Intrusiveness of Taiwan Relations Act

After the United Nations recognized the People’s Republic of China (herein PRC), seating the PRC and removing the Republic of China (herein ROC), located on the island of Taiwan, as the government of China, on Oct. 25, 1971, the United States recognized said PRC as the government of China effective Jan. 1, 1979, withdrawing recognition of the ROC and giving its one-year notice of termination of the Mutual Defense Treaty with the ROC.            

There was a Joint Communique on the Establishment of Diplomatic Relations between the People’s Republic of China and the United States on Dec. 16, 1978. Sen. Barry M. Goldwater, former Republican presidential candidate in 1964, filed suit on Dec. 22, 1978. It was dismissed. Congress passed the Taiwan Relations Act (herein TRA) on April 10, 1979, which by its terms related back to Jan. 1, which President Jimmy Carter signed, saying that it “contains all of the authority that I requested in order to enable us to maintain unofficial relations with the people on Taiwan.” An earlier draft by Carter had been rejected as not strong enough.

My thesis is that the U.S. never intended to let go of Taiwan. It has undermined PRC sovereignty over Taiwan from the beginning of its relationship with the PRC in 1979. This is shown by both the Joint Communique and the TRA.

The Joint Communique states, after it recognizes the PRC “as the sole legal government of China,” that, “within this context, the people of the United States will maintain cultural, commercial, and other unofficial relations with the people of Taiwan.” These “other unofficial relations” have included arms sales and, I believe, just as strong a commitment to defend Taiwan as the prior defense treaty. The Joint Communique also states the U.S. “acknowledges” the Chinese position “that there is but one China and Taiwan is part of China.” It does not use the word “accepts” or its equivalent.

The TRA is not a document in international law. It is a mere U.S. statute, a unilateral statement. I believe it is inimical to the notion of PRC sovereignty over Taiwan. First, the TRA creates structure which connects the U.S. with Taiwan, the American Institute in Taiwan and, for Taiwan, the Coordination Council for North American Affairs, renamed in 2019 the Taiwan Council for U.S. Affairs.

Second, the TRA is the functional equivalent of the prior Mutual Defense Treaty, if anything more detailed. While the treaty said in Article 5 (the trigger clause) the U.S. would respond to an armed attack by meeting “the common danger in accordance with its constitutional processes,” the TRA uses language in Section 2(b)(4) as “a threat to the peace and security of the Western Pacific area and of grave concern to the United States.” “Grave concern” language is very serious as a threat. In Article 2(b)(5) the TRA says that the U.S. will “provide Taiwan with arms of a defensive character,” and Article 2(b)(6) says the U.S. will maintain the capacity “to resist any resort to force or other forms of coercion that would jeopardize the security, or the social or economic system, of the people of Taiwan.” Note the U.S. threatens the use force to maintain Taiwan’s capitalist, democratic system.

Third, of course, there is the human rights mantra, our ideology. We say at Section 2(c): “The preservation and enhancement of the human rights of all of the people on Taiwan are hereby reaffirmed as objectives of the United States.”

It makes you wonder who is claiming sovereignty over Taiwan, the U.S. or the PRC? The PRC might say: With friends like these, who needs enemies? Indeed, we state the purpose of the TRA in Section 2(a)(2) is: “to promote the foreign policy of the United States by authorizing the continuation of commercial, cultural, and other relations between the people of the United States and the people of Taiwan.”

We are like a suitor who cannot let go. We are a stealth aggressor, claiming the right to defend and control an entity 100 miles off the PRC coast, which the U.N. recognizes belongs to the PRC.

James W. Pfister, J.D. University of Toledo, Ph.D. University of Michigan (political science), retired after 46 years in the Political Science Department at Eastern Michigan University. He lives at Devils Lake and can be reached at jpfister@emich.edu.

This article originally appeared on The Daily Telegram: James Pfister: Intrusiveness of Taiwan Relations Act