Based on Japan's Residual Sovereignty HoonTing

Based on Japan's Residual Sovereignty    HoonTing

Before the Summit between the Japanese Prime Minister Suga and the US President Biden on April 18th, Kurt Campbell, the White House National Security Council Coordinator for the Indo-Pacific, flew to Tokyo for the review. One of the issues he provided is said to urge the Japanese version Taiwan Relations Act (TRA).

Japanese version Taiwan Relations Act, which Kurt Campbell provided, has long been an objective of the members of the Taiwan Independence movement. However, those people forget to ask a critical question: Does Japan have the similar authority to make her TRA? Are there any other countries that are qualified to do it?

To answer that question, we have to study the contents of TRA, especially the authority that allows the U.S. to do so.

TRA is guideline legislation to manage the situation after the break-off of the diplomatic relations between the U.S. and the Governing Authority in Taiwan, or the Republic of China as they call. After the break-off, it is natural to shift the diplomacy to the consul, a long traditional institution to serve “people-to-people” relations. The U.S. had a consulate in Taiwan during the Qing Era and the Japanese rule before the Pacific War without any problem. The issue becomes: Why the U.S. had to do it in a complicated way?

As the result of deforming diplomacy, TRA expresses a form of civil law while performs the nature of public law. It repeatedly designates that the U.S. has to “help maintain peace, security, and stability in the Western Pacific;” as well as “to provide Taiwan with arms of a defensive character,” to “make available to Taiwan such defense articles and defense services,” “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 on Taiwan,” and the using of force and the coercion will be considered as “a threat to the peace and security of the Western Pacific area and of grave concern to the United States” etc. in specific.

The question then becomes: Why TRA concerns with the West Pacific region, rather than Taiwan and Penghu, which it is expected to do? Why the invasion of Taiwan will jeopardize the peace of the region?

The West Pacific is the maritime war zone during the Pacific War. Formosa and the Pescadores, known as Taiwan and Penghu, are within the U.S.'s Central Pacific Theater. Being the leading power of the Pacific War, the primary contributor to the victory, the vital role to draft the peace, and the “Principal Occupying Power” of the Treaty of Peace with Japan especially, the U.S. holds the sole and ultimate responsibility to arrange the territories in the Theater. The U.S. leads the battles throughout the War and carries out the peace.

The U.S. responsibility for Taiwan has various forms from designating the military occupation, the conclusion of the mutual defense treaty to the drafting of TRA. In the U.S. constitutional context, Taiwan becomes an "organized but unincorporated territory," or territory with the nature of “foreign in a domestic sense.”

Although Japan renounced Formosa and the Pescadores in the Treaty of Peace of 1951, the procedure of renouncing is yet to complete. When the victorious countries settle and the Taiwanese people concur, Japan, being a former administering authority, has to “agree” the said settlement in a treaty concerning the status of Taiwan to finish the whole process. The "power to agree" is based on Japan’s Residual Sovereignty: to formalize the renunciation, not to resume any.

During waiting for the result, Japan, the former administering authority, and the U.S., the Principal Occupying Power, as well as the UN members, have treaty obligations in maintaining the status quo of Taiwan and keep it from the invasion of any rogue nation. Deploying the JADF around the Taiwan area and across Taiwan Strait is one option, which is also the basis of the “situations in areas surrounding Japan” system. Under such context, Beijing’s Anti-Secession Law of 2005, a blunder of the reverse causation, is worthless to mention.