ON THE RIGHT : Taiwan As Metaphor.

NEW YORK, FEBRUARY 25

WELL, now it is staring us in the face, and although Peking's current threat is four days old, still we have not heard from the presidential candidates in precise language what the president should do. We are hearing from Peking, in words ostensibly directed to Taiwan, but inescapably challenging to us: "Do not dawdle, in your election campaign in Taiwan, on the question of a separate nation. Taiwan belongs to China." Those elections are in March. If they do not result in an agenda for reunification, Peking says it will take matters into its own hands.

The subject was discussed recently in a symposium in Commentary magazine. There this participant observed that in facing the Taiwan issue we need to steel ourselves against the temptation to retroactive remedies. About once every two years, beginning in 1962, I have counseled a foreign policy that would encourage Taiwan to declare its independence of the mainland. I learned how adamantly secession was opposed by Taiwan on my first visit there in 1962, and still opposed-though with less than unanimity-when I was last there in 1992 on my fourth visit. Although it violates my rule against retrospective improvisation, I nevertheless observe that if we had succeeded in the 1960s in persuading the Taiwanese to take progressive steps to detach from China-seminars, rallies, plebiscites, declarations of independence, applications to the United Nations-the gestation of a democratically governed independent state of 22 million people, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of their intentions, and unfurling their own flag, would have considerably hampered Chinese irredentism.

But what we have here is a critical problem. The China of the new millennium is making its claims with a standby arsenal of nuclear weapons and missiles and is now asserting jurisdictional sovereignty over an island that a) it says belongs to China, b) is acknowledged by Taipei as belonging to China, and c) is acknowledged by successive United States governments as a province of China, whatever the peculiarities of a Chinese province that governs itself, has its own army and navy, and pledges not to submit to the political authority of Peking until there is a change of government of counterrevolutionary dimension.

Still, we are "pledged"-to use the language of a political season-to the qualified defense of Taiwan. It is fair to ask then the question: What will the foreign policy to which we subscribe do if the day comes when Peking issues an ultimatum? Peking might say that at the end of the then current month-say, one month after the Taiwan elections-Taipei must disband its military forces and receive a delegation from Peking which will immediately, upon landing, take effective control of the government.

We all know that the object of statecraft is to abort crisis, and so far this has worked-Taiwan is self-governed and we are at peace with China. But the moment looms when Peking, confident of its resources and of its cause, can look us in the face and ask: Do you want Taiwan so badly as to countenance a nuclear bomb on Honolulu? Are they saying anything different from that, notwithstanding the susurrations of the State Department?

It is unlikely that any of the contenders will recommend adamant denials to Peking. The prospect of a nuclear confrontation with China is, as they used to say during the Cold War, unthinkable. So what then do we do? Devise a means of backing off from our pledge, in the Taiwan Relations Act of 1979, to defend Taiwan?

Before forsaking that commitment our president and presidential candidates should give thought to the wobbly American word. And we need to remind ourselves that there are other Taiwans here and there about the globe, little Kuwaits we are pledged prospectively to defend.

Shifty language can be useful in diplomatic tender, but in ultimate situations it is the generator of crisis, not of apocalypse. The State Department in mid November gave out the word that we would consider ending our blockade of Yugoslavia if there were free elections, even if these renewed the mandate of Milosevic. The same president who okayed this compromise had told us a year ago that Milosevic is this day-and- time's equivalent of Hitler. So if Hitler is democratically reaffirmed, Hitler be comes okay?

Or was "Hitler" just an inappropriate metaphor?

What are other inappropriate meta phors hanging around? Our commitment to Taiwan?