Eliot A. Cohen
For some 50 years, American policy toward Taiwan has been based on the assertion that people on both sides of the Taiwan Straits believe that they are part of the same country and merely dispute who should run it and precisely how and when the island and the continent should be reunified. It is a falsehood so widely stated and so often repeated that officials sometimes forget that it is simply untrue. Indeed, they—and other members of the foreign-policy establishment—get anxious if you call it a lie.
It may have been a necessary lie when the United States recognized the People’s Republic of China, although it is more likely that the United States got snookered by Chinese diplomats in the mid-1970s, when they needed us far more than we needed them. It may even be necessary now, but a lie it remains. Acknowledging this fact is not merely a matter of intellectual hygiene but an imperative if we are to prevent China from attempting to gobble up this island nation of 24 million, thereby unhinging the international order in Asia and beyond.
On a recent visit to Taiwan, I had the chance to talk with the president, the candidates to replace her, senior ministers, academic experts, diplomats, and soldiers. Those conversations brought home to me just how pernicious the falsehood has been. Taiwan is an independent country. Its people have (on the evidence of repeated polling) little interest in becoming part of the mainland, and by substantial majorities consider themselves more Taiwanese than Chinese. It has its own currency, a thriving economy, lively democratic politics, sizable armed forces, a more and more desperate foreign policy—everything that makes a country independent.
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