Is there some specific reason that Richard Halloran wants to antagonize China? In an op-ed at RealClearPolitics Richard Halloran argues for crafting a policy of “strategic clarity” in which the U. S. supports the rights of the people of Taiwan to determine whether their island is part of China or an independent, sovereign nation while fostering a policy of “tactical ambiguity” by which he means that the U. S. might or might not do anything about a Chinese move to incorporate the island. This would reverse the policy of strategic ambiguity, “One China Policy”, which has dominated U. S. thinking on the subject since the Eisenhower Administration. This position has be re-stated as recently as yesterday be Defense Secretary Robert Gates.
What possible benefit could such a policy have for the U. S.? I don’t see any. What it would unambiguously do is a) encourage the people of Taiwan to declare independence (the direction in which they’ve been moving anyway—do they really need encouragement?) and b) antagonize the Chinese for whom this is an issue of national pride.
There’s an old saw1 that says it’s better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak out and remove all doubt. The reason for the confusion about our China policy is not merely that it’s intentionally ambiguous but that the need for occasionally burnishing that ambiguity hasn’t been properly understood for four consecutive presidential terms during which we’ve had presidents who had no particular interest in foreign policy (the norm in the United States).
We’ve got a rather of lot of enemies at the moment. This is no time to make more.
1 In case you’re wondering the saying isn’t by Lincoln, Mark Twain, or Dr. Johnson. It’s from the Bible.
