Appeasing China
by Angelo Codevilla, Director, Division for Research in Strategy

The Times reports that a group of top deputies in the various agencies concerned with National Security have recommended that President Bush's long awaited decision on the sale of AEGIS destroyers to Taiwan be "not at this time" - perhaps later.  According to the Times, the reason for this recommended course of action is that the Taiwanese armed forces are not yet ready to absorb such a sophisticated system. President Bush, says the Times, is most likely to view the recommendation as a cover for doing what is needed to keep open the prospect for good relations with China after the upset of the midair collision of US and Chinese airplanes followed by the imprisonment of the US air crew while at the same time not angering those Americans who want to keep business ties open with the communist regime. 

What the best and brightest in the Bush administration ignore however  is that it is impossible to fudge the issue of whether China is or is not supplanting America as the dominant power in the Western Pacific. The immediate question affecting this issue is whether America's commitment to Taiwan extends to covering Taiwan against the only military threat that China can mount, namely missile strikes and naval interdiction.  The AEGIS ships are the key to both. Taiwan will either get this capability, or it will not. Fine wording at the White House may suffice to "triangulate" the issue domestically.  But there is no doubt at all how China will use America's denial of the Taiwanese request in its relationship with other Asian states.

The manner in which the captive crew crisis was resolved ensures success for China's exploitation of the Bush Administration's apparent decision. Quite simply, from the beginning of the crisis, the Bush Administration allowed the (correct) impression to spread that China would not have to pay a price to avoid America's ire, but that America would have to give something to China to get its crew back - never mind what was left of the airplane. The only question was how much.

From the beginning, newspapers reported (correctly) that Taiwanese, like most other Asians, were wondering what secret concessions America was going to make at their expense to get its crew back. Speculation was that China would demand denial of Taiwan's request for AEGIS. Whether or not the Bush administration actually made this trade, it is to China's advantage to whisper that it is so, and it is impossible for the Bush Administration to deny convincingly that it is so. That is because the fact that America responded to China's obvious slap in the face by giving  China what it wants at the expense of an American ally speaks for itself.

The meaning of this action may take a while to penetrate the bastions of the US foreign policy establishment.  But the peoples and governments of Asia have already figured it out.