Of course the area I most frequently disagree with my fellow libertarians is on foreign policy—not only the war, but on other matters as well. When it comes to American policy toward Taiwan, this is particularly the case. I noted some time ago how unfortunate I think it is that libertarians are not only willing to support the pretensions to sovereignty of a totalitarian communist dictatorship, but even willing to adopt their language. And unfortunately, the Cato Institute’s Justin Logan and Ted Galen Carpenter do it again in this podcast yesterday and this article in the Asian Wall Street Journal from last week.
Logan applauds the recent elections in Taiwan for resulting in a victory for a less independence-minded president, and says that the new president will be “less likely to rabble rouse.” Rabble rouse? Can we not at least call things by their right names? Taiwan is not, and never has been, a province of the People’s Republic of China. Taiwan is not seeking to interfere in mainland China’s domestic policies in any way whatsoever; it is not seeking to restrict the PRC’s constitutional or political autonomy, or infringe on its sovereignty. Instead, many people on Taiwan simply want to change their own Constitution, so as to acknowledge the often ignored fact that Taiwan is not part and never has been a part of the PRC. Taiwan is not even allowed to change its passports so that the covers say “Taiwan” on them, or rename its airline “Taiwan Airlines.”
For Logan to characterize the more independence-minded political leaders on Taiwan as “rabble rousers” suggests that what these people are trying to do is somehow disruptive and wrong—when all they are asking for is the right of their democratic nation to not suffer a cloud on its title by a totalitarian communist dictatorship! How dare Logan call this “rabble rousing”? Even if you believe that America should not use military power to protect Taiwan from China—that is to say, even if you believe that America should turn its back on a democratic ally in Asia in confrontation with a bloodthirsty totalitarian dictatorship—surely we can at least acknowledge that it is not “rabble rousing” for a political leader to seek at least a modicum of respectable independence for his country.
Yet Ted Galen Carpenter is even worse. For Taiwan to use the word Taiwan on its documents and corporations is, in his eyes, a “strategy of antagonizing Beijing.” Antagonizing? How is this antagonizing? What is the use of this word if not appeasement to the unjustified, even hysterical jealousy of the PRC over territory that does not and never has belonged to it? If we can’t call Taiwan by its right name, we will only have more difficulty in calling a muderous totalitarian regime with no legitimate claim to the land and people of Taiwan by its right name. It might make “sensible Taiwanese nervous” to take tiny measures in favor of justice and truth such as renaming state-run corporations or putting Taiwan on the cover of passports, but only because China rattles its immense sabre at Taiwan for taking these steps even though Taiwan has every right to take them. They are simply not aggressive acts.
Maybe Capenter and Logan are right that America should not intervene militarily if China’s dictators choose to move against a small democratic nation that has committed no aggression. But for them to accept in principle China’s unjustified claims, and accept them so much that they are willing to adopt the PRC’s fraudulent terminology by describing Taiwan’s perfectly legitimate, sovereign acts as wrongful or antagonistic, is another, and in my mind much worse matter. Taiwan has a right to substitute the name Taiwan for China in its corporations; it has a right to seek admission to the United Nations under the name Taiwan; it has a right to change its constitution to acknowledge that it no longer seeks to restore democracy to mainland China; it has a right to acknowledge its independence from the mainland if it so chooses. Perhaps the U.S. should not be the guarantor of that right, but why should America not at least applaud these things, even if it does not intervene militarily?
Evidently the Chinese themselves have an old saying: the beginning of wisdom is calling things by their right names. If Taiwan chooses to call itself by its right name, we could learn a little wisdom and realize that it is not aggression for them to do so and that the PRC has no legitimate right to stop them from doing so.
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