On Dec. 2, US president-elect Donald Trump
received a telephone call from President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) — the first time in nearly 40 years that a US
president or president-elect has talked to the president of the Republic of
China. It will be one for the history books.
Responding to a question from Democratic
Progressive Party Legislator Tsai Shih-ying (蔡適應) at the Legislative Yuan, National Security Bureau Director-General
Peng Sheng-chu (彭勝竹) said the bureau had “no prior intelligence
that Trump’s team would be willing to accept Tsai’s telephone call.”
This is correct: It certainly cannot be seen as
an intelligence failure by the bureau.
Organizing a call between the leaders of two
nations is no easy task. One cannot simply pick up the telephone and
immediately connect to one’s opposite number; far from a hasty act,
introductions and assessments have to be made by a series of officials before
the call can take place.
The call has been described by some as a result
of public relations and lobbying, but that is an extremely narrow way of
looking at the world. Whether the call represents a policy shift remains to be
seen.
Nevertheless, attention should be paid to the
recent movements of former US secretary of state Henry Kissinger. Despite
various media organizations reporting the Tsai-Trump call on Dec. 3, only
Japan’s Sankei Shimbun picked up that Kissinger met with Chinese President Xi
Jinping (習近平) in Beijing on the same day.
Trump’s close acquaintance with Kissinger, who
has also advised Trump for several years, has been well documented in the
media. During and after the election campaign, Kissinger met with Trump on two
separate occasions. Discussions are reported to have included Russia and all
areas of the Chinese-speaking world — Kissinger was clearly giving Trump
foreign-affairs advice.
Xi and Kissinger decided to meet on the very day
Tsai called Trump. What are the chances of this being a coincidence? The date
suggests that Trump was engaging in a traditional diplomatic ritual — notifying
the interested parties ahead of time.
Stephen Yates, who was deputy security adviser
to former US vice president Dick Cheney, is a familiar figure in Taiwan. On
Tuesday last week, Yates visited Taiwan in a private capacity, in what he
described as “an interesting week.”
On Wednesday last week, Kissinger met with Trump
once again as if he were reporting back to the president-elect following his
Beijing trip. This implies that Kissinger was under instructions to carry out a
specific task in China.
If the Trump administration is able to quickly
put on an overwhelming display of power, he will be able to catch Beijing off
guard and buy himself valuable time to consolidate power and build a stable
government. If unsuccessful, Trump will be forever on the back foot, unable to
fend off attacks from the enemy.
An “old friend of China,” Kissinger was
instrumental in the normalization of the US-China relationship. Following
Kissinger’s trip to Beijing to launch the opening salvo of Trump’s attack, the
media quickly reported that another “old friend” of China, Iowa Governor Terry
Branstad, had been chosen to be Trump’s ambassador to China — as Beijing likes
dealing with “old friends,” Trump obliged.
Trump and his team certainly like to do things
differently.
The phone call was all about setting out how
Trump’s administration will handle the US-China relationship, rather than about
the Taiwan-US relationship. For the next four years, will it be Trump or the
Republican Party running the government in the US? With Kissinger’s appearance,
the answer is gradually becoming clearer.
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