Trump a wild card in cross-strait tensions
Previous US presidents have grown more pragmatic when in office
Inadvertently or not, US president-elect Donald Trump’s 10-minute phone call with Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen on December 2 has upended decades of carefully observed American diplomatic tradition in managing a delicate trilateral relationship.
Observers remain divided over whether Trump’s groundbreaking conversation with Tsai was a well-calculated move in response to Beijing’s hardline approach towards Taipei or just a diplomatic blunder. But it’s not the first time in the past four decades that the fragile balance in the Taiwan Strait has been shaken up by an unconventional leader in Washington.
Watch: Trump questions continuing one-China policy
The only thing we know for sure is that he will be different from his predecessors
On the eve of the signing of a historic joint statement by Beijing and Washington on August 17, 1982, US president Ronald Reagan ordered America’s envoy in Taipei to give Taiwanese president Chiang Ching-kuo his personal reassurances about the island’s security.
The visit to Chiang by James Lilley, then head of the American Institute in Taiwan (AIT), which served as the de facto US diplomatic office on the island after Washington switched recognition from Taipei to Beijing in January 1979, came at a critical juncture.
On the one hand, Beijing threatened to downgrade Sino-US relations if Washington failed to address China’s concerns over US arms sales to Taiwan. On the other hand, the island was on high alert over the possibility of Reagan kowtowing to China at its expense.
After eight months of contentious negotiations, Reagan, a Republican, was poised to move ahead with a conciliatory pledge that Washington “intends gradually to reduce its sale of arms to Taiwan”, in return for a renewed commitment from Beijing to “strive for a peaceful solution to the Taiwan question”.