The incident on Senkaku Islands is not the first time the United States has asserted itself in support of the U.S.-Japan Security Alliance to the chagrin of the PRC. In April 2001 a U.S. Navy EP-3 surveillance aircraft, which departed from Kadena Air Base in Okinawa, collided with a Chinese fighter-jet in the skies over the East China Sea resulting in the crash of the Chinese plane and death of its pilot and the emergency landing of the U.S. Navy plane on Hainan Island. This incident resulted in high tensions between Beijing and Washington as responsibility for the incident was levied upon each other. This incident caused Beijing to question the activities of U.S. forces in East Asia
179 Xinhua News Agency in Tokyo Shimbun (Tokyo), 25 March 2004. 180 Tokyo Shimbun (Tokyo), 24 March, 2004.
181 Hiroyuki Akita, “US Administration clarifies, “Japan-US Security Treaty Also Applies to the
and the surveillance of the Chinese littorals as infringing on the sovereignty of China and acting in a provocative manner.
Incidents such as the April 2001 “EP-3 incident”, the March 2004 “Senkaku Islands incident”, and lesser known incidents such as a Chinese Navy 2,100-ton Ming- class submarine navigating in waters near Japan in November 2003 in which it was first spotted by a U.S. Navy EP-3 aircraft and reported to the Japanese Maritime Self-Defense Force,182 are cases which reinforce Beijing’s view that the U.S.-Japan Security Alliance in its contemporary structure is aimed at the PRC.183 This will be a challenge which must be carefully managed as the U.S.-Japan Security Alliance is transformed and is complicated by the mounting positioning of missiles opposite Taiwan. Although the Chinese may see the U.S.-Japan Security Alliance aimed at them, this study finds that the larger challenge to be overcome is to convince the Japanese people that a security alliance between the United States and Japan is still required should Korea unify peacefully and the Japanese Constitution revised to allow for collective defense without deteriorating relations with Beijing. This is a task that will be articulated in Chapter V as terrorism and a fledgling Japanese military will still require the presence of U.S. forces and the U.S. nuclear deterrence to contribute to the security and stability of the region for the foreseeable future.
4. The Taiwan Straits
The U.S-Japan Security Alliance and the U.S. nuclear deterrence is best measured by the effects it has had in promoting an obscure U.S. one-China policy, which has been defined by three joint communiqués and the Taiwan Relations Act (TRA), all of which do not recognize China’s claim to Taiwan but do not support Taiwan’s goal to claim independence.184 The issue of Taiwan, “which from the PRC perspective is always the
182 Asahi (Tokyo), 05 June 2004.
183 Geostrategy. “White House Upgrades U.S.-Japan Security Partnership,” Geostrategy Online
[home page on-line]; available from http://www.geostrategy-direct.com/geostrategy- direct/secure/2004/4_27/ne.asp; Internet; accessed 22 April 2004.
184 The Heritage Foundation. “Two Congressmen Look at “One China,” The Heritage Foundation
Online [home page on-line]; available from
most sensitive issue in [the U.S.-PRC] relationship,”185 goes back to the 1949 Chinese civil-war where China sees the issue of Taiwan as a quest to preserve their union just as the United States fought a civil war in the 19th Century for the same purpose. It was not until 1978 when the United States normalized relations with China that the United States passed the Taiwan Relations Act, which enables the United States to prevent the forcible reunification of Taiwan with the PRC by supporting Taiwan’s democracy and defense capabilities. It has been communicating the same position now for over two decades. That position is maintaining the status quo.186 Even though China has deployed about 450 short-range ballistic missiles opposite Taiwan and held naval exercises in waters near Taiwan, it has not moved against the island the PRC calls a “renegade province.” The United States’ position with Taiwan may be put to the test should the recently reelected and nearly assassinated Taiwanese President Chen Shui-bian go forth with a referendum in 2006 to declare independence and establishing a new constitution in 2008. It is public knowledge that China will declare war against Taiwan should Taipei declare independence and it is most likely that the United States will go to Taiwan’s aid. 187
If the United States is successful in restraining Taiwan’s ambitions, then it is the growing economic influence of China, one that President Bush has called a “strategic competitor,” that may test the United States’ one-China policy and force Washington to adopt a less ambiguous position, one which may cause instability in the region. For now, Washington has been performing preventative maintenance by counseling Beijing on the erosion of democracy in Hong Kong and the anxieties Taiwanese have in seeing this as their future should Taiwan decide to join the PRC. This effort may help ease the mounting tensions between Taipei and Beijing and serve the United States’ goal to maintain the status quo which is in keeping with Japan’s goal of regional stability and
185 Congress, Senate, Committee on Foreign Relations, Examining the Effects and Consequences of an Emerging China: Hearing before the Subcommittee on East Asian and Pacific Affairs of the Committee on Foreign Relations, 108th Cong., 1st sess., 19 March 2003, 7.
186 Gerrit W. Gong, ed. Taiwan Strait Dilemmas: China-Taiwan-U.S. Policies in the New Century
(Washington, DC: Center for Strategic and International Studies, 2000) 26.
187 The Heritage Foundation. “Two Congressmen Look at “One China,” The Heritage Foundation Online [home page on-line]; available from http://www.heritage.org/Research/AsiaandthePacific/ h1821.cfm; Internet; accessed 7 April 2004, 6.
maintaining non-governmental working relations with Taiwan by espousing neither a “two China policy” nor a “one China policy.”188