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2001 China Q. 147 (2001)
An Uncertain Relationship: The United States, Taiwan and the Taiwan Relations Act

handle is hein.journals/chnaquar42 and id is 151 raw text is: An Uncertain Relationship: The United States, Taiwan and the Taiwan Relations Act* Steven M. Goldstein and Randall Schriver The United States has separate mutual security treaties with Japan and the Republic of Korea which provide for stationing American forces and have established procedures for close co-operation. These alliances con- stitute the keystone of the American security position in East Asia and, possibly, the trigger for future involvement in the area. Yet since the early 1990s these formal alliances have been overshad- owed by a relationship based not on a treaty, but rather on an act of Congress - the Taiwan Relations Act (TRA) of 1979. This domestic legislation provides neither for the stationing of American troops on Taiwan nor for military co-ordination. Nevertheless, it figured promi- nently when, in March 1996, the Clinton administration sought to deter the People's Republic of China (PRC) from disrupting Taiwan's presi- dential elections by dispatching the largest naval force to be deployed in the region since the Vietnam War. These events focused attention on this legislation passed after the Carter administration's normalization of rela- tions with the PRC. At that time, there was considerable Congressional self-congratulation regarding its legislation of a foreign policy commit- ment and its central role in enforcing that commitment. Nevertheless, afterwards, the impact of the TRA has been a matter of debate. Some regard it as a virtual treaty while others depict it as providing for little more than what was already present in existing legislation or the Constitution. Some praise it as a key to the security of Taiwan over the past 20 years while others see its progressive weakening. This discussion joins the debate through an analysis of the origins of the act; its evolutionary course since 1979; and the differing impacts which it has had on the PRC/Taiwan policy of the United States. The Taiwan Relations Act: Origins, Ambiguities and Opportunities The TRA: assuring Taiwan's security? The origins of the TRA were in the legislation submitted by the Carter administration (S.245) intended to maintain commercial, cultural and other relations with the people on Taiwan on an unofficial basis.1 This was technical legislation concerned largely with maintaining the status of the people on Taiwan as a foreign state under American law and providing for the creation of a non-profit * The authors wish to thank Martha Johnson and Nada Tomisova for their research assistance. Special thanks to Nancy Hearst of the Fairbank Center at Harvard University who provided her usual perceptive editorial and critical input. 1. For a text of this bill see United States Congress, Senate, Committee on Foreign Relations, Taiwan: Hearings Before the Committee on Foreign Relations (hereafter Taiwan: Hearings), 96th Congress, 5,6,7,8,21 and 22 February 1979 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1979), pp. 3-10. © The China Quarterly, 2001

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