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EDITORIAL: Ma is
navigating tricky territory
As the region commemorates the anniversary of Japan’s surrender in World War II,
tensions are flaring anew over the Diaoyutai Islands (釣魚台), with the arrest by
Japan on Wednesday of 14 Chinese, Macanese and Hong Kong activists after five of
them swam ashore to one of the disputed islets to reaffirm China’s sovereignty.
The symbolic feat, accompanied by protests by activists in front of Japan’s
representative office in Taipei, has fueled speculation that President Ma Ying-jeou’s
(馬英九) administration, which upholds the Republic of China’s (ROC) sovereignty
over the islets, could work with Beijing to corner Tokyo on the issue.
Among others, the Apple Daily yesterday editorialized that Taipei’s stance could
be part of a plan to irritate Japan and the US, and thereby “force” Taiwan to
cooperate with China, thus undermining Taipei’s alliance with the US, its sole
security guarantor, and Japan, which, despite the absence of official diplomatic
relations, remains a friendly regional power.
However, such theories collapse on the shores of political reality. The pro-Diaoyutai
movement in Taiwan is a peripheral political force, and whether Taiwan has or
should have control over the islets is a matter that simply does not keep
ordinary Taiwanese up at night. Mobilizing them in the use of force to reaffirm
such claims would have even less traction with the public, especially if doing
so risked damaging relations with a country that Taiwanese hold in high esteem.
The Ma administration is fully aware that adventurism over the dispute, such as
cooperating with China, would be frivolous in the extreme.
Furthermore, Taipei cannot ignore the fact that the Diaoyutais are at least
tacitly part of the US-Japan security alliance and that Washington would likely
stand by its regional ally if antagonism turned to bloodshed.
Given the longstanding ties between the US and Taiwanese military, a
relationship that includes arms sales, joint training and assistance at various
levels, it is even more unlikely that the Taiwanese armed forces would risk
compromising all that to protect small, barren islets in the East China Sea, or
suddenly side with a military with which they have no history of cooperation and
which, for more than half a century, has been the principal threat to this
nation.
Despite warming relations across the Taiwan Strait, it will take far more than
the Diaoyutais to convince Taiwanese military officers to abandon more than six
decades of friendship with their US counterparts for the sake of illusory
nationalistic adventurism. Support for such an extreme volte-face simply does
not exist, not within the public, and not within the armed forces. To think
otherwise is to swallow Chinese propaganda.
Ma’s announcement of an East Asia peace initiative earlier this month is not a
construct meant to ensnare Japan or the US, but rather an effort to give Taiwan
(in Ma’s book, the ROC) a seat at the negotiating table. Far too often — and
this also applies to its claims in the South China Sea — Taiwan’s voice has been
ignored by other claimants. Proposing peace mechanisms, as over the Diaoyutais,
or adopting a more muscular stance, as on Itu Aba Island (Taiping Island, 太平島)
in the Spratly Islands (Nansha Islands, 南沙群島), makes it more difficult to ignore
Taipei.
The Ma administration has often, and deservedly so, been criticized for adopting
a low-key attitude to Taiwan’s international space. However, it’s difficult to
ignore the irony when Ma’s critics accuse him of both not doing enough and doing
too much over sovereignty claims in the East and South China Sea, especially
when his stance on those issues shows a large level of continuity with that of
the previous administration.
Ma, like former president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) before him, must play a tricky
balancing act as he negotiates the troubled waters of Taiwan’s relations with
the US, Japan and China, while seeking to set a course of its own — hence the
mixed and sometimes contradictory signals and lack of a clear policy. But
cooperate with China he won’t. He can’t.
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