CENTER’S COX LEADS CONGRESSIONAL EFFORT TO DISCOURAGE CHINESE AGGRESSION AGAINST TAIWAN

(Washington, D.C.): On the eve of renewed missile
launches by communist China in the direction of the
Republic of China on Taiwan — the latest in a series of
provocative acts of intimidation by Beijing —
Representative Chris Cox (R-CA) today unveiled an
important congressional initiative: In his capacity as
Chairman of the House Republican Policy Committee, Rep.
Cox announced that he and a bipartisan group of
cosponsors would shortly introduce a concurrent
resolution designed to end the Clinton Administration’s
policy of “strategic ambiguity” towards Chinese
threats of violent action against Taiwan.

A statement released today by Rep. Cox (a long-time
member of the Center for Security Policy’s Board of
Advisors) on behalf of the forty members of his Policy
Committee said:

“In the face of [China’s] destabilizing and
aggressive actions [against Taiwan], the Clinton
Administration’s response has been supine. The
Administration has pointedly refused to commit to
assist Taiwan in the event of invasion or attack by
the PRC, preferring a posture of ‘strategic
ambiguity’ that virtually invites conflict. In
effect, the Administration has turned President
Reagan’s commitment to ‘peace through strength’ on
its head. In its place, the Clinton Administration’s
dangerous ambiguity risks substituting ‘war through
weakness.'”

On 26 February 1996, the Republican Policy Committee
issued a “Policy Perspective” paper which noted
that recent history has a number of examples in which
mixed American signals appear to have encouraged
aggressors to strike. Examples include: the invasion of
Kuwait by Saddam Hussein’s Iraq; the invasion of
Afghanistan by Leonid Brezhnev’s USSR; and the invasion
of South Korea by Kim Il Sung’s North Korea. There is no
reason for the United States to add to this list of
unnecessary, highly destructive and probably avoidable
military actions by remaining, in President Clinton’s
words, “deliberately ambiguous” about the
American response to Chinese attacks against Taiwan.

The Policy Committee statement released at a packed
Capitol Hill press conference today in the presence of
several of Rep. Cox’s cosponsors (including the Chairman
of the House International Relations Committee, Rep. Ben
Gilman; the Chairman of that Committee’s Asia and Pacific
Subcommittee, Rep. Doug Bereuter; and Reps. Dan Burton,
Dana Rohrabacher, Chris Smith, Ed Royce and Joe
Scarborough) concluded:

“The Taiwan Relations Act of 1979 rests on
the premise that the United States will assist Taiwan
should it face any effort to determine its future by
other than peaceful means, including by blockade.
American policy both before and since that time has
been based on the expectation that the future of
Taiwan will be determined exclusively by peaceful
means and by mutual agreement between the parties. There
should be no ambiguity whatsoever — deliberate or
otherwise — about that expectation, or about the
consequences should it be contravened.“
(Emphasis added.)

The Cox legislation resolves, among other things,
that:

• “The United States should maintain its
  commitment 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, consistent with its
  undertakings in the Taiwan Relations Act.”
• “The United States should maintain a
  naval presence, including submarine
  deployments, sufficient to keep open the sea
  lanes in and near the Taiwan Straits.”
• “…The United States should supply
  Taiwan with defensive weapons systems, including
  submarines, aircraft and air defense, all of
  which are crucial to the security of
  Taiwan.” And
• “The United States, as a demonstration of
  its friendship with and commitment to the
  democratic government and people of Taiwan,
  should assist in defending them against invasion,
  missile attack or blockade by the People’s
  Republic of China.”

The Center for Security Policy commends Rep. Cox and
his cosponsors for providing needed leadership on a
matter of enormous consequence for American security and
interests. It notes that, in doing so, they have
responded appropriately to a clarion call issued last
week by another long-time friend of the Center — former Secretary
of Defense Caspar Weinberger. Secretary Weinberger,
recipient of the Center’s 1991 “Keeper of the
Flame” award, announced on 28 February 1996 that, “There
should be no equivocation” with respect to the U.S.
response to a Chinese attack on Taiwan. He declared that
the sort of comment made by the current Secretary of
Defense, William Perry, to the effect that the response
would “depend on the circumstances” is “an
invitation to aggression.”

The Center endorses Secretary Weinberger’s call for
“a public guarantee that [the United States] would
come in” if Taiwan were attacked. The Cox
resolution is a step in that direction whose thrust
should be embraced urgently and unequivocally by
President Clinton.