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Calls to ¡¥abandon¡¦ Taiwan not mainstream view in US
By Shih Hsiu-chuan / Staff Reporter
Recent calls urging Washington to ¡§abandon¡¨ Taiwan to China
are not a mainstream view and there is no need for the US to change its
long-term policy of having good relations with China and Taiwan, a former senior
US official said in Taipei yesterday.
¡§Some people have the opinion that as China and Taiwan are interacting more ...
now it¡¦s time that we should be reviewing what we are doing, but, why would we
change our approach when it seemed to be paying dividends?¡¨ said Randy Schriver,
a former deputy assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific Affairs
and now president and chief executive of the Project 2049 Institute, a think
tank.
Schriver had been asked by reporters to comment on a report by the University of
Virginia that makes the case for a re-evaluation of the US¡¦ longstanding policy
toward Taiwan to improve bilateral ties with China.
¡§My instinct is exactly the opposite,¡¨ Schriver said.
For a long time, the US¡¦ cross-strait policies have been committed to providing
Taiwan with arms so that it would have confidence to negotiate with China, and
they are focused on the process of relations between Taiwan and China to ensure
their peaceful development, Schriver said.
¡§After years, it seems to me they are happening. Why would we change our
approach when it seems to be paying dividends? It doesn¡¦t make any sense to me,¡¨
he said.
Schriver said he had ¡§pretty strong differing views¡¨ from those arguments,
including those expressed in an article by Charles Glaser, a professor of
international affairs at George Washington University in the current issue of
Foreign Affairs, in which he proposes the US ¡§abandon¡¨ Taiwan.
¡§There have been several such articles and several people have made the
argument, but what I have found in Washington is that each article or paper is
being swiftly followed by negative reaction and response from the policy
community and it¡¦s been bipartisan reaction, both Republican and Democrats,¡¨
Schriver said.
Asked how the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) under the leadership of Tsai
Ing-wen (½²^¤å) differed from the previous DPP administration in terms of its
China policy, Schriver said: ¡§The US would be more comfortable with¡¨ the current
DPP guided by its general principles.
Tsai and some senior DPP officials discussed the general principles of the
party¡¦s China policy with Schriver and former US deputy secretary of state
Richard Armitage on Monday.
¡§There are a lot of concerns and issues with the previous DPP government, but it
seems to me they moved in a direction that is more constructive and more
thoughtful than what we saw in the past. I think that is a good thing,¡¨ Schriver
said.
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