Bathing in Lukewarm Water: American Public Opinion Regarding the US Security Commitment to Taiwan

1 Bathing in Lukewarm Water: American Public Opinion Regarding the US Security Commitment to Taiwan Steven I. Levine University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Conclusions Faced with a direct and imminent PRC threat to Taiwan or an actual attack against the island republic, U.S. policymakers will likely respond according to their understanding of America s regional and global strategic interests, their assessment of the overall international balance of forces, and the specificities of the unfolding situation, not on the basis of American public opinion regarding the US security commitment to Taiwan. There is certainly nothing unusual about this. Public opinion is rarely if ever a primary determinant of U.S. foreign policy. It is usually an environmental factor that itself is subject to influence and manipulation by policymakers who wish to pursue a particular course of action. I begin this paper with a conclusion rather than an introduction not just for the sake of perversity, although that is an under appreciated scholarly value, but also to emphasize this fundamental point about my topic. Judging from several dozen public opinion polls eliciting American public opinion regarding Taiwan in the last half-dozen years as well as a sampling of editorial opinion, it seems that a majority of the American public has a generally favorable view of Taiwan, but is unenthusiastic and divided about the potential deployment of US armed forces in defense of Taiwan. Undoubtedly, the prospect of a Sino-American armed conflict arising from US military support for Taiwan is responsible for this caution. These conclusions are drawn from analysis of polls that typically posed rather simplistic questions. We may suppose that most of the opinions expressed therein were neither deeply rooted in substantive

2 knowledge nor necessarily firmly held. The primary conclusion I draw is that American public opinion regarding Taiwan creates a permissive environment in which U.S, policymakers may pursue their own policy preferences with respect to the US-China- Taiwan triangle. They may do so without worrying about a domestic political backlash or significant domestic political voting blocs whose interests must be indulged or assuaged. Views of Taiwan During the early and middle phases of the cold war, American views of Taiwan were forged in the crucible of the cold war strategic and ideological contest against international communism. To be sure, following the communist conquest of China Republican and Democratic administrations quickly rediscovered that Chiang Kai-shek was an irascible ally and that his government s interests with respect to China policy and regional security often diverged from those of the United States. The screening of these differences from public view, however, served to sustain the American myth of Free China as heroic David battling Communist Goliath. 1 The transformation on dubious strategic grounds of official Washington s view of China beginning in the early 1970s led to the increasing marginalization of Taiwan, particularly as viewed from the White House, a process that, unfortunately, continues to this day. Meanwhile, the Taiwanese people s struggle against Guomindang one-party dictatorship on Taiwan culminated in the transformation of Free China into democratic Taiwan. This struggle, although inadequately reported in the American media, helped shift the basis of American 1 For surveys o US relations with Taiwan during the cold war, see John W. Garver, The Sino- American Alliance: Nationalist China and American Cold War Strategy in Asia (Armonk, N.Y.: M. E. Sharpe, 1997); and Nancy Bernkopt Tucker, UTaiwan, Hong Kong, and the United States, 1945-1992 (New York: Twayne, 1994).

3 domestic support for Taiwan from a cold war rationale to one more deeply rooted in the basic American political value system. With this very brief background, let us now look at recent American public opinion regarding four dimensions of Taiwan as it figures in the American consciousness and foreign policy preferences. These are: (1) General feelings toward Taiwan; (2) Views of Taiwan s status; (3) Views of Taiwan s basic relationship with the United States; and (4) Views concerning US military obligations vis-à-vis Taiwan. Relatively few Americans have direct experience of Taiwan as tourists, as businesspersons, as military personnel stationed on the island, or via family connections. Therefore, it is not surprising that Taiwan evoked neither particularly warm nor particularly cool responses on the feeling thermometer on which the Chicago Council on Foreign Relations asked nearly 1900 respondents to rate Taiwan in February 1999. 2 The mean temperature recorded was 51 degrees or just one degree above neutral. (A breakdown of responses is not provided on the internet source I consulted.) A Gallup Poll on March 23, 2000, just days after the election of Chen Shui-bian, found 47 percent of respondents with very favorable (10 percent) or mostly favorable (37percent) views of Taiwan compared to 37 percent who had mostly unfavorable (27 percent) or very unfavorable (10 percent) views of the island. (The remaining 16 percent had no opinion and, one is tempted to add, probably couldn t have located Taiwan on a map of Taiwan.) Another Gallup Poll released on June 6, 2000, reported identical results from interviews with 3,000 respondents in March and May. 3 It would be interesting to know whether the 37 percent unfavorable ratings reflected a belief that 2 Of these 1507 were members of the general public and 379 leaders. See http://poll.orspub.com/poll/lpext.dll/ors/t/taiwan/028119-1999.htm?f 3 See http://poll.orspub.com/poll/lpext.dll/ors/t/taiwan/032630-2000.htm?f

4 President Chen Shui-bian would create problems for the United States by challenging the status quo. By early 2001, Taiwan s favorable numbers had shot up to 62 percent, of which 52 percent were mostly favorable, and the unfavorable response dropped to 22 percent, of which 14 percent were mostly unfavorable. 4 Yet on the Chicago Council of Foreign Relations feelings thermometer in 2002 Taiwan registered just 50 degrees, which placed it squarely in the middle. 5 Evidently, for most Americans Taiwan aroused neither positive nor negative political fevers. With respect to our second question, American views of Taiwan s international status, the limited evidence I have suggests that a clear majority of Americans thinks of Taiwan as a separate country. This suggests common-sense realism and the fact that most individual Americans, unlike official Washington and the international community, are not subject to pressure from Beijing unless, of course, such individuals are doing business with the PRC or for parallel reasons seek to avoid provoking China s wrath. A Harris Poll released on August 8, 1995 found that 69 percent of American respondents (N=1003) thought of Taiwan as a completely separate and independent country while only 26 percent thought it was part of China. 6 In May 1996, two months after the election of Chen Shui-bian, 62 percent of Americans thought of Taiwan as completely separate and independent while 29 percent thought it was part of China. 7 In the weeks prior to Taiwan s presidential election, American media devoted considerable attention to Beijing s crude attempts to pressure the Taiwan electorate, and it may be that many Americans who ordinarily paid no attention to Taiwan were confused regarding the actual state of affairs, 4 See http://poll.orspub.com/poll.lpext.dll/ors/t/taiwan/008876-2001ab.ht 5 See http://poll.orspub.com/poll.lpext.dll/ors/t/taiwan/003817-2002g.htm? 6 See http://poll.orspub.com/poll.lpext.dll/ors/t/taiwan/025968-1995.htm?f 7 See http://poll.orspub.com/poll.lpext.dll/ors/t/taiwan/026469-1996.ht,?f

5 Be that as it may, the value Americans place on self-determination was evident from a March 1996 Harris Poll (N=1005) showing that 69 percent of respondents thought that Taiwan and China should be reunified only if Taiwanese desired this outcome while another 18 percent opined that reunification should never occur at all. (Only 2 percent thought it should happen under any circumstances and 11 percent were unsure.) 8 That same Harris Poll. Incidentally, showed 45 percent in favor of the US supporting Taiwan s bid to rejoin the UN even in the face of PRC anger. 9 A third question that has elicited remarkably stable answers over the past decade is the following, posed in October 1995 by the Institute for Social Research at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill: Do you feel that Taiwan is a close ally of the US, is friendly but not a close ally, is not friendly but not an enemy, or is unfriendly and is an enemy of the United States. In reply, 14 percent of respondents viewed Taiwan as a close ally, 50 percent as friendly but not a close ally, 22 percent as unfriendly and five percent as an enemy. The remaining 8 percent were unsure. 10 Thus, nearly two-thirds of respondents perceived Taiwan as a close ally or a friendly nation. We have responses to almost identical questions posed by the ISR (1997-1998), and the Harris Poll (2000-2003) in each of the succeeding years except for 1996 and 1999. [See Table 1 for summary results] 8 See http://poll.orspub.com/poll.lpext.dll/ors/t/taiwan/026471-1996.htm?f 9 See http://poll.orspub.com/poll.lpext.dll/ors/t/taiwan/026470-1996.htm?f 10 See http://poll.orspub.com/polllpext.dll/ors/t/taiwan/025967-1995.htm?f

6 TABLE 1 American Views of Taiwan In Relation to the United States 1995 1997 1998 2000 2001 2002 2003 Close ally 14 20 21 19 21 17 20 Friendly 50 41 38 34 35 36 33 Not friendly 22 19 22 21* 17 22 20 Enemy 5 5 4 * 2 4 5 Not sure/ 8 16 15 23 25 22 24 No response [Numbers do not all add up to 100 because of rounding.] Roughly one of five respondents viewed Taiwan as a close ally of the United States; about the same number were unsure or would not respond. The combined percentage of those who viewed Taiwan as a close ally or a friendly country varied between a high of 64 percent in 1995 and a low of 53 percent in 2000, 2001, and 2003, but was consistently a majority and far exceeded the roughly one-quarter of respondents who viewed Taiwan as unfriendly or an enemy. I suspect that most of those who viewed Taiwan as unfriendly or an enemy did so not on the basis of any knowledge but from a general distrust of foreign countries or on the mistaken assumption that Taiwan was part of the PRC. A further confirmation of the majority s positive view of Taiwan came in a Gallup Poll survey of March 2000 in which 56 percent of respondents [N=1024] felt that possession of nuclear weapons by Taiwan would not

7 constitute a serious threat to the US. 11 (Thirty-nine percent thought it would of whom some were those who perceived Taiwan as unfriendly or hostile and others opposed nuclear proliferation in general.) What I find remarkable in these figures is that during a period when Taiwan was rarely in the news, except during its presidential elections in March 1996 and March 2000, times when US media reported on PRC threats to Taiwan, a fairly stable majority of Americans continued to view the island republic positively. Since US media reports regularly emphasized Taiwan s democratic political system, and contrasted that with PRC authoritarianism, we may hypothesize that the congruence between the core American value of democracy and Taiwan s successful implementation of a democratic system was largely responsible for the preponderance of positive views. It is one thing to entertain positive views of another country; it is something else to support the use of one s own country s armed forces to defend the other country against attack from a third party. Somewhere between the feeling thermometer and the dispatch of armed forces, possibly into harm s way, is the question of transferring advanced weapons system to a threatened ally or friendly country such as Taiwan. In a Harris Poll released on March 8, 1996, only 26 percent of respondents (N=1005) favored sending a U.S. aircraft carrier to the Taiwan Strait to try to decrease China s influence on Taiwan s election. More than two-thirds of the respondents (68 percent) opposed such a move and 6 percent were unsure. 12 The Clinton administration s decision to send an aircraft carrier group to the waters off Taiwan did not raise an outcry in the United States and was broadly supported by editorial and 11 See http://poll.orspub.com/poll/lpext.dll/ors/t/taiwan/032634-2000.htm?f 12 See http://poll.orspub.com/poll/lpext.dll/ors/t/taiwan/026472-1996.htm?f

8 public opinion once the action was taken. 13 This same poll showed 29 percent responding affirmatively to the idea that America should fight to defend Taiwan against China should China attempt to invade Taiwan militarily. 14 Nearly two-thirds (65 percent) opposed American military intervention and 5 percent were unsure. 15 In September 1996, six months after the Sino-American contretemps over Taiwan, and in the aftermath of President Clinton s reminder to Beijing of America s interest in Taiwan s security, the Project on Foreign Policy and the Public in Washington, DC conducted a telephone survey of 1,214 respondents asking whether they would favor or oppose sending US naval forces to help protect Taiwan in the event China once again makes threatening gestures toward Taiwan. This time 50.5 percent favored such action while 38 percent opposed it. 16 Presumably the successful deployment of US naval forces in March without precipitating a conflict with China accounts for the bare majority in favor. It also suggests that if US policymakers decided to use force to oppose a PRC attack on Taiwan, they would be able, at least initially, to activate latent pro-taiwan feeling in support of their policy despite the reluctance of the American public to support war in hypothetical cases. The same poll asked what course respondents would support if Congress favored and the President opposed sending US naval forces to defend Taiwan. Here the results were evenly split with 45.4 percent favoring and 45.7 percent opposing. 17 What is interesting is that as many proposed to follow Congress as 13 For one account, among many, see John Garver, Face Off: China, the United States, and Taiwqan s Democratization ( Seatrtle: University of Washington Preess, 1997). 14 See http://poll.orspub.com/poll/pext.dll/ors/t/taiwan/026473-1996.ht,?f 15 Ibid. 16 See http://poll.orspub.com/poll/lpext.dll/ors/t/taiwan/026474-1996.htm?f A University of Maryland poll in September 1997 that asked the identical question received identical responses. See http://poll.orspub.com/poll/pext.dll/ors/t/taiwan/024755-1997.htm?f 17 See http://poll/orspub.com/poll/lpext.dll/ors/t/taiwan/026475-1996.htm?f Again, the University of Maryland 1997 poll referred to in the preceding footnote confirmed this distribution

9 the President even though the Executive Branch, and the President in particular, is usually the initiator of foreign policy decisions involving matters of war and peace. A Pew Research Center telephone survey in March 1999 (N=1008) asked, If war breaks out in Taiwan, in your opinion would the United States have a responsibility to do something about the fighting there, or not? The phrasing of the question left open how the US should discharge its responsibility, whether through military or non-military means, and did not raise the prospect of a Sino-American armed conflict. Even so, only 40 percent of respondents thought the US had such a responsibility while 46 percent answered it did not. 18 This suggests that about two-thirds to three-quarters of Americans who consider Taiwan an ally or a friend think the United States has a responsibility to do something on behalf of Taiwan. This percentage would likely swell if Washington could make the case that it was coming to the aid of a friendly democracy (Taiwan) being threatened or attacked by an international bully (the PRC). A cognate question asked of the general public by the Chicago Council on Foreign Relations in February 1999 (N=1507] determined that 52 percent believed the United States had a vital interest in Taiwan. 19 Early in the administration of President George W. Bush the perennial question of U.S. arms sales to Taiwan arose once again. Washington s policy in this area was seen as a litmus test in both Taipei and Beijing of the new administration s position with respect to the US-PRC-Taiwan triangle. Consideration of the issue came hard upon the heels of the PLAAF bumping of an American EP-3 surveillance plane over the South China Sea that resulted in the loss of the Chinese jet and its pilot, and the unauthorized of opinion on this question. See http://poll.orspub.com/poll/lpext.dll/ors/t/taiwan/024756-1997.htm?f 18 See http://poll.orspub.com/poll/lpext.dll.ors/t/taiwan/028121-1999.htm>f 19 See http://poll.orspub.com/poll/lpext.dll.ors/t/taiwan/028118-1999.htm?f

10 landing and detention on Hainan island of the American crew for two weeks. A Newsweek telephone poll of April 14 [N=1000] found only 35 percent in favor of Congress approving the administration s request to sell new military equipment to Taiwan with 50 percent opposing. 20 A Reuters/Zogby International telephone survey of likely voters on April 26, 2001 (N=754) found just 28 percent supporting US sale of state of the art military weapons to Taiwan with 57 percent opposing. 21 A much larger (N=7123) on-line survey by the same firm of likely voters conducted simultaneously reversed these findings, finding 56 percent support for arms sales and 26 percent opposed. 22 My only possible explanation for this discrepancy is the presumed greater knowledge and sophistication of internet users, but I would welcome alternate explanations. Support for US arms sales to Taiwan dropped to 39 percent in a May 10, 2001 Market Shares Corporation telephone survey of registered voters (in Illinois only) that noted PRC opposition to such sales and the risk of worsening relations with China. In this survey 41 percent opposed US arms sales to Taiwan. 23 It appears that when viewed in a purely bilateral context, a majority of Americans not only have positive if relatively affectless views of Taiwan, but are also inclined to support Taiwan s political aspirations, particularly its recognition by and participation in the international community, as a matter of fairness and realism. Viewing Taiwan as an ally or friend, a majority of Americans also approves strengthening Taiwan s ability to defend itself through transfer of modern military equipment and would not feel threatened even were Taiwan to possess nuclear 20 See http://poll.ors.pub.com/poll/pext.dll.ors/t/taiwan/007877-2001ab.ht 21 See http://poll.orspub.com/poll/pext.dll.ors/t/taiwan/003518-2001fg.ht 22 See http://poll.orspub.com/poll/pext.dll.ors/t/taiwan/002017-2001f.htm? 23 See http://poll.orspub.com/poll/pext.dll.ors/t/taiwan/003959-2002a.htm?

11 weapons. Once China is introduced into the equation, however, things change. Here I must speculate a bit about what the poll data suggests. For years now the American media have reported on China s rise to global power status and on its rapid economic development. To be sure, much reporting on China remains negative, emphasizing such things as continuing human rights violations, absence of the rule of law, government corruption, abuse of migrant workers, gender inequality, and so forth. Yet, the larger picture that emerges is of a rising power that poses a potential challenge to American strategic and economic interests, which cannot be ignored, and which is best dealt with by multiplying opportunities for cooperation rather than risking confrontation. In this context, Beijing wishes Taiwan to appear as an obstacle to Sino-American cooperation rather than the independent democracy defending its own national interest. Like the child in a Victorian household, Taiwan is not supposed to speak unless spoken to and must carefully mind its P s and Q s lest it incur the displeasure of its parents or guardians. This implicit notion of father knows best lies at the heart of the current contretemps over President Chen Shui-bian s plan to hold a popular referendum on March 20, 2004 concurrent with the forthcoming presidential election. Meeting with PRC Premier Wen Jiabao at the White House on December 9, 2003, Mr. Bush, observing Beijing s taboo against referring to Chen Shui-bian as the president of Taiwan, said, the comments and actions made by the leader of Taiwan indicate that he may be willing to make decisions unilaterally to change the status quo. This carefully crafted statement was correctly interpreted as a rebuke to President Chen and elicited praise from the PRC. How was it received in the United States?

12 The strongest criticism of the American president s words came from some of Mr. Bush s neo-conservative supporters, China skeptics whose long-standing view of China as a strategic competitor and Taiwan as a de facto US ally initially informed Bush s China policy. After September 11 the United States shifted to a much more benign view of China as an ally in the so-called war against terrorism, a delusion that comported with Beijing s own foreign policy interests. In a Memorandum to Opinion Leaders dated December 9, 2003, three neo-conservative stalwarts, Irving Kristol, Robert Kagan, and Gary Schmitt, criticized President Bush s statement as a mistake, and said that in response to Beijing s calculated fit over Taiwan s decision to hold a referendum, the U/S. government decided to at least partly appease Beijing. They went on to say, Appeasement of a dictatorship simply invites further attempts at intimidation. Standing with democratic Taiwan would secure stabiliy in East Asia. Seeming to reward Beijing s bullying will not. 24 Just days before, The Project for the New American Century circulated an article in the Asian Wall Street Journal by Heritage Foundation Fellow and retired Foreign Service Office John J. Tkacik, Jr. who criticized President Bush for blaming Taiwan in the face of Chinese saber-rattling and called on the president to stand firm against China s threats of military action against democratic Taiwan. 25 Not everyone was as critical of the president. The Wall Street Journal editorialized on December 10, 2003 that the charge of appeasement leveled against Bush was unfair, and added that his administration has done much more than any recent U.S. government to help bring Taiwan out of its isolation. 26 An editorial in the Cleveland Plain Dealer on December 10, 2003 praised President Bush for clarifying the 24 http://www.newamericancentury.org/taiwan-20031209.htm 25 Reprinted on Project for the New American Century web site at http://www.newamericancentury.org/taiwan-20031205.htm 26 Wall Street Journal (Eastern edition), Dec. 10, 2003, A18.

13 previous policy of strategic ambiguity and said, astonishingly, that The United States must walk a fine line as an ally of both [China and Taiwan]. In similar vein, a December 18, 2003 editorial in The Buffalo News said that President Bush took the strategically correct but politically risky step of siding with China against a Taiwanese leader recently. It is the wrong time for Taiwan to be pushing to upset a status quo that has kept it informally independent with American protection. The Memphis Commercial Appeal took a different tack regarding Taiwan s proposed referendum, saying that China is the aggressor in this instance and Taiwan is relying on one of the greatest tools of a free people: the ballot box. Instead of retreating from his principled words about democracy, the President could have invoked an option that could scarcely have offended either China or Taiwan. He could have kept quiet. This superficial sampling of editorial opinion is intended merely to sketch the parameters of the intermittent dialogue on U.S. policy toward Taiwan in the press. A complete analysis is well beyond the scope of this paper. What does emerge from the comments regarding President Bush s December 9 th admonition to President Chen Shuibian as well as a cursory survey of articles from the American press over the past several years are three markers that inform contemporary American public opinion regarding Taiwan. The first is admiration for the democratic character of Taiwan s political system in contrast to China s authoritarian regime. Second is Taiwan s prosperity connected to high-tech industry and international trade. Third is the depiction of Taiwan as a doughty and plucky country that lives in the menacing shadow of its giant neighbor and manages to prospers by its wits and hard work. Taken together these three attributes inform the generally positive if emotionally detached view of Taiwan that the opinion polls analyzed above reveal. In its efforts to influence American public opinion,

14 democracy is the strongest card that Taiwan holds, and Taiwan officials and institutions interested in cultivating American public opinion would do well to play this card whenever possible rather than tout Taiwan s economic progress which, as we know, authoritarian regimes are equally able to achieve.