President Caught in a Whopper

Lee Teng-hui President Taiwan

Dear President Lee:

Political rhetoric, in our country and yours, is distinguished by exaggeration. But at a campaign rally last week about America’s fears for Taiwan’s coming elections, you came up with a real whopper, one that could easily mislead the 22 million people on your island. You should know that your whopper did not go unnoticed here in the U.S.

You aren’t even running in the elections next March. You’re stepping down as Taiwan’s president. Still, you understandably care a lot about the campaign. You’re trying to make sure that your own man, Vice President Lien Chan, Taiwan’s version of Al Gore (stolid, loyal, boring) will be elected as your successor.

After all, you’ll still be the chairman of your political party, the Kuomintang--and Lien, its candidate, will owe you more than a little if he wins.

You care, but last week you went too far.

In an impassioned speech, you claimed that Taiwan’s friends overseas, especially the United States and Japan, want to see the Kuomintang win the presidential election next March--because, you said, the Americans and Japanese are afraid of instability in Asia if anyone else comes to power in Taiwan.

That’s not the way it looks in Washington, President Lee.

Here, policymakers have a variety of views about Taiwan. Even within the Clinton administration, officials disagree. Some strongly sympathize with Taiwan, and others don’t. Some believe the United States should give an unqualified commitment to Taiwan’s defense, and others think this would be a bad idea because it might lead Taiwan to declare independence or to provoke a war with China.

But not a single U.S. official, scholar or expert has voiced the fear of instability if your political party should fall from power. Not one.

Your remarks last week were particularly ironic, because there is one scenario in Taiwan that does keep some Americans awake at night.

They’re afraid of you, President Lee. Washington is truly nervous about what you might try to do during your last months in office.

Specifically, U.S. officials are worried that you might try to have your theory of Taiwan’s ties with China--that this is a “special state-to-state relationship”--enshrined with formal legal status in Taiwan’s constitution. That’s the step that China, which claims sovereignty over Taiwan, has made clear could lead to war.

Some Americans go further. Some are afraid that you might try to touch off a military conflict with China during your last months in office, or that you might even come up with some excuse for putting off the elections and keeping yourself in power as president.

Sure, not all of these American fears are justified. If you wanted to scuttle the elections, why would you be working so hard for your vice president?

However, those American fears are the reality, President Lee. You caught Washington completely by surprise last July when you redefined Taiwan’s relations with China. Now, the Americans are afraid of some new shock.

In short, the United States isn’t afraid of your Kuomintang falling from power in Taiwan, but rather of how you personally will deal with giving up power.

What will your legacy be, President Lee? How will history remember you?

If there’s a smooth, quiet transfer of power next spring, you will probably be remembered as an authentic hero.

In 1988, you became Taiwan’s first ethnic-Taiwanese leader. In 1996, you became its first elected president.

You brought democracy to Taiwan. You helped Taiwan overcome half a century of tensions between ethnic Taiwanese and Chinese from the mainland with your shrewd redefinition last year that anyone living on the island could become a “new Taiwan person.”

Sure, you have shrugged off some of Taiwan’s other problems. You’ve done precious little to clean up the corruption that still plagues the island. But on the whole, if nothing happens in your last few months in office, your legacy will be a proud one.

But if you do something now that sparks a war with China, that by itself could become your legacy.

Don’t miscalculate what Washington will do. Sure, Congress and the American public strongly support Taiwan. But this support is for Taiwan’s democratic government, not for you as an individual.

You’ve got the two key congressional committee chairmen, Jesse Helms at Senate Foreign Relations and Ben Gilman of the House International Relations Committee, on your side. But if you start something with China, can you be sure that the Clinton administration will come to Taiwan’s defense? Probably not. President Lee, I recently read your autobiography. Taiwan’s Washington office sent the book to me (and no doubt to scores of other Americans). You called the book “The Road to Democracy.”

In it, you ask, “What will happen in Taiwan after I leave office?” The answer, should be that it will keep traveling down the democratic road without you. In democracies, leaders some day need to step aside gracefully for their elected successors. Will you?