Andrew J.

Nathan

What’s Wrong with

American Taiwan Policy

F rom the signing of the 1972 Shanghai Communiqué until the

mid-1990s, American policy was that the United States would be satisfied
by any resolution of the status of Taiwan that was acceptable to people on
both sides of the Taiwan Strait, so long as the resolution was achieved
peacefully. American policy sought to deter each side from taking actions to
resolve the situation in a way not acceptable to the other.
This policy was frustrating to Beijing because it prevented the use of
China’s military and diplomatic advantages to preempt a resolution of the
Taiwan problem. Since 1995-1996, however, because Washington has be-
come concerned that Beijing is losing its patience, it has shifted its policy
emphasis toward reassuring Beijing. In effect, it has come to see peaceful
resolution as resolution on terms that will satisfy Beijing and has tried to
push Taiwan to start talking about solutions. The policy has failed to calm
tensions because it is based on a wishful belief that the people of Taiwan can
be made to accommodate Beijing at Washington’s behest. Instead, American
efforts to ease People’s Republic of China (PRC) anxieties have motivated
the Taiwanese to defend their interests even more assertively and thus have
made the situation more difficult rather than less.
To be sure, the Taiwan situation is a bad problem with no easy solution.
But the least worst choice is to return to the policy that served the United
States well for a quarter-century, which combines clarity about the ends of
the policy with “strategic ambiguity” about the means. Instead, recent
American efforts to mollify Beijing have encouraged confusion about both
ends and means and have increased rather than decreased the risk of war.

Andrew J. Nathan is professor of political science at Columbia University, co-author

with Robert S. Ross of The Great Wall and the Empty Fortress (1997), and author of
China’s Transition (1997).

Copyright © 2000 by The Center for Strategic and International Studies and the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
The Washington Quarterly • 23:2 pp. 93–106.

T HE WASHINGTON QUARTERLY ■ SPRING 2000 93

 l Andrew J. Nathan

The Origins of ‘Strategic Ambiguity’

To understand the recent shift in American policy requires a careful decod-

ing of texts and slogans that were encoded purposely in order to avoid clar-
ity, achieving what became known as “strategic ambiguity.” The 1972
Shanghai Communiqué set down the essence of what was then a new policy:
The United States acknowledges that all Chinese on either side of the
Taiwan Strait maintain there is but one China and that Taiwan is a part of
China. The United States Government does not challenge that position.
It reaffirms its interest in a peaceful settlement...
Here, the United States put in place both ends and means that were to
serve it well for years to follow. Abandoning a long-standing position, the
United States no longer characterized Taiwan’s regime as the legitimate claim-
ant to all of China. But it now made clear that whatever outcome was to oc-
cur must be achieved peacefully. At this time, under the rule of Chiang
Kai-shek, there was no risk that Taiwan would declare independence from
China, and Chiang’s plans to attack the mainland over the years had been
blocked by the United States. So the insistence on peaceful resolution was
aimed essentially at deterring mainland attack. Strategic ambiguity lay in the
fact that the United States never explicitly stated what it would do to enforce
this requirement. It did, however, conspicuously maintain in and around Tai-
wan the means for a military response adequate to any PRC action.
Normalization of U.S.-China relations in 1979 changed this position,
but not by much. The United States recognized the PRC as the sole legal
government of China and (in the English text) “acknowledge[d] the Chi-
nese position that there is but one China and Taiwan is part of China” or
(in the Chinese text) “recognized [chengren] the position taken by China,
namely, there is but one China and Taiwan is part of China.”1 At the same
time, the United States terminated its security treaty with Taiwan, but
nonetheless declared that it “continues to have an interest in the peaceful
resolution of the Taiwan issue.” To bolster this declaration, Congress
adopted the Taiwan Relations Act, which stated that “it is the policy of
the United States” to resist coercion of Taiwan, both through sales of de-
fensive arms to Taiwan and by possible direct American involvement in
any military crisis in the Taiwan Strait.
Bottom line: The United States was willing to accept the eventual reuni-
fication of Taiwan under mainland Chinese rule if that came to pass, but it
continued to insist that this or any other outcome be achieved by peaceful
means and backed up this insistence with the implicit threat of military ac-
tion. The issue of a Taiwanese declaration of independence was still not on
the horizon under the rule of Chiang Kai-shek’s son, Chiang Ching-kuo.
Deterrence was still targeted at Chinese military action, but it was an essen-
94 T HE WASHINGTON QUARTERLY ■ S PRING 2000
 What’s Wrong with American Taiwan Policy l

tial part of the policy that what would trigger an American response and
what that response might be remained ambiguous.
In 1982, the United States signed another communiqué with China,
promising to reduce arms sales to Taiwan. But the agreement also reempha-
sized the importance of a peaceful solution and left room for continued arms
sales as long as peaceful resolution was not achieved. The United States at
the same time gave “six assurances” to Taiwan, the main idea being that
Washington would not push Taipei into talks with Beijing. These agree-
ments did little to change American policy. So by 1995-1996, the United
States was still insisting on peaceful resolution and deterring aggression by
means of strategic ambiguity.
The 1995-1996 Taiwan Strait crisis brought
the biggest change in American goals and
means since 1972. Under congressional pressure
T he Taiwan
situation is a bad
in 1995, the administration had granted a visa
to Taiwan president Lee Teng-hui to visit his problem with no
alma mater, Cornell University, even though it easy solution.
had earlier assured Beijing it would not do so.
Lee gave a speech there that Beijing viewed as
provocative. To Beijing, against the background
of an earlier American “Taiwan Policy Review,” and tense U.S.-China rela-
tions on other issues, these events signaled dangerous adventurism in both
Taipei and Washington and stoked a concern that America’s China policy was
turning fundamentally hostile. Beijing responded with a series of missile exer-
cises that culminated in the firing of live missiles into the waters close to Tai-
wan in March 1996, just before Taiwan’s presidential election, which Lee won.
In response, the United States dispatched two American aircraft carrier battle
groups to the waters near the Taiwan Strait shortly before the missile firings
were scheduled to end.
All three sides had signaled their resolve. Yet these events produced a more
significant rethinking in American policy than in the policies of the other two
actors. The Americans, the party with the least to gain from war, realized that
the risk of armed conflict in the Taiwan Strait was real and growing. The stan-
dard analysis traced the source of this worsening risk to Taiwan’s democratiza-
tion. Democratization had started in the last two years of Chiang Ching-kuo’s
life, with the tolerated formation of an opposition party to contest Legislative
Yuan elections in 1986, and it would culminate in the presidential elections of
1996 and 2000. As the voters in Taiwan took control, the analysis ran, they
demanded more assertive policies toward the mainland.
It had been easy enough to define what “all Chinese on either side of the
Taiwan Strait” believed, when Taiwan was ruled by the mainlander regime of
the Chiangs. But Taiwan’s new breed of politicians led by Lee rushed to define
T HE WASHINGTON QUARTERLY ■ SPRING 2000 95
 l Andrew J. Nathan

a new mainland policy that would recognize the pride and practical needs of
Taiwan’s voters. The politicians understood that Taiwan might lose American
protection if it made an open declaration of independence—this too had be-
come part of strategic ambiguity. But Lee’s administration and the opposition
Democratic Progressive Party floated every idea short of formal independence
to shore up Taiwan’s position as a free-standing, self-sufficient entity in inter-
national politics.2 This included seeking relations with countries that also rec-
ognized mainland China, seeking entry into the United Nations, dropping
Taiwan’s claim to the territory of main-
land China, and defining Taiwan and
A s with so much else in China as separate “political entities.” Lee
derided China’s “one country, two sys-
this triangular drama,
tems” offer as inadequate, bruited the su-
the formula was both periority of Taiwan’s economic and
new and not new. political models to those of the PRC, and
emphasized Taiwan’s separate history and
sense of national identity.
Equally reasonably, one might have
blamed the crisis on China’s intransigent response to Taiwan’s changing in-
terests. But since the innovating actor was Lee, both Americans and main-
land Chinese saw Taiwan as the one rocking the boat, and doing so for
short-term, domestic political reasons. The Americans were concerned that
sending aircraft carriers was misinterpreted in Taiwan as proof that it could
tweak the nose of the Chinese dragon as much as it wanted. The situation
was all the harder to manage because U.S.-China relations remained in a
deep freeze dating back to the June 4, 1989, Tiananmen crackdown. There
had been, for example, no U.S.-China summit meeting since the crackdown.
American policymakers thus tried to reduce the risk of war by doing more
to deter Taiwan and more to reassure Beijing. While continuing to prevent
Chinese military action by selling arms to Taiwan and threatening possible
direct intervention, the United States readjusted its declaratory policy in
two important ways.3 First, during his state visit to China in 1998, President
Bill Clinton articulated the “Three Noes”—the United States does not sup-
port “independence for Taiwan, or two Chinas or ‘one Taiwan, one China,’
and we don’t believe that Taiwan should be a member in any organization
for which statehood is a requirement.”
Administration officials insisted that none of the three noes were new.
Strictly speaking, they were correct since all had been part of secret assur-
ances to the PRC since as early as 1971.4 What was novel, however, was the
manner and context of their articulation—on Chinese soil, clustered to-
gether as a package of negatives directed at Taiwan, framed as a reassurance

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 What’s Wrong with American Taiwan Policy l

to China, devoid of the other elements of U.S. policy that were favorable to
Taiwan, and given canonical status by public presidential utterance. It was
therefore correct for politicians on both sides of the Taiwan Strait to inter-
pret the statement as an intentional tilt toward Beijing.
The second American initiative was a series of quieter adjustments of
diplomatic posture. Assistant Secretary of State Stanley Roth called for “in-
terim agreements” between the two sides. Although vague and in isolation
unobjectionable, the statement came against the background of a history of
“Track II” proposals by influential Americans suggesting that Taiwan agree
to long-term unification in exchange for China’s commitment not to use
force. 5 In Taiwanese eyes, such an agreement would have amounted to giv-
ing up all their bargaining chips (U.S. arms supplies, the claim to separate
international status, and so on) in exchange for an unenforceable verbal
commitment from the other side. (Interestingly, the Chinese voiced parallel
objections from their side. They saw the threat of military force as their best
bargaining chip.)6
The U.S. tilt ultimately led to counterproductive effects. China took ad-
vantage of the tilt to harden its stance in negotiations over the precondi-
tions and agenda for a planned fall 1999 visit of negotiator Wang Daohan to
Taiwan. The United States piled on by stating its preference that the talks
discuss “significant issues.” Decoded, this meant that the talks should ad-
dress the political issues in cross-strait relations rather than the technical is-
sues preferred by Taiwan. It was in response to these developments that Lee
hardened the Taiwanese position by declaring that Taiwan-mainland rela-
tions were a kind of “special state-to-state relationship.”
As with so much else in this triangular drama, the formula was both new
and not new. But its political significance was widely understood. If Taiwan
was going to have to discuss macro-arrangements across the strait, it would
only enter such talks as an autonomous entity, not as a local government or
rival political party—statuses which would have given away much of the
game before the negotiations started. Lee’s statement led to the crisis atmo-
sphere of late 1999—indefinite postponement of the Wang visit, tough talk
and military deployments by China, and a high profile for the issue of China
relations in the hard-fought Taiwan presidential election campaign of 1999-
2000 as well as in the U.S. presidential campaign.
All this was accompanied by much American hand-wringing and high-
level visits to both sides urging them to sit tight. Clinton tried to deter a
dangerous Chinese reaction by talking tough to Chinese president Jiang
Zemin at a bilateral encounter during the Asia Pacific Economic Coopera-
tion (APEC) meeting in Auckland in September 1999. And he tried to stuff
Taiwan’s politicians back into their box by rearticulating America’s Taiwan

T HE WASHINGTON QUARTERLY ■ SPRING 2000 97

 l Andrew J. Nathan

policy in terms of “three pillars”: one China, cross-strait dialogue, and

peaceful resolution. Again there was nothing new in the pillars, but their
context and emphasis made clear the U.S. preference that Taiwan stop using
American support to put off talks over Beijing’s agenda indefinitely. As this
essay was written, both the United States and China had calmed their
rhetoric to see who would be elected Taiwan’s new president and what that
person would do next.

Fundamental U.S. Interests in the Face of Change

Before examining the possible actions of a new Taiwan administration and

what the stance of the United States should be, it is useful to return to fun-
damentals about the goals of U.S. policy. Does the United States want Tai-
wan ultimately to be independent, or would it like to get Taiwan off its
hands and safely reunified with China before a war breaks out? Or is the
only abiding American national interest what we have long said it was—
peaceful resolution of Taiwan’s relationship with China without regard to
outcome?
Suspicions and misunderstanding on this point are rife on all three sides
of the triangle. Many—perhaps most—people on both sides of the Taiwan
Strait have believed all along that the United States has a hidden agenda
and that its real objective is to keep Taiwan separate from the mainland in-
definitely in order to use it as a strategic or economic asset. Mainland strat-
egists routinely argue that U.S. arms sales to Taiwan betray the purpose of
frustrating the rise of China, by maintaining a permanent locus of hostility,
military containment, and political subversion.
Leading Taiwanese politicians also believe that the United States is loath
to relinquish its special position in Taiwan. According to Lee, for example,
the United States cannot effectively deploy a theater missile defense (TMD)
without Taiwan’s cooperation.7 And according to Chen Shui-bian,
The crescent-shaped American defenses against China in the Pacific,
without Taiwan, would be forced back to Saipan and Guam, even Hawaii
... We must make good use of this bargaining chip, and make good use of
our strategically important position under the U.S. strategic goals in the
western Pacific.8
U.S. politicians themselves often betray confusion over the goals of Ameri-
can policy, as when Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich during the 1995
crisis suggested that the United States simply establish diplomatic relations
with Taiwan, or when presidential candidate Steve Forbes suggested an un-
conditional commitment to Taiwan’s defense, or when the U.S. Congress
considered the Taiwan Enhancement Security Act, which would have di-

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 What’s Wrong with American Taiwan Policy l

rected the sale of certain weapons systems to Taiwan regardless of whether

defense specialists considered them appropriate for Taiwan’s defense.
A less prevalent confusion, both in Taiwan and among some in the
United States, involves the belief that the true goal of U.S. policy is to get
Taiwan safely reunified with mainland China so as to remove an obstacle to
the development of Sino-American relations.
In my view, the policy goal the United States pursued from 1972 to 1996
was well conceived. It should remain the foundation of U.S. policy efforts in
the strait, as in intent it still does, even
though the execution is currently flawed.
That policy meant (and should continue to
mean) what it said: The United States has no
A dministration
officials insisted that
vested interest in the outcome of the Taiwan
issue so long as the resolution is arrived at none of the three
peacefully. It is not bad for American inter- noes were new.
ests if Taiwan becomes reunified with the
mainland. We also have no particular interest
in seeing it unified with China.
Three reasons are often erroneously suggested for why the United States
might want to prevent Taiwan’s reunification with the mainland: U.S. inter-
ests in regional security, trade and investment in Taiwan, and support for
democracy. All refer to real U.S. interests, but none in fact requires that Tai-
wan be kept separate from China.
With regard to security, if the United States ever needed Taiwan as an un-
sinkable aircraft carrier, it no longer does. The United States no longer pur-
sues a policy of militarily containing the PRC. We are not involved in a war in
Southeast Asia. Should either of these unfortunate conditions recur, we are
still able to defend our interests without using Taiwan as a military asset. The
United States has had no military or intelligence facility on Taiwan since
1979. We have bases in Hawaii, Guam, Japan, and South Korea, and port visi-
tation arrangements throughout Southeast Asia which, under conditions of
modern military and logistical technology, permit force projection throughout
Asia. Contrary to the implications of Lee’s remark, neither national missile
defense (NMD) for American territory nor TMD for American allies in Asia
requires forward-deployed radar specifically in Taiwan, except insofar as Tai-
wan is included under the TMD umbrella. In short, the United States no
longer needs Taiwan to maintain its military position in Asia.
Some argue that ceding Taiwan to the PRC would give Beijing an advan-
tage in realizing its ambition to control the South China Sea and the sea
lanes of communication around Taiwan, which are essential to the com-
merce and security of Japan, South Korea, and various countries in South-

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 l Andrew J. Nathan

east Asia. It may be relevant to remember that the PRC formula for reunifi-
cation calls for the mainland not to place any troops on Taiwan and for Tai-
wan to maintain its own military forces. Hence it is by no means certain that
reunification on negotiated terms would bring about military access to the
island for the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) Navy (PLAN) and Air Force
(PLAAF). If Chinese forces did use Taiwanese ports and airfields as bases,
this would indeed project Chinese power up to an extra 300 miles farther
into the western Pacific Ocean than existing Chinese bases, but the ports of
Taiwan are farther from contested areas of the South China Sea than are the
major Chinese naval bases in Hainan and Guangdong provinces. More im-
portantly, Chinese naval technology lags so far behind that of the United
States and its allies that the occupation of Taiwan would swing matters in
the west Pacific or the South China Sea only if the United States were to
pull out of Asia and cede these waters to the Chinese.
As for commercial concerns, it is true that the United States has substan-
tial commercial interests in Taiwan, but these would be as well—perhaps bet-
ter—guaranteed under reunification than they are today with the status of
Taiwan contested. U.S. traders and investors already have wide access to the
mainland economy and would presumably have no less access to a reunified
Taiwan economy. If “one country, two systems” were as fully implemented in
Taiwan as it has been in Hong Kong, American economic interests would be
adequately protected. A negotiated unification might bring even more favor-
able conditions for Taiwan than for Hong Kong—say, a confederal solution
rather than a Special Administrative Region solution—which might be even
more protective of U.S. business interests.9 Any form of peaceful reunification
would result in a diminution of tensions in the region and greater integration
between the Taiwanese and mainland economies, both of which should be
good for American businesses on both sides of the strait. Political risks would
diminish and war risks all but disappear.
To be sure, if Sino-American relations turned extremely hostile, U.S.
business interests in a reunified Taiwan would be exposed. But this would
require a more dramatic downturn in the relationship than any we have
seen since China started its “reform and opening” in 1979. So far in this
twenty-year period, business conditions for foreigners have never been more
than temporarily affected by ups and downs in political relations, even after
the June 4, 1989, crackdown, the 1995-1996 T aiwan Strait crisis, and the
U.S. bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade. For business interests in a
reunified Taiwan to be affected, Sino-American relations would have to en-
ter a deep crisis. But in that case, United States business interests in an au-
tonomous Taiwan would surely also be damaged by insecurity in the region.
Such a deep crisis in U.S.-China relations is more likely to be generated by
tensions over Taiwan than by any other issue. In short, American commer-

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 What’s Wrong with American Taiwan Policy l

cial interests will probably be no worse protected in a reunified Taiwan than

they are now, and those on the mainland would benefit from the resolution
of the Taiwan issue.
Finally, does the United States have an interest in maintaining Taiwan’s
freedom of action because it is a democracy? Not in hard security terms, un-
less one believes that the mainland itself is more likely to democratize with
Taiwan separated from it than with Taiwan reunified. But in more political
terms—in the sense that a sustainable U.S. foreign policy has to serve
American values—it would be unthinkable to stand idly by while a vibrant
democracy was forced into the arms of a neighboring dictatorship. This,
however, is a reason in favor of the current
policy, insistence on peaceful resolution, not
one in favor of making Taiwan stay separate
from the mainland if it no longer wants to. So
T he Taiwanese do
not want war, but
again, the argument from democracy does
not support the search for a hidden agenda. they are determined
On military, commercial, and political not to surrender
grounds, then, decades of declaratory policy
have told the truth about fundamental U.S.
interests, however unlikely this may appear to
conspiracy theorists and aficionados of realpolitik. U.S. interests really are in
one sense altruistic: they do not require any particular outcome of the Tai-
wan question.
But the United States’ interest in a particular modality of resolution—
peaceful—is not as altruistic as it may sound and provides the key for under-
standing the nature of the U.S. commitment to Taiwan. A commitment to
peace around Taiwan is consistent with a realpolitik interpretation of
American national interests. The reason is that the coerced incorporation of
Taiwan into the PRC would damage, even destroy, the U.S. strategic posi-
tion in Asia. This position rests on America’s credibility as a guarantor of
the regional peace. The United States is formally allied with Japan, South
Korea, Australia, Thailand, and the Philippines and is informally committed
to the other major Southeast Asian nations, especially in maritime South-
east Asia, to guarantee regional security and stability. America’s ability to
keep the peace in the Taiwan Strait is essential to its credibility as the guar-
antor of Japanese and Korean security and to its role as the overseer of
peace in the region as a whole. Were the United States to stand idly by
while the PRC coerced Taiwan, others in the region would conclude that
U.S. determination had declined.
And they would be correct in that judgment. The United States committed
itself to peaceful resolution of the Taiwan issue not only for reasons relating to
regional security but also for reasons of domestic politics and values that re-
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 l Andrew J. Nathan

main compelling today. If we try to imagine a situation in which a U.S. presi-

dent would allow Taiwan to be coerced by mainland China and the Congress
and the public would accept it, we can only envision tectonic changes in U.S.
politics and public opinion that would also have eviscerated our other com-
mitments throughout Asia and perhaps worldwide. An America in which Tai-
wan fell off the radar screen of public concern would not be an America that
would keep 100,000 troops in Asia or send its soldiers to defend far-off Korea
or Japan. Given the peculiar lay of the land in Asia—where there is no secu-
rity architecture, alliance, or regional hegemon capable of keeping the peace
without the U.S. presence—unresisted Chinese military action against Taiwan
would create a fundamental alteration in security calculations throughout the
region. If the U.S. position in Asia—historically, and on the ground today—
means anything, it means that we must still insist on peaceful resolution of the
Taiwan issue.

Back to the Basics of Dual Deterrence

The question, then, is how to ensure a peaceful resolution. The challenge

for the United States in the Taiwan Strait is dual deterrence: to deter not
one but both sides from destabilizing actions. In deterring a single oppo-
nent, 10 the problem is to create sufficient certainty about one’s future ac-
tions so as to make it unappealing for the other party to trigger them, but
not to create so much certainty that the other side knows just how far it can
go without risking a response. The challenge of dual deterrence is to achieve
this effect simultaneously vis-à-vis two actors whose interests are opposed.
The actions to be deterred are not necessarily symmetrical, and it is part of
strategic ambiguity not to specify what they might be. Destabilizing actions
by the mainland are more likely to be military; by Taiwan, declaratory.11
Taiwan is far from the only situation of dual deterrence in which the
United States finds itself. It faces more or less similar challenges in regulat-
ing Greek and Turkish actions over Cyprus, in seeking peace between Israel
and its enemies in the Middle East, and in trying to dampen the nuclear
arms race in South Asia. In all such situations, the deterring state has to be
careful about adjusting its level of threat, since threats which deter one side
risk opening up room for adventurist actions by the other. What in single
deterrence would have been a calibration of threat becomes in dual deter-
rence a tilt against one side and in favor of the other, and on both counts
potentially dangerous.12
This is exactly the error into which U.S. policy has now fallen. The
United States’ policy of reassuring Beijing has also deassured Taiwan, thus
worsening rather than easing tensions. On one side it has encouraged

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 What’s Wrong with American Taiwan Policy l

Beijing to bring added pressure to bear on Taiwan, and on the other side it
has driven Taiwan to take new destabilizing actions.
The outcome of the Taiwan presidential election is not likely to relax ten-
sions, because Lee’s policies are deeply rooted in the preferences of the elec-
torate. The new president will have little freedom of action on the
fundamentals of mainland policy, unless he is willing to risk being seen by
the public as selling out Taiwan’s interests. At the same time, of course, the
voters will want the new administration to reduce conflict with the main-
land. These demands are contradictory (welcome to democracy!) and allow
the new president some room to be more or less active in promoting a Lee-
like agenda, but, in the end, what will satisfy
Taiwan’s voters will not satisfy Beijing, and
vice versa. This structural fact makes it un-
likely that the new president can accommo-
I
f the United States
date Beijing’s minimum demand: for
ever needed Taiwan
substantive progress toward unification. Lee as an unsinkable
himself is scheduled to remain on the scene aircraft carrier, it no
for another two years, wielding influence
longer does.
and shaping public opinion in his role as
Kuomintang chairman.
Hence we should expect that after a pe-
riod of waiting followed by testing, Beijing
will resume its policy of bringing pressure on Taiwan through verbal military
threats, an arms race, tension-enhancing maneuvers, or even moves toward
actual conflict. We should also expect the new Taiwanese president to seek
to build his authority after a bruising three-way race and a likely plurality
electoral win by showing that he can be firm in promoting Taiwan’s interna-
tional interests.
A notion prevalent in Washington is that if the United States continues
to reduce its support for Taipei, perhaps moving beyond verbal measures to
slow arms deliveries or deny specific weapons systems, the Taiwanese gov-
ernment will become more reasonable and accommodating to Beijing’s de-
mands. This hope is based on a dangerous lack of familiarity with Taiwan.
Policymakers need to understand the intense pride of the Taiwanese in their
identity and in their accomplishments, their sense of entitlement to nation-
hood, and their commitment to keeping something they think they already
have, their own state. The Taiwanese do not want war, but they are deter-
mined not to surrender. While not provided for in the U.S.-China
“communiqué framework,” this sense of nationhood is real.
Beijing needs to understand these facts as well. Militarily speaking, the
most the mainland can probably do to Taiwan is bomb it or subject it to mis-

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 l Andrew J. Nathan

sile attacks. As we learned in World War II and discovered again recently in

Yugoslavia and Iraq, a committed population can sustain damaging attacks for
quite some time with little loss to its morale. Taiwan will certainly not fold be-
cause of diplomatic pressure, and probably not even under military attacks of
the sort that China is capable of mounting. Nor could the United States af-
ford to stand idly by if such a scenario unfolded.
On the contrary, further erosion of Taiwan’s sense of security due to the
actions of either Washington or Beijing
could lead Taiwan into desperate measures.
H owever the process Nuclearization is an obvious option, and one
which is far from unthinkable. The technol-
unfolds, the task of
ogy exists in an economy which depends
the United States is substantially on nuclear power. Twelve years
modest, yet daunting. ago, the United States put a stop to a long-
running Taiwanese nuclear weapons pro-
gram. So far as is known, that program has
not been resumed, but it would be wrong to
think that the option is foreclosed forever.13 Taiwan certainly continues to
arm itself for every form of defense short of weapons of mass destruction.
Some have proposed correcting the administration’s error by swinging
from reassurance to clearer deterrence of Beijing. The proposal is to draw a
clear line in the Taiwan Strait and guarantee U.S. military action if Beijing
crosses it. The problem with this proposal, intrinsic to dual deterrence, is
that a tilt against Beijing risks encouraging Taiwanese adventurism just as
the tilt against Taipei encouraged Beijing to harden its line. Short of declar-
ing independence (an act which in any case most Taiwan politicians now
consider superfluous), if Taiwan felt safer it might for example revise its con-
stitution to redefine its national territory or its name.
Even though the situation in the Taiwan Strait is truly dangerous, the
United States needs to exercise the uncharacteristic virtue of patience. The
Taiwan problem is not going to be solved in the foreseeable future. It has
been with us for decades and will be with us for decades more. Its ultimate
resolution will probably take a form that no one imagines today. It is likely
to arise out of the creativity not of Americans but of Taiwanese and Chinese
and is likely to involve concessions by China which are unanticipated today.
As happens surprisingly often in international politics, it may turn out that
the weakest actor holds the strongest cards, and Beijing may ultimately have
to accept the Taiwanese position that one China consists of two equal sover-
eign states. However the process unfolds, the task of the United States is
modest, yet daunting: to prevent war from breaking out. Our long-tested
policy of strategic ambiguity remains the best way to do this.

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 What’s Wrong with American Taiwan Policy l

Making the strategic logic of our position clear to the two sides can
strengthen dual deterrence while also relieving both sides of the fear that
U.S. goals are more detrimental to their interests than they actually are. As
it is, U.S. goals are sufficiently detrimental to the interests of both sides, but
especially to the mainland’s. Insisting on peaceful resolution is tantamount
to insisting on Taiwan’s de facto autonomy for a very long time to come with
a good likelihood that during this time Taiwanese national identity will in-
crease and Taiwan’s bargaining position may improve. But at least the
United States is not seeking the permanent independence of Taiwan as an
end in itself, or to contain China, or prevent China’s rise to major-power
status. Our goals are not as detrimental to Chinese interests as many Chi-
nese believe them to be.
The hard reality Taiwan must come to terms with is that the United
States cannot give it strategic carte blanche just because it is a democracy,
nor does it have to do so because of the island’s strategic value. But clarity
about U.S. goals will at least relieve the Taiwanese of the fear that the
United States wants to sell out their democracy in order to cultivate rela-
tions with a rising superpower.
If the policy makes sense to Americans, it can make sense to the Chinese
and the Taiwanese, even if they do not like it. By making sense, it will work
more effectively as a deterrent to both sides and help create conditions to
continue a long diplomatic struggle without actions on either side that pro-
voke war.

The author would like to thank Richard K. Betts, Richard Bush, Timothy Crawford, Harvey
Feldman, Yadong Liu, Barry R. Posen, John J. Tkacik, and Ezra F. Vogel.

Notes

1. The difference between the two versions is conspicuous. The English version leaves
room for the idea that the United States has only noted, not adopted, the Chinese
position. The Chinese text does not. The United States considers the English text
binding. Thus (e.g., during congressional hearings over the Taiwan Relations Act
and the 1982 communiqué) American diplomats left holes through which it would
be possible to draw gossamer threads of argument that the United States had never
really changed its position on the status of Taiwan.
2. So far, this has not meant giving up the verbal commitment to some form of unifi-
cation in the long term.
3. Some policymakers wanted to send a signal to Taiwan by slowing or denying certain
weapons systems, but it is hard to produce quick adjustments in U.S. arms sales to
Taiwan for several reasons. First, increasing mainland military deployments made it
necessary for the United States to maintain a high level of arms sales to Taiwan. Sec-
ond, arms sales unfold over a long time period from request to delivery and are diffi-
cult to adjust within a short timeframe. Third, the subject of U.S. arms sales to

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 l Andrew J. Nathan

Taiwan is intensely politicized within the American foreign policy bureaucracy and
the Congress, making any change in policy difficult to achieve. Thus for the time be-
ing the United States signaled its displeasure to Taiwan through verbal measures only.
4. This is revealed in James Mann, About Face: A History of America’s Curious Rela-
tionship with China, From Nixon to Clinton (New York: Knopf, 1999), 33, 46. The
three noes had also been articulated by the State Department spokesman and by
Secretary of State Madeleine Albright in the months prior to the president’s trip to
China.
5. Among the influential, private Americans making Track II proposals were former
Secretary of Defense William Perry and former Assistant Secretary of Defense for In-
ternational Security Affairs Joseph Nye. But a proposal by Kenneth Lieberthal
seemed most relevant in retrospect to people in Taiwan, because he had used the
term “interim agreement” (albeit in the singular, not Roth’s plural) and because, at
the time of Roth’s speech, Lieberthal had taken a leave from his professorial post at
the University of Michigan to manage China policy in the National Security Council.
6. Meanwhile, officials of the American Institute in Taiwan, the formally nongovern-
mental agency that manages U.S. relations with Taiwan, gave a series of fuller, more
complex statements of the American position which were more comforting to Tai-
wan. But people on both sides of the strait understandably gave more political
weight to the higher-profile formulations.
7. Lee Teng-hui, The Road to Democracy: Taiwan’s Pursuit of Identity (Tokyo: PHP In-
stitute, 1999), 134.
8. “Chen Shui-Bian’s ‘National Blueprint,’” interview with Taipei Hsin Hsin Wen in
Chinese, June 9, 1999, in FBIS Daily Report: China, FBIS-CHI-1999-0724, online
version.
9. However, no such offer is on the table now.
10. In the international relations literature, deterrence of a single opponent against
oneself is often called basic deterrence, and against an ally, extended deterrence.
Dual deterrence is by definition a variant on extended deterrence.
11. The technique of strategic ambiguity that the United States has developed to deal
with this problem is sometimes misunderstood as intended to give the deterring
power flexibility to respond if it wants to and not if it doesn’t. This is wrong. As just
argued, the United States has no flexibility in the matter of ends.
12. I borrow the word “pivotal” from Columbia Ph.D. student Timothy Crawford, who
is conducting an analysis of “pivotal deterrence” in his doctoral dissertation in
progress, “Power and Uncertainty: Pivotal Deterrence in World Politics.”
13. New York Times, December 20, 1997, p. A7, reporting on an article by David
Albright and Corey Gay, “Taiwan: Nuclear Nightmare Averted,” Bulletin of the
Atomic Scientists 54, no. 1 (January/February 1998). Former Premier Hau Pei-tsun
revealed additional details of this incident in a book recently published in Taiwan.

106 T HE WASHINGTON QUARTERLY ■ S PRING 2000