20100819 National security trumps elections

National security trumps elections

Thursday, Aug 19, 2010, Page 8

Now that the Chinese Nationalist Party’s (KMT) 18th National Congress is over, the government has gone into election mode, both for the run-up to the year-end special municipality elections and, worringly, for the presidential elections in 2012.

The only thing this government is concerned about more than election results is election results. Any hope that they would be planning for Taiwan’s long-term future has long since gone down the drain. When everything President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) says is laced with facile, superficial election-speak, you know you’re in trouble.

It is important, however, to separate elections and foreign policy or national security issues. These are serious matters that should not be played around with, for if trouble comes calling, one needs to be prepared.

Confucius (孔子) said: “When a person should be spoken with, and you don’t speak with them, you lose them. When a person shouldn’t be spoken with, and you speak to them, you waste your breath. The wise do not lose people, nor do they waste their breath.”

What he meant was that if you have something meaningful to say, say it, and if you don’t, don’t. This is especially true when it comes to politics.

There is another saying to the effect that nations rise or fall on the spoken word. Therefore, anyone with even the most rudimentary understanding of how things work is careful to speak up when appropriate, but to exercise discretion when the situation demands they do so.

During the Martial Law era, the powers-that-be preferred to do things behind closed doors. Now that Taiwan is a democracy, there is a need for politicians to open up channels of communication with the public.

We understand the fact that the more they say, the more they risk putting their foot in their mouths, and each president has at one time or another been obliged to extract said appendage. The public is used to it.

In the two years he has been leader, Ma has lost more people, wasted more breath and has had to remove his foot from his between his molars more times than any of his predecessors. One might even say he’s actually a liability in his job.

As the special municipality election campaigns heat up, it might be an idea to give Ma a few pointers. The election is, after all, a temporary affair: National interests and the welfare of the public are a more long-term matter.

During the recent party congress, Ma was more focused on elections, trying to convince the public that their concerns over his pro-China policies were unfounded. The original plan was to make it clear to China during his chairman’s address that he hoped to use the “1992 consensus” as the basis for getting China to remove the missiles it has aimed at Taiwan. This part of the speech featured quite prominently in the text, a copy of which was printed out on the day and distributed among the audience.

The so-called “1992 consensus” is a consensus only among KMT members, not the wider public. The party believes, mistakenly, that it can use the phrase as a fig leaf to conceal what the consensus actually refers to, namely the idea that there is “one China, with each side having its own interpretation.”

Even this rather timid formula was apparently deemed too risky, for Ma skipped right over it when it came to his official address. He didn’t mention it once. And this wasn’t lost on the audience either.

This was an important part of the speech. Why did Ma choose to omit it? According to some newspapers, it was because Beijing was concerned by comments, made in the US by Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) Minister Lai Shin-yuan (賴幸媛), to the effect that China should abolish policies and laws — such as the “Anti-Secession” Law — that could be the basis for military action against Taiwan. Beijing responded by issuing a “warning” to the KMT, saying that it was important not to rock the boat and destroy the political platform they have established, given the difficulties surrounding the signing of the Economic Cooperation Framework Agreement (ECFA).

There is little getting away from the fact that this pressure was related to Ma’s change of heart. The government would have discussed Lai’s comments prior to the event, the general consensus being to allow them to be said, no doubt with one eye on what the electorate would think. Again, they made a bad call, and felt the weight of Beijing’s hand as a result.

Basically, they contrived to stage a drama only for it to descend into farce, finding themselves unceremoniously hurled from the stage by the infuriated manager. Picture them, a motley bunch of scorned actors shielding their ears and behinds as they tumble out of the theater, bewailing the injustice being dealt them. And so the KMT are waking up to the real consequences of signing the ECFA.

The next day, during a speech delivered to the KMT’s Central Advisory Committee, Ma compared the situations in the Taiwan Strait and the Korean Peninsula, noting that it was the 60th anniversary of the Korean War and that, more than half a century later, North and South Korea were still at war.

However, he said, “There is now peace in the Taiwan Strait.” He made this ill-advised comparison for the benefit of two audiences. First, Beijing, by way of a climbdown to atone for the aforementioned farce. Second, for the Taiwanese electorate, to lull them into a false sense of security and conceal the fact that this bogus peace comes from essentially surrendering to the aggressor. This blatant example of bad faith is naive in origin, malicious in intent and fundamentally unforgivable.

There has recently been a conspicuous return of US shows of power to the Asia-Pacific region and a hardening of the rhetoric from US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton. Right now, the US is holding joint naval exercises with South Korea in the East China Sea and the South China Sea, and the massive aircraft carrier USS George Washington has been deployed in the region, despite China’s objections.

The question is, how will China deal with this growing glut of foreign policy headaches? Taiwan itself is in an extremely strategically important location, in geo-political terms. How could the government be so unaware, so ill-prepared, so indifferent to the encroaching realities?

For Ma to turn around at such a sensitive time and rub the nose of a regional ally in the rubble of history for the sake of appeasing those at home is not only ignorant, it is downright embarrassing for those of us watching in Taiwan. How is this supposed to benefit Taiwan’s national interests and national security?

To talk of “peace” in the Taiwan Strait is disingenuous. In the two years since Ma has been in office, his consistently pro-China policies have only seen ever more missiles aimed at us, with a total of 1,800 planned.

Nor have we seen a reduction in the amount of military drills simulating an invasion of Taiwan, despite their having been relocated further inland. The purpose of these drills is twofold. Of course, they are meant as a kind of psychological threat to the US, but they are also preparations for an actual conflict.

So why is Ma pretending that everything is hunky dory? Why is he trying to get people to drop their guard, and to relax national security measures?

There is a saying to the effect that politicians never look beyond the next election. How true this is. And how thick on the ground the elections have been these past two years. Since we can hope for little else in the near future but more electioneering from the president, a bit of damage limitation is in order.

When it comes to national security, we would ask Ma to start talking sense and to make good on the election promises he made about protecting Taiwan’s sovereignty. The very future of our nation is at stake.