Day: October 9, 2013
Cross-strait optimism 1
Jonas Brown, who will be getting his third masters’ degree at SAIS in December, reports:
The government shutdown last week led President Obama to cancel his long-planned Asia trip, prompting media speculation about the negative implications for his “rebalancing” to Asia and a potential boost to China’s influence in the Asia-Pacific region. Against this backdrop, Taiwanese, Chinese and American experts met at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace (CEIP) last Thursday and Friday for a conference entitled “Cross-Strait Developments in 2013: New Trends and Prospects.” The event included four panel discussions and a keynote speech by Kin Moy, deputy assistant secretary of state in the Bureau of East Asian and Pacific Affairs. Each panel featured four presenters and a commentator, tasked with synthesizing the panelists’ observations and offering concluding remarks.
Arthur Shuh-Fan Ding, a research fellow at National Chengchi University in Taipei, led off the first panel discussion “The Washington-Tapei-Beijing Triangle.” Focusing on Washington-Beijing relations, he predicted a continued mix of moderate cooperation and managed competition. China assumed a more coercive role in the region after the 2008 global financial crisis weakened the US economy. Absent a more complete economic rejuvenation, the US will be unable to regain the credibility necessary to curb Beijing’s assertiveness. Kwei-Bo Huang, a professor at National Chengchi University, emphasized increased participation in international organizations and agreements—such as the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) free trade agreement—as the key to Taiwan’s “survival.” US support will be vital in this effort.
George Washington University international affairs professor Robert Sutter used the Taiwanese debate over nuclear power as a case study to highlight the intensely partisan nature of its domestic politics. This hyper-politicization of issues has caused fatigue among the Taiwanese and concern among American leaders—the irony here was noted—that partisan rivalries will prevent Taiwan from pursuing a coherent approach to critical economic and security issues.
Peng Li, a University of Maryland Fulbright scholar visiting from Xiamen University in China, outlined Beijing’s gradualist approach to unification. Beijing aims to establish a constructive political environment that will permit pragmatic solutions to specific problems in the short term and pave the way for a formal agreement on Taiwan’s status in the future. He expressed concern that a return to power by Taiwan’s Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) might derail this plan and urged the US to support Beijing’s efforts to develop a sustainable political dialogue with Taipei.
Commentator Cynthia Watson, a professor at the National Defense University, underlined the incongruity between Beijing’s hope for slow, consistent progress toward unification and the Taiwan government’s inherently unpredictable democratic process. She expressed doubt that even a full US economic recovery would result in a large injection of resources into American “rebalancing,” due to the current lack of domestic support for expanding foreign policy investment.
In his keynote speech, Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Kin Moy affirmed the US’s “enduring friendship” with Taiwan and sought to dispel any notions that the relationship has deteriorated. He cited close, ongoing U.S.-Taiwan cooperation on economic, security, and environmental issues. Moy expressed support for Taiwan’s participation in international organizations, noting that the US had backed Taiwan’s membership in the WTO, as well as its attendance at the WHO’s 2009 World Health Assembly and the 2013 International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) congress. He said that enlarging the Trans Pacific Partnership requires consensus among existing members. Taiwan will need to commit to further economic liberalization. Moy emphasized that American “rebalancing” entails increased cooperation with both the Beijing and Taipei. There is nothing inconsistent in strengthening ties with both governments.
To begin the second panel discussion, entitled “Opportunities and Challenges in Cross-Strait Relations,” Chinese Culture University professor Chien-Min Chao outlined President Xi Jinping’s “pragmatic” approach to relations with Taiwan. Xi is concentrating on consolidating and developing existing modes of economic and diplomatic cooperation. Taiwan’s guest status at the ICAO congress is evidence of his flexibility. Xi’s stance provides an opportunity for both trust-building and concrete progress on trade talks that should be embraced by Taiwan. The Mainland could help deescalate tensions by easing its military build-up along the Taiwan Strait.
Returning the discussion to Taiwan’s domestic politics, Taipei University professor Samuel Shiouh-Guang Wu said that the Mainland has adopted a more flexible attitude toward Taiwan in part because by demonstrating the economic benefits of closer cross-strait relations, Beijing hopes to short-circuit public support for the DPP. DPP ascendance in Taiwan’s 2014 local elections or 2016 presidential election would introduce new uncertainty into cross-strait relations to the detriment of Taiwan’s interests, because Beijing might become more assertive if faced with a resistant DPP leadership. It is therefore in Taiwan’s interest to maintain the status-quo through a “no surprises” approach to cross-strait diplomacy.
Stimson Center fellow Alan Romberg acknowledged that Taiwan’s tumultuous domestic politics will continue, but both he and Tsinghua University professor Shulong Chu predicted a continuation of Beijing’s tough, patient (“economic first, political later, easy first, difficult later”) approach to Taiwan. Like Peng Li, both forecast stable cross-strait relations focused on steadily developing Track II dialogue in preparation for future Track I talks. Romberg noted an outside chance for a peace accord before 2016 if Beijing explicitly decouples such an agreement from the issue of Taiwan’s political status.
Commentator Bernard Cole, a professor at National Defense University, closed by emphasizing the positive trends in cross-strait relations. The increasing number of direct flights across the Taiwan Strait and the growing number of Taiwanese citizens on the Mainland indicate the degree to which economic and cultural ties have been strengthened, presaging gradual progress toward an eventual peaceful agreement on Taiwan’s status.
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All politics is local
My friends in the Syrian opposition are understandably discouraged. Months of intensified Hizbollah and Iranian support have brought the regime advances on the ground. Some Islamist forces have parted ways with the Coalition of Syrian Revolutionary and Opposition Forces (Etilaf) and its affiliated Supreme Military Council (SMC), whose brigades are finding themselves in a two-front war against both the regime and Islamist extremists. The American/Russian agreement for destroying Syria’s chemical weapons capabilities, now endorsed by the UN Security Council, implicitly assumes the regime will stick around over the next year to get the job done. Washington support for the Etilaf has rarely seemed less certain, even if arms supplies and training are supposedly being amped up.
If Etilaf wants stronger international support, it is going to need to be able to present itself as a serious bulwark against extremism and state collapse.
Anyone thinking Bashar al Asad can play that role is sorely mistaken. He has done his best to polarize the situation in Syria so that he can be viewed as fighting extremism, rather than as repressing a popular rebellion. That polarization is a serious threat to the Syrian state, which was once regarded by the opposition as something to be preserved. Many now see no alternative to disbanding its army and security services, which have conducted themselves in inexcusably violent and sectarian ways.
So the regime is compromised, but the opposition is also. The worst has come from its extreme Islamist wing. The UN human rights reports on Syria document the rise of opposition abuses, on a curve well behind that of the regime but still distressingly similar in its rise. With priority now given to chemical weapons, about which the opposition can do nothing since it apparently has no control of them (and no one, even Moscow, is even pretending that they really do), the regime can present itself as indispensable, even if reprehensible.
To offset this tilt in the direction of the regime, the Coalition needs to present itself as a serious bulwark against extremism and collapse of the Syrian state. This above all means
- gaining better control of the opposition fighting forces;
- presenting a clear alternative for future governance in Syria.
Neither of these is proving easy to accomplish. The SMC is trying to regain some degree of loyalty from brigades that have joined Islamist extremists. It is difficult to see how that can happen without a substantial flow of resources that reconnects the SMC and individual brigades. The formation of a national government by the opposition has stalled for months, even as the Coalition manages to improve its delivery of at least some humanitarian assistance.
Syria is fragmenting into a patchwork. It will likely never again be as centralized a state as under the Assads, who essentially ruled everything from the presidential palace in Damascus. Kurds in the north, Alawites in the west, Druze in the south, Sunnis throughout the country will be unwilling in the aftermath of war to entrust their security or well-being to anyone beyond their local areas. Rebuilding the state will require a localized effort, one that recognizes the widely varying security needs of different communities and adjusts to the reality of populations with varied experiences of rebellion and war.
Progress for a demoralized and discouraged opposition is likely to come not in the form of a national government, but rather from focus on the needs of people at the local level. That is where a determined and clever opposition can outbid the brutal behavior of a regime that has focused for decades on building and maintaining national institutions.
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