Taiwan Arms Sales and the Third Communiqué
The early phase of
the Reagan administration was marked by its chief’s faith that his
persuasiveness could bridge the gap between two, on the face,
incompatible positions. In practice, it meant that both positions
were carried out simultaneously. The issue had some urgency because
normalization had taken precedence over resolving a final legal
status for Taiwan. Carter had stated that America intended to
continue to supply arms to Taiwan. Deng, eager to complete the
normalization process so that he could confront Vietnam with at
least the appearance of American support, proceeded with
normalization, in effect ignoring Carter’s unilateral statement on
arms supply. In the meantime, in 1979 the U.S. Congress had
responded to the winding down of the official American diplomatic
presence in Taipei by passing the Taiwan Relations Act. This
legislation outlined a framework for continued robust economic,
cultural, and security ties between the United States and Taiwan,
and declared that the United States “will make available to Taiwan
such defense articles and defense services in such quantity as may
be necessary to enable it to maintain a sufficient self-defense
capacity.”2 As soon as the Reagan administration took
office, Chinese leaders raised the Taiwan arms issue again,
treating it as an unfinished aspect of normalization and bringing
to a head the American internal contradictions. Reagan made no
secret of his wish that some arms sales to Taiwan go forward. His
Secretary of State, Alexander Haig, had a contrary view. Haig had
been my deputy on the Nixon White House staff that planned the
secret visit in 1971. He had led the technical team that advanced
Nixon’s visit, during which he had a substantive conversation with
Zhou. As a member of the generation that had experienced the start
of the Cold War, Haig was keenly aware of how the addition of China
to the anti-Soviet camp altered the strategic equilibrium. Haig
treated the potential role of China as a de facto American ally as
a breakthrough to be preserved as a top priority. As a result, Haig
sought for ways to come to an understanding with Beijing whereby
the United States would supply arms to both China and
Taiwan.
That scheme foundered
on both sides. Reagan would not agree to formal arms sales to
China, and Beijing would not consider a deal that implied a trade
of principle for military hardware. Matters threatened to get out
of hand. Haig, conducting arduous negotiations both within the U.S.
government and with his counterparts in Beijing, achieved an
agreement that permitted both sides to postpone a final resolution,
while establishing a roadmap for the future. That Deng acquiesced
in so indefinite and partial an outcome demonstrates the importance
he attached to maintaining close relations with the United States
(as well as his confidence in Haig).
The so-called Third
Communiqué of August 17, 1982, has become part of the basic
architecture of the U.S.-China relationship, regularly reaffirmed
as part of the sacramental language of subsequent high-level
dialogues and joint communiqués. It is odd that the Third
Communiqué should have achieved such a status together with the
Shanghai Communiqué of Nixon’s visit and the normalization
agreement of the Carter period. For the communiqué is quite
ambiguous, hence a difficult roadmap for the future.
Each side, as before,
restated its basic principles: China affirmed its position that
Taiwan was a domestic Chinese affair in which foreigners had no
legitimate role; America restated its concern for a peaceful
resolution, going so far as to claim that it “appreciates the
Chinese policy of striving for a peaceful resolution.” This
formulation evaded the consistent and frequently repeated Chinese
assertion that it reserved its freedom of action to use force if a
peaceful resolution proved unfeasible. The key operative paragraph
concerned arms sales to Taiwan. It read:
[T]he United States Government states that it does not seek to carry out a long-term policy of arms sales to Taiwan, that its arms sales to Taiwan will not exceed, either in qualitative or in quantitative terms, the level of those supplied in recent years since the establishment of diplomatic relations between the United States and China, and that it intends to reduce gradually its sales of arms to Taiwan, leading over a period of time to a final resolution. In so stating, the United States acknowledges China’s consistent position regarding the thorough settlement of this issue.3
None of these terms
was precisely defined—or, for that matter, defined at all. What was
meant by “gradually” was left open; nor was the “level” reached in
the Carter period, which was to be the benchmark, ever specified.
While the United States abjured a policy of long-term arms sales,
it gave no indication of what it understood by “long-term.” While
China reaffirmed its insistence on a final settlement, it
established no deadline and submitted no threat. Domestic
imperatives on both sides dictated the limits: China would not
accept the principle of a foreign arms supplier on what it
considered its own territory. American politics, underscored by the
passage of the Taiwan Relations Act by wide margins in the U.S.
Congress, did not permit any cutoff of arms for Taiwan. It is a
tribute to the statesmanship on both sides that this state of
affairs has been continued for nearly thirty years since the events
discussed in these pages.
The immediate
aftermath of the Third Communiqué showed that its meaning was not
self-evident to the President of the United States. He told the
publisher of the National Review: “You
can tell your friends there I have not changed my mind one damn bit
about Taiwan. Whatever weapons they need to defend themselves
against attacks or invasion by Red China, they will get from the
United States.”4 Reagan felt so strongly on this subject
that he called Dan Rather, then the anchor on the CBS Evening News, to deny reports that he no longer
backed Taiwan, declaring: “There has been no retreat by me. . . .
We will continue to arm Taiwan.”5
To carry out the
President’s conviction, the White House secretly negotiated the
so-called Six Assurances with Taiwan to restrict the implementation
of the communiqué it had just signed with China. The assurances
affirmed that the United States had not set a specific date to end
arms sales to Taiwan, had not committed to consulting with Beijing
on such sales, had not committed to amend the Taiwan Relations Act,
had not altered its position regarding Taiwan’s political status,
and would neither pressure Taipei to negotiate with Beijing nor
serve as a mediator.6 The assurances were reinforced by a
memorandum placed in the files of the National Security Council
that tied observance of the communiqué to the peaceful solution of
the differences between the People’s Republic and Taiwan. The
administration also proceeded to give a liberal interpretation to
the Third Communiqué’s concept of “reducing” “arms sales” to
Taiwan. Through technology transfers (technically not “arms sales”)
and an inventive interpretation of the “level” of various weapons
programs, Washington extended a program of military support to
Taiwan whose duration and substance Beijing seems not to have
anticipated.
The Taiwan Relations
Act, of course, binds the President; it has never been acknowledged
by China’s leaders, who do not accept the premise that American
legislation can create an obligation with respect to arms sales to
Taiwan or condition American diplomatic recognition on the peaceful
resolution of the Taiwan issue. It would be dangerous to equate
acquiescence to circumstance with agreement for the indefinite
future. That a pattern of action has been accepted for a number of
years does not obviate its long-term risks, as Beijing’s heated
reaction to the arms sale of the spring of 2010
demonstrates.
The Reagan
administration’s China and Taiwan policy during the first term was
therefore a study in almost incomprehensible contradictions—between
competing personalities, conflicting policy goals, contradictory
assurances to Beijing and Taipei, and incommensurable moral and
strategic imperatives. Reagan gave the impression of supporting all
of them at once, all as a matter of deep conviction.
To the scholar or the
traditional policy analyst, the Reagan administration’s early
approach to the People’s Republic and Taiwan violated every ground
rule of coherent policy. However, as with many other controversial
and unconventional Reagan policies, it worked out quite well in the
following decades.
The remarkable aspect
of Reagan’s presidency was his ability to blunt the edges of
controversy even while affirming his own essentially unchanging
convictions. Whatever his disagreements, Reagan never turned them
into personal confrontations; nor did he transform his strong
ideological convictions into crusades other than rhetorical. He was
therefore in a position to reach across ideological gulfs on the
basis of practicality and even goodwill—as Reagan and his
subsequent Secretary of State George Shultz’s remarkable series of
negotiations with their Soviet counterparts Mikhail Gorbachev and
Eduard Shevardnadze over nuclear arms limitations would
demonstrate. With respect to China, its leaders came to understand
that Reagan had gone as far as his convictions permitted and to the
utmost limit of what he was able to accomplish within the American
political context. He would therefore gain credit for goodwill even
while taking positions that would have been rejected—perhaps even
indignantly—had they been put forward in a more formal setting or
by a different President.
The seeming
contradictions in the end established two timelines: what would be
done immediately and what might be left to the future. Deng seems
to have understood that the communiqué established a general
direction. It could be traveled once conditions had altered the
context that prevented it at the beginning of the Reagan
administration.
After Shultz took
over the State Department in 1982, despite some uncomfortable
conversations and bruised egos, the United States, the People’s
Republic, and Taiwan all emerged from the early 1980s with their
core interests generally fulfilled. Beijing was disappointed with
Washington’s flexible interpretation of the communiqué; but on the
whole, the People’s Republic achieved another decade of American
assistance as it built its economic and military power and its
capacity to play an independent role in world affairs. Washington
was able to pursue amicable relations with both sides of the Taiwan
Strait and to cooperate with China on common anti-Soviet
imperatives, such as intelligence sharing and support for the
Afghan insurgency. Taiwan obtained a bargaining position from which
to negotiate with Beijing. When the dust eventually settled, the
most vocally anti-Communist and pro-Taiwan President since Nixon
had been able to preside over a “normal” relationship with the
People’s Republic of China without any major crisis.