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The U.S. Securitization of the 1992 Consensus—Security Speech Acts

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The U.S. Securitization of the 1992 Consensus—Security Speech Acts EURAMERICA Vol. 48, No. 3 (September 2018), 387-427 © Institute of European and American Studies, Academia Sinica http://euramerica.org The U.S. Securitization of the 1992 Consensus —Security Speech Acts and Threat Inflation, 2011-2012* Chi-hung Wei Institute of European and American Studies, Academia Sinica No. 128, Sec. 2, Academia Rd., Taipei 11529, Taiwan E-mail: [email protected] Abstract During 2011-2012, the “1992 Consensus” was understood as relating to the cross-Strait security situation. Yet, I argue that the 1992 Consensus was not intrinsically a security problem but rather became one through U.S. acts of securitization. While the 1992 Consensus was originally seen as a political issue, the United States brought a security logic to bear on it by arguing that cross-Strait relations would likely become unstable should the 1992 Consensus be denied. As a result of the issue linkage or rhetorical framing, what once had been a political formula came to be underst ood in Taiwan as a Received Octorber 24, 2017; accepted March 23, 2018; last revised April 11, 2018 Proofreaders: Min-Fang Tsai, Yu-Tung Yeh, Chia-Chi Tseng * A version of this article was presented at the “U.S.-China-Taiwan Relations, 2012-2017” Conference held in December 2017 by the Institute of European and American Studies at Academia Sinica. For helpful comments, I thank Chin-Kuei Tsui and other participants in the conference. I also thank three anonymous reviewers of EurAmerica. 388 EURAMERICA security issue. I also argue that the U.S. securitization of the 1992 Consensus was a discursive practice that inflated Chinese threats to Taiwan. A comparative-historical analysis reveals that what causes cross-Strait tensions is Taipei’s adoption of pro-independence policies that provoke China rather than Taipei’s rejection of the 1992 Consensus. Key Words: The United States, securitization, the 1992 Consensus, speech acts, threat inflation The U.S. Securitization of the 1992 Consensus 389 I. Introduction The “1992 Consensus” figured heavily in the 2012 Taiwanese presidential election. According to a post-election poll, Kuomintang (KMT) candidate Ma Ying-jeou won reelection with 51.6 percent of the vote primarily because his advocacy of the 1992 Consensus received support from those with a stake in a peaceful cross-Strait relation (Romberg, 2012a: 4). Conversely, Tsai Ing-wen, the candidate of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), failed to convince the voters that her opposition to the 1992 Consensus would not cause cross-Strait instability, as the DPP admitted in a post-election report. 1 At a time when the cross-Strait tensions characteristic of the Chen Shui-bian years (2000-2008) were still in the forefront of the Taiwanese mind, the election result was attributed largely to Taiwanese people’s pursuit of security predicated on the 1992 Consensus. As a Chinese official put it, “Taiwan compatriots in the end chose peace, rejecting instability” (Romberg, 2012a: 9).2 Without denying Chinese threats posed to Taiwan, this article nonetheless argues that the Taiwanese understanding of the 1992 Consensus as a security issue was not unproblematic. A careful review reveals that the 1992 Consensus was originally coined as a political issue addressing the meaning of “one China.” Shortly after Chen Shui-bian was elected president in March 2000, the KMT invented a term called the 1992 Consensus and defined it as “one China, respective interpretations,” which KMT leaders argued was first agreed upon by Taipei and Beijing in 1992. In the period 2000-2008, debates over the term revolved around whether a cross-Strait consensus had been reached in 1992, and whether 1 The DPP’s post-election report is available at http://www.dpp.org.tw/ news_content. php?&sn=6043 2 For the role of security concerns in the 2012 presidential election, see also Li (2014). 390 EURAMERICA President Chen should accept it as the basis for resuming cross-Strait dialogue. In few circumstances was the 1992 Consensus associated with security (or insecurity). Using the securitization theory pioneered by the Copenhagen School, I argue that the 1992 Consensus was not intrinsically a security problem but rather became so through securitizing discourses. I further ascribe the securitization of the 1992 Consensus to American practices. At a time when Tsai rejected the 1992 Consensus during the 2012 presidential campaign, the United States brought a security logic to bear on the term, arguing that the 1992 Consensus was essential to cross-Strait peace and that cross-Strait relations would likely become unstable should it be disregarded. As a result of the issue linkage or rhetorical framing, what had once been a political formula came to be perceived in Taiwan as a security issue. Theoretically, this article suggests the limits of materialist approaches to the securitization of the 1992 Consensus. China’s military weapons (missiles, tanks, fighter jets, warships, and so on) were objectively real, but the 1992 Consensus as a security problem was not an outgrowth of China’s material capabilities. To the contrary, it emerged out of U.S. speech acts. When U.S. actors articulated the 1992 Consensus as a security issue, their securitizing practices not only sank its original political meaning to oblivion but also shaped the intersubjective understanding about the cross-Strait security situation. To examine the U.S. securitization of the 1992 Consensus, this article adopts genealogical methods. Genealogy, a framework of analysis pioneered by Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (1989) and popularized by Michel Foucault (1984), traces the origin, lineage, history, and even transformation of meanings embedded in the discursive representation of an object, be it in material or linguistic forms. This method is helpful to explore how political elites and their linguistic practices impart a particular meaning to a particular object. Therefore, this article offers a genealogy of the 1992 The U.S. Securitization of the 1992 Consensus 391 Consensus not only by uncovering its original political meaning but also by analyzing the linguistic process through which the United States moved the 1992 Consensus away from the political field and into the security realm. It is important to note that this article refrains from any involvement in the partisan debate over whether Taiwan and China reached any consensus in 1992. Whether the 1992 Consensus was a consensus per se has been the subject of heated debate in Taiwan, and between Taiwan and China. Even different U.S. actors have different stances on it. In this article, I treat the 1992 Consensus as a terminological invention. Regardless of whether a cross-Strait consensus existed in 1992, the 1992 Consensus as a term exists because it has been said by both proponents and opponents of the term. It is an object, though in a linguistic form, that merits study. This article first examines the origin of the 1992 Consensus, with a special focus on U.S. stances on it during 2000-2008. I then explain securitization theory and review its application to European and American Studies. The attention then shifts to how the United States securitized the 1992 Consensus during 2011-2012. I also argue that U.S. securitization gained momentum due partly to the lack of “desecuritization.” Afterwards, I assess the validity of the U.S. argument that vetoing the 1992 Consensus would destabilize cross-Strait relations. I show that cross-Strait tensions arouse during 2000-2008 not because President Chen denied the 1992 Consensus but because he adopted pro-independence moves that provoked Beijing. I also show that the post-2016 cross-Strait relationship has been devoid of the 1992 Consensus but avoided tensions because President Tsai Ing-wen has taken a pro-status quo approach that to some extent assures Beijing. I thus argue that the U.S. securitization of the 1992 Consensus was a practice that inflated Chinese threats to Taiwan. Afterwards, I explain why the securitization process was of American rather than Chinese making. I attribute the outcome to American authority in cross-Strait security affairs. I also point to China’s past failures to influence Taiwan’s elections through 392 EURAMERICA coercive means. I conclude that American speech acts explain the securitization of the 1992 Consensus better than China’s material power alone. II. The 1992 Consensus, 2000-2008 The year 1992 marked the convocation of a cross-Strait meeting that later became a matter of political debate. In October, Taiwan’s Straits Exchange Foundation (SEF) and China’s Association for Relations across the Taiwan Straits (ARATS) met in Hong Kong. According to the KMT, the two organizations reached a “one China, respective interpretations” consensus. It was on the basis of the consensus that SEF Chair Koo Chen-fu and ARATS Chair Wang Daohan met in Singapore in 1993 (Su & Cheng, 2002). However, cross-Strait dialogue came to a halt after President Lee Teng-hui visited the United States in 1995, and the cross-Strait deadlock endured for the rest of his tenure. In March 2000, DPP candidate Chen Shui-bian won the presidency. Before his inauguration, Su Chi, Chair of the Mainland Affairs Council, concocted a term that he called 1992 Consensus. The term, he argued, “referred to the period between 1992 and 1995 when the Taiwan Strait experienced a period of détente, so its basic tone was one of moderation and good will” (Su, 2009: 90). Because the KMT claimed that Taipei and Beijing had “agreed to disagree” in 1992 over the meaning of one China, it defined the 1992 Consensus as “one China, respective interpretations.” For KMT actors, the 1992 Consensus offered the possibility of bridging the divide between the DPP and Beijing. The 1992 Consensus was warmly welcomed in Beijing, as Chinese leaders suggested that the two sides of the Taiwan Strait reopen dialogue on the basis of the term.
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