Ever since the Senate Republicans defeated the fatally flawed Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, the White House has been whining about what it describes as a new and dangerous level of "partnership" on the GOP's part. What will the administration's complaint be now that the members of the House International Relations Committee have favorably voted out of committee the Taiwan Security Enhancement Act, by the overwhelming and bipartisan margin of 32-6?
Give credit to committee chairman Ben Gilman and Tom DeLay, the GOP whip, for forcing the bill to a vote, and to Chris Cox for managing its final wording. But as the committee vote showed, even Democrats, like Rep. Sam Gejdenson, the ranking member on the committee, are becoming increasingly embarrassed by the administration's supine approach to China and its hesitation in backing Taiwan, a "full-fledged democracy," in its confrontation with "the largest totalitarian state in the world" (Gejdenson's words).
Indeed, Jim Woolsey, Clinton's own former head of Central Intelligence, described the administration policy toward Beijing as one of "appeasement." Just as Britain and France's appeasement of Germany on the question of Czechoslovakia before World War II fed rather than mollified Nazi ambitions, he told the committee, so too the administration's deference to China over Taiwan is "wrongheaded and dangerous."
The administration will undoubtedly attempt to kill the bill on the House floor with a whole host of "the-world-is-going-to-end" arguments. But the House should pass it, move it to the Senate for a vote before recess, and then force the president to veto an act which, on its face, falls squarely within the commitments the United States undertook to the island's self-defense under the 1979 Taiwan Relations Act.
Let the White House explain why supporting the democratic government of Taipei in the face of overt military threats from Beijing is bad policy.