Bush decided yesterday to defer Taiwan's request for high-tech U.S. destroyers with an advanced combat radar system. Instead, the U.S. will offer a less-powerful class of warship. For the United States, this dispute is the most difficult and dangerous of all post-Cold War foreign policy issues, one that could provoke a war with China.
China claims that Taiwan is a province of China and the United States agrees.
The preference of the people of Taiwan for formal independence, which has grown steadily over the last three decades, does not have the support of the American government. At the same time, however, Washington opposes any effort by Beijing to exert control over Taiwan by force. That act includes the promise to provide Taiwan with defensive armaments. Moreover, the forcible conquest by a Communist regime of a democratically governed society with which the United States has had a long association would be morally repugnant to the American public and would severely weaken the standing of the United States in Asia. Thus, no American government will or should abandon Taiwan altogether.