world affairs, the ‘determined’ discourse enabled Washington to treat seriously Beijing claims to sovereignty regarding Taiwan. At the same time, the commitment to Taiwan became difficult to transcend as it rested on the credibility generated by the representation of the US as a leader of the free world. Accordingly, the ‘undetermined’ discourses constrained Kissinger and Nixon’s room for manoeuvre as they aimed to maintain a ‘principled’ approach whereby the ambiguity embedded in the ‘undetermined’ discourse would be emphasised. The complexity entrenched in the changes in US Taiwan policy, which altered representations of the Taiwan issue and shifted US China policy away from the position that the ROC represented all of China to acknowledging the one-China principle, together with the commitment to withdraw US troops from the island, should not be seen as ‘given’ or an automatic result of balance of power logic and the imperative of the distribution of capabilities at the international level.153 Instead, by using a critical constructivist approach we need to connect the understanding of interests to identity and its associated discursive practices. By illuminating how discourse(s) construct a particular reality, I have demonstrated how the Nixon administration changed its Taiwan policy and how the Taiwan issue should be seen as historically contingent and constantly modified and transformed through discursive representations. Nonetheless, such an approach does not dispute that important documents such as the NSSM 106 enlighten our understanding of US China policy. The NSSM 106 provides interesting ‘evidence’ to support a number of explanations about US China policy: that Taiwan was strategically important and that ‘the presence of US forces had helped to deter overt conventional aggression by Asian communist countries’; that the ROC was a long-term ally of the US; that Taiwan represented an important symbol for US credibility, responsibility and commitments; that Taiwan was an important bargaining tool to extract quid pro quo from Beijing; that the close ties between Washington and Taipei were a liability when it came to the objective of improving Sino-American relations; that the administration had to take domestic considerations into account; and that bureaucratic infighting shaped various policy choices.154 Thus, I am not arguing that these factors did not have an impact on policymakers in Washington. Rather it has been suggested that this was not all that was going on in this particular foreign policy discourse. As Dean has pointed out, ‘[a]ll historical explanations, traditional or otherwise, are grounded in theories about the way the world works (although these theories are often left implicit). These theories largely determine what evidence is to be considered and what is to be

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ignored.’155 By drawing on a critical constructivist approach and inspired by Goh’s novel emphasis on how China, ‘from being America’s most implacable enemy, became its friend and even tacit ally’, this chapter aimed to re-examine aspects of US Taiwan policy which has been inadequately tackled to date.156 It has therefore been argued that a more nuanced understanding of US Taiwan policy during the Nixon administration would first inquire into the ‘how-possible’ questions. Reading foreign policy texts as discourses alerts us to the predicates, presuppositions and categorisations which differentiate discourses and allow us to identify the articulatory practices that construct meanings and reality. As Doty has shown, the possibility of practices presupposes the ability of an agent to imagine certain courses of action, certain background meaning and the role of the US in world affairs.157 Such a starting point highlights the complexity and the conflicting dynamics behind the Nixon administration’s Taiwan policy. Although I have established that the determined discourse had a predominant role in shaping US Taiwan policy during the Nixon administration and furthermore argued that by the late 1960s the Nixon administration had discarded the ‘red menace’ discourse as ‘unacceptable’, Washington still moved cautiously when signalling their desire for reconciliation with Beijing. Moreover, despite Nixon and Kissinger’s reluctance to support the prospect of an independent status for Taiwan, other policymakers advocated such a proposition, and the White House were keen on making the impression that everything possible had been done to save Taiwan at the UN vote in 1971.158 This suggests that the ‘undetermined’ discourse also had a major impact on decision making and furthermore illustrates how Nixon felt it necessary to take a ‘principled approach’, while Kissinger believed that the administration did not ‘have much of a choice’ with regard to the Taiwan issue. It also explains why the White House needed ‘running room’ in order to ‘disengage gracefully from commitments which are largely a Korean War legacy’. To some extent, then, the discourses about US Taiwan policy overlap and interrelate with each other. As Ole Wæver points out, that one discourse is ‘in ‘opposition’ or even ‘marginalised’ means only that it is ‘outside’ and ‘different’ at the level of manifest politics, while it probably shares codes at the next (deeper) level of abstraction. The ‘dominant’ political line and main opposition most often share a lot (except the question on the agenda), and more marginalised opposition share less, but still some, basic codes.’159 In other words, what each of these discourses was doing was constructing particular subject identities, positioning these subjects vis-à-vis one another and thereby constructing a particular reality which guided US Taiwan policy. This study rejects the notion that a single best explanation is possible for complex historical events. Accordingly, ‘there is no place where we can find an unmediated truth and thus transcend the need to decode information and construct interpretations of the world’.160 Hence, rather than assuming that the US, China and Taiwan had pre-existing, a priori and given national identities and that policymakers acted rationally according to strategic calculus induced by structural changes, a critical constructivist approach permits a reflexive engagement with

Opening space on the Taiwan question 1969–72 75 the ‘reality’ that policymakers were bound up in when constructing a particular US Taiwan policy. Such an approach, therefore, broadens our understanding of decision-makers’ room for manoeuvre and draws our attention to how it became possible to consider and shift US Taiwan policy in a direction which previously had been seen as unthinkable.

4

Contemporary challenges in US Taiwan policy

This chapter will demonstrate how the US adherence to the one-China principle, originating in Nixon and Kissinger’s visits to the PRC in 1971–2, is increasingly being challenged by the contemporary contradictions in US Taiwan policy. For Washington, the conflict between the one-China principle and the principle of selfdetermination for the people of Taiwan, the increased attention to human rights violations on the Chinese mainland and the aspirations to promote democracy and freedom globally foreshadow a discomforting dilemma. Paradoxically therefore, the US, the self-defined indispensable promoter of democracy and human rights, finds itself in a precarious situation whereby it has become constrained by the development of democracy in Taiwan. Simultaneously, Taiwan has successfully manoeuvred through the dangerous process of democratisation only to arrive at a democratic transition that threatens to alter the delicate equilibrium in the triangular relationship in a more dangerous direction. Although several writers have pointed out the contradictory and ambiguous aspects of US policy towards Taiwan, this key theme still remains somewhat starved of critical reflection.1 Just a few months after being sworn in as President in 2001, George W. Bush proclaimed on the ABC News programme Good Morning, America that the US would ‘do whatever it takes to help Taiwan defend itself’. In the immediate aftermath of what was seen as the strongest support in Taiwan’s defence in more than two decades, official Governmental representatives attempted to weaken the President’s words while some Congressional members, commentators and scholars expressed concern that the President had decided to alter the longstanding US policy of ‘strategic ambiguity’.2 Others, conversely, applauded what they saw as initiatives to discard performing ‘the rituals and intone the mystical words of their ancestors: “There is only one China”.’3 Although, as Tucker has pointed out, the Bush administration initially continued ‘with bold gestures to redefine U.S. policy towards Taiwan’, the overly sanguine interpretations of Washington’s policy in Taipei alerted the White House to the possibility that Taiwanese leaders might take steps to change the status quo unilaterally, knowing that the US had pledged its support to defend the island. Therefore, during the Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao’s visit to Washington in December 2003, the Bush administration retreated to the position of its

Contemporary challenges in US Taiwan policy 77 predecessors, reaffirming US commitments to the one-China policy, warning that the administration opposed any unilateral moves to change the status quo and even confirming that the US did not support Taiwan’s independence.4 For the Bush administration, then, these two statements seemed to define the parameters for contemporary US Taiwan policy. Indeed, James A. Kelly, the former Assistant Secretary for the Bureau of East Asian and Pacific Affairs, US Department of State, summarised the position in a Congressional hearing a few months after Premier Wen’s visit to Washington: ‘What the President says has a meaning at the time he says it to those listeners. You may have heard one thing. I may have heard another. The fact is the sum of the President’s statements has made very clear to the PRC that we are serious about our defense responsibilities under the Taiwan Relations Act … At the same time, as I noted in the principles of our policy, which are the President’s policy, we oppose actions that would unilaterally alter Taiwan’s status … the US remains committed to our one China policy … [and] the United States does not support Taiwan independence.’5 At first glance, then, the administration’s policy might appear to be clear. However, Kelly’s statement unravels when confronted with the illuminating question posed by House Representative Grace F. Napolitano (D – California): ‘Can the evolution of the full-fledged democracy on Taiwan and the clear emergence of Taiwanese identity meld with the principle of one China, or are they in stark contrast with each other?’ As Kelly responds to the question, we come to the heart of this chapter: ‘There certainly is a degree of contrast … I made the point of our one China, and I really did not define it. I am not sure that I very easily could define it. I can tell you what it is not. It is not the one China policy or the one China principle that Beijing suggests, and it may not be the definition that some have in Taiwan, but it does convey a meaning of solidarity of a kind among the people on both sides of the Strait that has been our policy for a very long time.’6 It is clear from Kelly’s statement that the meaning of the one-China policy today differs from the meaning attached to the key sections on Taiwan in the Shanghai Communiqué and the Joint Communiqué on the Establishment of Diplomatic Relations between the US and the PRC: ‘The United States acknowledges that all Chinese on either side of the Taiwan Strait maintain there is but one China and Taiwan is part of China. The United States Government does not challenge that position … The United States of America recognizes the Government of the People’s Republic of China as the sole legal Government of China … [and] acknowledges the Chinese position that there is but one China and Taiwan is part of China.’7 Although the word acknowledges indicates cognisance of, but not necessarily agreement with, the Chinese position, and the statement offered the caveat that a resolution to the Taiwan issue should be peaceful, Kissinger’s assurances to Zhou in July 1971 that ‘we are not advocating a ‘two Chinas’ solution or a ‘one China, one Taiwan’ solution’ and Nixon’s private statement in February 1972 clearly suggested that the Nixon administration did not dispute the Chinese position that Taiwan was part of China or the one-China principle.

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The over-arching aim of this chapter, therefore, is to emphasise that meaning is not intrinsic to an object or an event, but rather that actors, embedded in discursive representations, assign meaning to that object or event which remains contingent and socially constructed. Meaning is revealed and reinforced by the categorisation of things which give it a meaning and a place in a particular context.8 Discourses construct meaning and perform a constraining and enabling function with regard to state action, in the sense that policy options may be rendered more or less reasonable by particular understandings of China, the United States and Taiwan.9 For instance, when a number of US officials and Congressional members emphasise the democratic attributes of Taiwan, they are categorising Taiwan with the self-identified US. The interpretation of China, then, is predicated on the assumption that China is different. The PRC diverges fundamentally from American/Taiwan society in its authoritarian, hierarchical and rigid ways. Such an argument is structured around a series of binaries that help to accentuate differences, which again undermine the possibility of an intermediate position between the opposites. As we shall see, such an understanding has a profound impact on whether the one-China policy is accepted, contested or allowed to remain ambiguous. There are three main sections to the argument. The first offers a closer examination of how the US-enhanced emphasis on the promotion of human rights and democracy in the post-Cold War era interrelates with the emergence of a Taiwanese national identity and growing concern about the ‘rise of China’ in the post-Tiananmen period, which shows how convoluted US policy towards Taiwan has become since the one-China framework was established in the early 1970s. The second section aims to encapsulate how these new meanings in US Taiwan policy are predicated on the predominant way in which the US imagines self and other(s). My intent, then, is to show that the combined discursive representation of a threatening, expansive and authoritarian China, differentiated from the freedom, the flourishing democracy and the exemplary economic development model on Taiwan, creates persuasive commonsensical challenges that increasingly contradict, constrain and undermine the official one-China policy. This section, then, contextualises how the discursively constructed status of Taiwan is negotiated, renegotiated and embedded in discursive practices that intersubjectively establish meanings and work to ‘construct identities and position subjects vis-à-vis one another’.10 The final section emphasises the efforts the executive branch has put on maintaining the one-China policy and the pressure that the US government has initiated in order to curb Chen’s independence activities. It also addresses the declining support for Taiwan in Congress, as congressional members have become increasingly frustrated with the political deadlock and partisan posturing in Taiwan that leads Taiwan not to purchase US weaponry and Chen’s actions that are seemingly dismissive of US interests. I summarise the section by problematising the proposition that US protection of Taiwan is embedded in strategic calculations, before I conclude by briefly arguing what a concern with the identity problematic might entail for the contemporary interpretation of the Taiwan issue.

Contemporary challenges in US Taiwan policy 79

From rapprochement to the post-Tiananmen and post-Cold War era Upholding US leadership On 16 December 1978, a joint Sino-American communiqué announced the establishment of formal diplomatic relations between Washington and Beijing as from 1 January 1979. Both sides reaffirmed the principles agreed in the Shanghai Communiqué and the US once again emphasised that it ‘acknowledges the Chinese position that Taiwan was an integral part of China’. Although the US agreed to break all official relations with the government of Taiwan and terminate the MDT, the communiqué noted that ‘the people of the United States will maintain cultural, commercial, and other unofficial relations with the people of Taiwan’.11 The close Sino-American relations were further consolidated by the Vietnamese invasion of Cambodia in November 1978 and the Soviet Union’s invasion of Afghanistan in December 1979. With regard to the Taiwan question, however, the ‘tight alignment’ was short lived.12 In April 1979, the US Congress adopted the Taiwan Relations Act (TRA) which ensured that ‘diplomatic relations’ were maintained through the offices of the American Institute in Taiwan (AIT) and the Coordination Council for North American Affairs (CCNAA) and routine, if informal, business, cultural and economic ties continued.13 The US and the PRC signed yet another communiqué on 17 August 1982, whereby the US promised to reduce and eventually cease the sale of weapons to Taiwan. Nevertheless, arms sales continued at high levels and military technology transfer bypassed the August Communiqué. The Chinese protested vociferously, claiming that arms sales went far beyond what had been agreed on in the three Communiqués, and the issue has been a thorn in the side of US–China relations ever since.14 It was another event, however, which significantly inflamed US–China relations. The path-breaking events of the Tiananmen massacre in June 1989 brought China’s human rights record to the forefront of the US governmental agenda, and portrayed China as an authoritarian menace causing the US public and the Congress to perceive China’s behaviour in overwhelmingly negative terms. Assisted by bureaucratic changes, congressional legislation and an increased influence of human rights organisations since the 1970s, the structures were in place to condemn the ‘butchers of Beijing’ in the following days after the Tiananmen massacre.15 Sanctions were imposed in the immediate aftermath, and no other country acted as severely or restricted its relations with China as broadly as the United States. It is interesting to note, however, that China was absent as a country scrutinised by US human rights concerns before the late 1980s. Indeed, as former President Carter official Roberta Cohen has noted, the US exemption of China’s poor human rights record before 1987 was bipartisan and it is usual to observe that since 1972 the US and China were able to cooperate against a common enemy.16 With the

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collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War, however, the strategic rationale for US–China relations evaporated and sensitive issues, such as Taiwan, human rights, trade disputes, arms sales and nuclear proliferation, increasingly constrained US–China relations.17 The argument developed in this study, however, holds that the main dynamic behind Washington’s increased attention to human rights violations in China was not the concern with human rights per se. To a large extent, US policy had the exact opposite effect of the officially declared intentions of the White House and Congressional actions. Instead of reducing the level of repression, the United States’ sanctions, threats of withdrawing China’s Most Favoured Nation (MFN) trade status and public criticism of China’s behaviour gave Chinese leaders ample reasons to detain more of its citizens and restrict civil rights.18 An insincere and overbearing American attitude often resulted in suspicion about the underlying motives of US human rights policies, incited anti-western feelings, united the Chinese and consolidated additional legitimacy for the Chinese Communist Party. Accordingly, there are reasons to believe that the continued condemnation of China’s human rights violations is a central part of a domestic US political agenda. As many commentators have observed, the Christian right-wing constituency is a central component of any presidency and China’s religious prosecution and one-child policy is an easy target when rallying support back home. In a broader sense, however, a more interesting argument holds that the resilience of promoting human rights derives from its utility. As Sellars has noted, ‘[t]he most important, yet least discussed aspect of the issue is the enormous political and moral benefits it offers its practitioners. The simple truth is that in the campaigns of the modern era, the benefactors have benefited more than – and often at the expense of – the supposed beneficiaries.’19 The central feature of the heightened US concern over human rights abuses could therefore be seen as part of reproducing US identity in the post-Cold War period. Of course, as David Campbell has pointed out, a critical assessment of the ‘shift from old to new discourses of danger drastically oversimplifies the complexity of this cultural terrain. Transformations do not occur in discrete or sequential stages, for there has always been more than one referent around which danger has crystallized. What appears as new is often the emergence of something previously obscured by that which has faded away or become less salient.’20 As will be shown below, therefore, the emphasis on the Tiananmen massacre and the authoritarian characteristic of the Beijing regime demonstrates how previously established discursive strategies of otherness could be invoked and contextualised to provide powerful new modes of representation. As Campbell further reminds us, ‘in times of crisis or in periods in which there is a critical rupture that destabilises the boundaries of identity established earlier, it is a process that assumes added significance’.21 Accordingly, what the following argument suggests is that in the aftermath of the Cold War, as the US was on the outlook for a new foundation to guide its foreign policy, the challenge to promote human rights replaced the emphasis on the United States as the leader

Contemporary challenges in US Taiwan policy 81 in the battle against Communism, with America’s increased attention to its image as the champion of freedom and democracy. In other words, the attention to human rights stepped in to fill the breach and replace the anachronistic rhetoric of discrediting Communism with an increased importance of promoting human rights and democracy abroad. The threat of China as a Communist regime, therefore, became obscured by an emphasis on China’s anti-democratic and authoritarian credentials. George H. Bush, who had not yet recognised the value of human rights and democracy as a central principle of foreign policy and was still devoted to an obsolete Cold War mindset, secretly sought to keep lines of communication open, sending high level diplomats (National Security Advisor Brent Scowcroft and Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs Lawrence Eagleburger) to Beijing in order to engage constructively with the Chinese in the months following Tiananmen. When these initiatives became public they caused widespread outcry and turmoil. Echoing the allegations from the Cold War that democrats were ‘soft’ on Communism, Bush was now perceived as ‘soft’ on the authoritarian regime in Beijing and accused of coddling the repressive Chinese leadership. Hence, Bush’s efforts to create some room for manoeuvre in US–Chinese relations became a political liability in the election campaign of 1992 and Clinton used China as one of several grounds upon which to attack the Bush administration.22 Although Clinton reversed his position of linking MFN trade status to improvements in China’s human rights record, he proudly announced that under his administration the US ‘has made human rights a cornerstone of our foreign policy’, reflecting a desire to enhance America’s self-image and provide its foreign policy with a new sense of shared purpose and mission. Moreover, US aspirations in the post-Cold War era to reshape the international order coincided with a deepening of the international human rights regime and an increased appeal to the idea of humanitarian intervention during the 1990s.23 In the post-September 11 era, some human rights advocates have anxiously observed in the words of Michael Ignatieff that ‘the era of human rights has come and gone’ and that strategic interests again appear to prevail over previous concerns with human rights and democratisation.24 Arguably, China has attempted to exploit the situation since 11 September in order to persecute separatist movements, especially in its Xinjiang province. Nevertheless, the promotion of human rights is still firmly on the US agenda and to some extent American rhetoric has become even more determined. Condoleezza Rice, President Bush’s former National Security Advisor and present Secretary of State, declared one week after 11 September 2001 that ‘[c]ivil liberties matter to this President very much, and our values matter to us abroad … We’re going to continue to press these things; we would not be America if we did not.’25 In a speech before the Heritage Foundation on 31 October 2001, Lorne W. Craner, former Assistant Secretary for the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor, goes so far as to assert: ‘We are proud to bear the mantle of leadership in international human rights in this century.’26

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Moreover, President Bush and other officials in the Bush administration have repeatedly reminded the Chinese that the US does not and will not condone governments using counterterrorism as an excuse to silence peaceful expressions of political and religious views. During Bush’s visit to China in February 2002 he stated that ‘my prayer is that all persecution will end, so that all in China are free to gather and worship as they will’.27 Even the September 2002 US National Security Strategy report stressed the need for accountability and allowing the Chinese people to be able to ‘think, assemble, and worship freely’.28 Despite closer strategic cooperation between the United States and China on a tactical level in the war on terror, the United States has not retreated from its approach to human rights promotion in China. As Foot has argued, ‘[i]n fact, US scrutiny of China’s human rights record has survived reasonably well’.29 Compared with US policy prior to 11 September 2001, there has been no significant change and there are reasons to believe that the proclaimed demise of attention to human rights violations has proved to be exaggerated.30 Finally, the United States’ recent reassertion of its commitments to promoting democracy aggressively in the aftermath of military operations in Afghanistan and Iraq, and Bush’s determination to spread freedom globally, as revealed in his State of the Union Address in February 2005, indicate that the principle of sponsoring democracy and freedom will be essential to US foreign policy for the foreseeable future.31 Indeed, the March 2006 National Security Strategy maintains that US national security is founded upon two pillars: first, ‘promoting freedom, justice, and human dignity’, and second, ‘confronting the challenges of our time by leading a growing community of democracies’.32 Taiwan in transition The Taiwanese Government fervently condemned the establishment of formal diplomatic relations between the US and China as ‘not in conformity with its [US] professed position of safeguarding human rights and strengthening the capability of democratic nations to resist the totalitarian dictatorship’. ‘For all the consequences that might arise as a result of this move’, Taipei warned, ‘the United States Government alone should bear the full responsibility.’33 The incredulity and dismay that characterised Taiwan’s response to closer US–China relations in the 1970s and early 1980s was, however, overcome by continued economic growth, stability in cross-Strait relations, persistent close ties with Washington and more flexible and constructive diplomatic initiatives from Taipei. As Tucker convincingly has argued, ‘conditions on the island did not deteriorate as some had feared’.34 The most profound and increasingly important aspect of development on the island, however, has been Taiwan’s successful management of the often unsettling effects of a democratic transition.35 With the lifting of martial law on 14 July 1987 and increasing democratisation, there has been an unwavering rise in Taiwanese nationalism. Manifested in an emphasis on Taiwanese culture and language, this process has had a p