THE RIGHT BOOKS

On January 5, 1950, President Truman announced that the United States would no longer aid the Republic of China (ROC) in its attempt at resisting the aggressions of Mao Tse-tung’s People’s Republic, whereupon the U.S. Department of State sat back —with the rest of the world—to observe the impending invasion and collapse of Taiwan. Before this could occur, however, North Korea invaded South Korea in June, and the picture, especially so far as the United States was concerned, had changed. Alarmed by what he viewed as a concerted Communist onslaught against Southeast Asia, Truman organized a consortium of free-world nations to restrain the offensive, and suddenly the island republic had become “an unsinkable aircraft carrier,” a key component in the defense of Asia, crucial to any possible military engagement on the continent. The following May the U.S. sent a Military Assistance Advisory Group to Taiwan and the Seventh Fleet to guard the Taiwan Strait. In December 1954, the American Secretary of State signed a mutual-defense treaty with the ROC, and early in 1955 Congress passed the Formosa Resolution, empowering the Chief Executive to use force to oppose any attack upon our new-found ally. Since that time, a succession of American Presidents and Congresses of both parties have required frequently to be reminded of both the moral and the strategic importance of the Republic of China, which—even after the Carter Administration’s cancellation of formal diplomatic ties—continues to be a pawn in the perverse bipartisan attempt at conciliating the Mainland Communists.

The authors admit that many of the rights bearing the imprimatur of the United Nations are indeed being held in abeyance by Taipei (an inarguably besieged government, which, however, enjoys none of the indulgence offered by many Western sympathizers to the Soviet Union on account of imaginary threats to its existence by its neighbors), but argue that the validity of these rights is nowhere denied by the constitution, which is in essence the Nationalist Constitution of 1946, executed according to the generally Western and specifically American constitutional ideas of Sun Yat-sen, rather than the “ideocratic” constitutionalism cast in lapidary form by Stalin in 1936. A protracted state of emergency —lasting almost certainly until Peking formally disavows its intent to return Taiwan to “the motherland”— has made it necessary for Taipei to maintain strong authoritarian control over the island; yet the Lockean principles upon which it rests have not been—and, the authors believe, never will be—forsworn.

On January 5, 1950, President Truman announced that the United States would no longer aid the Republic of China (ROC) in its attempt at resisting the aggressions of Mao Tse-tung’s People’s Republic, whereupon the U.S. Department of State sat back —with the rest of the world—to observe the impending invasion and collapse of Taiwan. Before this could occur, however, North Korea invaded South Korea in June, and the picture, especially so far as the United States was concerned, had changed. Alarmed by what he viewed as a concerted Communist onslaught against Southeast Asia, Truman organized a consortium of free-world nations to restrain the offensive, and suddenly the island republic had become “an unsinkable aircraft carrier,” a key component in the defense of Asia, crucial to any possible military engagement on the continent. The following May the U.S. sent a Military Assistance Advisory Group to Taiwan and the Seventh Fleet to guard the Taiwan Strait. In December 1954, the American Secretary of State signed a mutual-defense treaty with the ROC, and early in 1955 Congress passed the Formosa Resolution, empowering the Chief Executive to use force to oppose any attack upon our new-found ally. Since that time, a succession of American Presidents and Congresses of both parties have required frequently to be reminded of both the moral and the strategic importance of the Republic of China, which—even after the Carter Administration’s cancellation of formal diplomatic ties—continues to be a pawn in the perverse bipartisan attempt at conciliating the Mainland Communists.

The authors admit that many of the rights bearing the imprimatur of the United Nations are indeed being held in abeyance by Taipei (an inarguably besieged government, which, however, enjoys none of the indulgence offered by many Western sympathizers to the Soviet Union on account of imaginary threats to its existence by its neighbors), but argue that the validity of these rights is nowhere denied by the constitution, which is in essence the Nationalist Constitution of 1946, executed according to the generally Western and specifically American constitutional ideas of Sun Yat-sen, rather than the “ideocratic” constitutionalism cast in lapidary form by Stalin in 1936. A protracted state of emergency —lasting almost certainly until Peking formally disavows its intent to return Taiwan to “the motherland”— has made it necessary for Taipei to maintain strong authoritarian control over the island; yet the Lockean principles upon which it rests have not been—and, the authors believe, never will be—forsworn.