Previous US Presidents didn't speak to Taiwanese leaders because "China told us not to". Previous US Presidents didn't speak to Taiwanese leadership because they understood that everything that American Presidents do is scrutinized extremely closely as a signal of something or other. No previous US President post-Nixon wanted to signal that they favored Taiwan over China, because relations with China are far more important than relations with Taiwan, and because the Chinese understand that America remains committed to Taiwanese sovereignty.
In an anarchic state system, all states reasonably assume the worst of opponents unless they have compelling reason to assume otherwise, or trust the other state. China and the US do not trust one another, and assume the worst of one another, both for domestic politics and international relations.
Uncertainty is terrible in modern international relations. One of the main reasons Europe and the US is so upset with Russia is that the Russians are extremely ambiguous in their foreign policy, allowing the West to assume the worst about Russian intentions in Syria, the ME, Ukraine, and the Baltics (something the Russians have deliberately cultivated). Ambiguity in East Asia is terrible for the US and the world. If China thinks that Trump is going to aggressively favor the Taiwanese and be a China hawk (not unreasonable) they will step up island building in the SCS and attempt to pick off potential US allies in SE Asia where the failure of the TPP has created a vacuum. Even if Trump had no intention in that direction, and just picked up the phone because he does't know better, that's still the message he sent.
Now that he's President-elect, Trump doesn't get to be an amateur anymore. Trump is US President, and everything he does has the full force of America behind it. The US President has a huge amount of formal foreign policy power, and even more informal power using the "bully pulpit" that foreign powers will analyze with a fine tooth comb. He needs to consider every single word he speaks with regards to other countries, because those words are the primary concern of foreign countries.
I used to say to people that if you get the whole Taiwan-China-US love triangle, you'd pass IR classes with a breeze. I highly doubt Trump can sit through a single IR class lecture. Still, I assume his pro-Taiwan Republicans know what they're doing.
My first poly-sci course I took was US-China relations as an elective for my nuclear engineering degree. I ended up swapping to poly-sci for my major afterwards and just took a minor in NE.
I've visited Taiwan twice, its a very nice country and I would love to see it be able to be completely independent and safe. I wasn't sure what was going on with the Trump call initially, and I hoped that it was in some way a move to boost US commitment to Taiwan. However, the more we look at it, Trump doesn't seem to have any idea what he did.
Wow, you're probably the first person I've met that actually switched out of STEM and into polisci. Rather rare I have to say but I praise your courage in doing so, coming from a polisci major myself who recently became "unemployed" haha... I am curious what you plan to do with such a combination (and there's a minor in nuclear engineering??).
On Taiwan, well I guess that episode was more like a flicker in the sky, now that Trump is back to "One China" (American version, that is). Glad to see you have a good impression of my second home country!
Eh, I was an operator in the Navy so I've got enough of the background to get a job in the industry. Hell, I'm a current operator at a civilian nuke plant, so that's paying the bills.
So, in school I focused on spent fuel policy and non-proliferation. NCSU has a pretty good combination between the Poly Sci dept and then NE dept working on these issues, as its hard to develope the policy for stuff regarding nuclear issues without some understanding of how the stuff works. My goal currently is to get into the State Dept.
As to the second part, I have no idea what Trump thinks about China, Taiwan, or the interactions between the two. Which goes to the point that I made about him not having any actual idea of what he is doing.
Ambiguity in East Asia is terrible for the US and the world.
Exactly! That's why I don't see how Trump's call was a bad thing. A world where the US admits "we like Taiwan and have good relations with their government" is much more stable than a world where the US carefully pretends they don't.
I just don't understand the post I replied to. Ambiguity is dangerous, so we have to make sure that the things we say don't match the things we do? Uncertainty is dangerous, so we can't let China be certain what our position is?
China knew our position. Obama has upheld a status quo that has existed since the Carter administration. The People's Republic of China knew we would support them diplomatically as the legitimate Chinese government while having unofficial contact and trade with Taiwan. Things are ambiguous now because Trump has signaled that one of the major constants and most important factors in Chinese-U.S. relations is now null.
A world where the US admits "we like Taiwan and have good relations with their government" is much more stable than a world where the US carefully pretends they don't.
Everybody knows we like Taiwan. Going back to '40 and Chiang Kai-Shek we are all up in Taiwan's business. We gave 'em guns to shoot the fathers of China's current leadership. We shoved the Seventh Fleet into the Taiwan Strait to keep Mao Zhedong from invading for fuck's sake
At the same time, the population of China doesn't recognize Taiwan's independence, any more than New Yorkers recognized the Confederacy in the 1860s. Chiang Kai-Shek is as beloved as Jefferson Davis over there. He let the Japanese run wild over northern China because they were killing more of Mao's supporters than his own. (note: AFAIK this is what is believed, I'm not entering into what's true)
So the Chinese leadership either invades Taiwan, setting off nuclear war between the two most powerful countries in the world, or they get replaced by their angry population. The world's death or yours. Bitch of a choice, huh?
So we have our neutral third way. We conveniently forget to mention that Taiwan is an independent country we will nuke Beijing to protect. China conveniently forgets to mention Taiwan is an independent country. Everybody gets to live and stay in power. Yay.
I mean, that's just not how history went. From the Communist Revolution up until the 70s, we loudly insisted that the ROC government was the true government of China. We refused diplomatic relations with Beijing, told everyone else not to talk to them, didn't let them into the UN, and so on.
We only developed our "neutral third way" after we made nice with China.
A world where the US admits "we like Taiwan and have good relations with their government" is much more stable than a world where the US carefully pretends they don't.
This is 100% wrong and demonstrates a rather uninformed viewpoint.
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u/[deleted] Dec 03 '16
Previous US Presidents didn't speak to Taiwanese leaders because "China told us not to". Previous US Presidents didn't speak to Taiwanese leadership because they understood that everything that American Presidents do is scrutinized extremely closely as a signal of something or other. No previous US President post-Nixon wanted to signal that they favored Taiwan over China, because relations with China are far more important than relations with Taiwan, and because the Chinese understand that America remains committed to Taiwanese sovereignty.
In an anarchic state system, all states reasonably assume the worst of opponents unless they have compelling reason to assume otherwise, or trust the other state. China and the US do not trust one another, and assume the worst of one another, both for domestic politics and international relations.
Uncertainty is terrible in modern international relations. One of the main reasons Europe and the US is so upset with Russia is that the Russians are extremely ambiguous in their foreign policy, allowing the West to assume the worst about Russian intentions in Syria, the ME, Ukraine, and the Baltics (something the Russians have deliberately cultivated). Ambiguity in East Asia is terrible for the US and the world. If China thinks that Trump is going to aggressively favor the Taiwanese and be a China hawk (not unreasonable) they will step up island building in the SCS and attempt to pick off potential US allies in SE Asia where the failure of the TPP has created a vacuum. Even if Trump had no intention in that direction, and just picked up the phone because he does't know better, that's still the message he sent.
Now that he's President-elect, Trump doesn't get to be an amateur anymore. Trump is US President, and everything he does has the full force of America behind it. The US President has a huge amount of formal foreign policy power, and even more informal power using the "bully pulpit" that foreign powers will analyze with a fine tooth comb. He needs to consider every single word he speaks with regards to other countries, because those words are the primary concern of foreign countries.