Wednesday, President Bush further strengthened support for Taiwan when asked, by a reporter, his position on defending Taiwan against a potential Mainland China attack. If Taiwan is, as we have continued to maintain, a province of the mainland, then the mainland has every reason to be extremely angry over our arms sales to Taiwan and the President's rhetoric. China maintains that such a sale represents interference in its internal affairs. They have a point. But if Taiwan is really an independent country then she has every right to defend herself.
Fiction is often useful in diplomacy to some extent and in some instances.
But the fiction of Taiwan as a province of the mainland, which has permitted both China and the U.S. to avoid dealing with reality for half a century, ought to come to an end immediately. Then and only then will the right decisions be made concerning Taiwan's future. Otherwise, I am afraid that future may be tied to a fiction that exists only in the minds of the policy makers at the State Department. That would be bad news indeed for the brave people of Taiwan who are a textbook Democratic Republic, standing before the world as an example of what can happen when things are done as they should be. Paul Weyrich is president of the Free Congress Foundation.