Double Diplomatic Turmoil - 3 March 2000

Last week, starting off in a rather sombre tone, I suggested that at the end of March something could happen in Vienna which might have a larger effect on American life and prosperity than the topic which is obsessing the country just now, of which man the Republicans will choose as their candidate for the presidency.

The coming ominous event I have in mind was the next full strategy meeting of Opec - the main oil producers on whom we've depended for so long and still depend for most of our energy in spite of the pooh-poohing assurances of a school of some economic and financial "experts" that oil no longer matters, that all our vital energy, in the sense of power that fuels our heating, lighting, production, manufacturer, transport, now comes - or will shortly come - from high technology.

President Clinton, you remember, sent his secretary of energy off to the Middle East to plead with the big three - Saudi Arabia, Iran, Kuwait - to increase their oil production at the Vienna meeting and let us see the price of oil sink from the present horrendous $30 a barrel to something we can all pay.

The big outcry, which forced first mayors and then governors and then the presidency to get roiled up about oil, the outcry came from millions of humble householders - you and me - who, in the fierce winter we've undergone - and March ahead can be a monster - have seen the price of keeping the basement furnace going reach a level they've not known since the infamous year in the early 1970s when Opec quintupled the price of oil in 18 months.

Americans for the first time in peace time learned about daily queues for petrol and every senator and congressman started howling for somebody to discover new sources of energy - synthetic fuels, how about cheaper nuclear power and so forth.

Opec relented and the gas lines - the petrol queues - disappeared and the manufacturers went back to making cars the size of destroyers.

Well I expected the same reflex this week because the day after I recorded my talk the Saudis - and I am not suggesting, you understand, that they heard it - the Saudis responded to Secretary Richardson, the energy wallah, and said yes, they rather thought that come the 27th of this month they would make things easier for the Americans and the Europeans by increasing production and letting a barrel of oil drop in price to, say, $22, 23, 24 from the present awful 30.

There was an audible sigh of relief in Washington and I feared that we'd take it as a done thing and face, with optimism again, the approaching summer when more than half of all the world's motor cars drive short and enormous distances, guzzling up two thirds of the world's expendable oil.

So for a week or so the great oil debate seemed to have gone to rest. But then we heard that Saudi Arabia had spoken prematurely.

A news bulletin denied that America's biggest suppliers, who are Saudi Arabia, Mexico and Venezuela, had ever agreed to raise the crude oil output.

Thursday morning there was worse to come. On the New York Mercantile Exchange the price of crude rose to just under $32 a barrel - the highest price since the Gulf War in 1991.

So now governors in the eastern states and some senators are urging the administration to tap the nation's strategic oil reserve - something it never does except in case of war or some enormous natural disaster. The president has refused.

Even so, with the wrangle over oil coming back on to the front pages and the homeowners renewing their squawkings over the heating bills, President Clinton, for one, had a much more troubling matter on his mind.

If we weren't coasting along so blissfully on the unbelievable and apparently unstoppable prosperity we would probably be the object - the victims - of very grave full-page headlines.

For quite quietly last Wednesday, Taiwan came on to the front pages. And if the worst happened I fear the name, the word, the place Taiwan would hurl every other topic off front pages and off the 90-odd channels on the tube.

And what is that worst? It would be war between the United States and China.

Taiwan - I so rarely, if ever, hear it talked about when I'm in Europe. Indeed in the United States it's only in the West - California especially - that you hear Taiwan talked about as an anxious if not yet an urgent topic.

So if you'll forgive me - or even if not - I had better briefly sketch what Taiwan has meant to the United States and what it expects from any American administration.

Taiwan used to be known as Formosa - by either name a large island of 23m off the south east coast of China.

Once ruled by the Dutch it has been, for most of its history, run by whichever power was in control of the mainland which for the Second World War was Japan.

When Japan lost the war and two years later the mainland was won by the Communist Chinese, 2m of the opposition troops and their families, who'd fought under Chiang Kai-Shek, fled to the island of Taiwan.

The United States swore, from the earliest days of the Communist takeover, that Taiwan should remain to represent China in the United Nations.

The United States swore - in old, long-gone Dean Acheson's words - that Communist China "will never shoot its way into the United Nations."

Well not quite literally but it did. It replaced by Security Council vote Taiwan and in 1978 the United States went further - it severed all diplomatic relations with Taiwan.

Well it took years and eloquent reminders from the Republican Party mainly, that Taiwan had been betrayed by all the democratic powers.

And in time Taiwan started struggling into a democratic system and it developed an immensely successful economy. It is today one of the 10 leading exporters of the world.

During the past 20 years, I think it's fair to say, the American admiration for Taiwan has gone alone with an ill-disguised sense of shame in having deserted her.

The conscience money subsequently paid to Taiwan has been much economic aid and a regular and substantial supply of conventional weapons for its defence.

But this week Taiwan requested from the United States four warships with sophisticated radar and anti-missile systems - the whole package to cost Taiwan, which it can afford, about $6bn.

Why? In defence against whom? Against Beijing, which for the past 40 years has made indirect threats to Taiwan, saying it must renew talks about reuniting itself with the mainland.

The awful sticking - the root of all the concern and of the current extremely sticky diplomatic situation the United States finds itself in - is that Beijing has never recognised Taiwan as an independent nation. It has officially considered it to be an errant, lapsed part of Communist China.

But the request for anti-missile systems alone must seem a very large over reaction to the mere - if constant - scolding from Beijing.

But that request comes in response to a new - a uniquely alarming - warning last week from Beijing in the form of a white paper issued by the Chinese cabinet.

It declared that there were three possible contingencies that would provoke Beijing to take "all drastic measures" including military action:

1. If Taiwan formerly declared itself to be an independent republic.

2. If it were invaded by foreign troops - what this means is if the United States jumped in during Communist manoeuvres designed as a "protective force".

3. If the Taiwan government goes on idling, delaying negotiations to reunify itself with the mainland.

This was more strongly worded than ever before and what is more worrisome is, for the first time, the actual spelling out of military force as one of the drastic actions it would take if and if and if...

Now I hear some listeners saying: But why should this so upset the United States if it broke diplomatic relations 20 years ago and went along with all the other of its allies in expelling poor little Taiwan from the United Nations and welcoming - if you'll excuse the expression - Communist China?

Well, what I should have stressed earlier is that the biggest payment of what I call conscience money, at having deserted Taiwan, the most penitential act of all was the pledge given by every president since Truman of either party, given time and time again whenever Beijing sounded tough or threatened the island, a pledge that any military move by Beijing would have, for the United States, "the most serious, the gravest consequences."

Now this has always been taken to mean, was meant to mean, that the United States would spring to the defence of Taiwan.

Nobody has said the word itself, either spring or defence or, heaven help us, war. Only somebody as gutsy and undiplomatic as the late Senator Barry Goldwater could say: "You land a foot on that island and we'll fight you for it."

Anybody who thinks he/she has a good and sensible solution to this double diplomatic turmoil might care to write to the President of the United States, 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, Washington, DC.

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