This is not the first time that Guyana has made a seemingly inexplicable slipup in its foreign policy decision making and yet, in this instance, it defies belief that the government’s recent short-lived decision to establish a Taiwanese ‘outpost’ here, a move which Beijing would have seen as amounting to the creation of a de facto embassy in Georgetown, could have ended a matter of hours later in an unseemly retreat following a swift feral blast from the Chinese. As a diplomatic occurrence it was embarrassing and more than barely so.
It is hard to believe that this was simply a diplomatic blunder deriving from inexperience, ineptitude or both. After all, Guyana’s support for the so-called “One China” policy had been scripted as a foreign policy axiom long enough for the key players in current political administration to be familiar with its significance. Nor, one suspects, could it have come from some inexplicable blunder inside Takuba Lodge. After all, isn’t the ‘One China’ policy one of those diplomatic axioms as far as our foreign policy is concerned?
Accordingly, any public ‘calling out’ of Takuba Lodge over what appeared to be the momentary jettisoning of the ‘One China’ policy becomes decidedly unsustainable. In truth, to blame Takuba Lodge, whether for an act of inclusion or exclusion, would amount to a gross misplacement of blame, no less. The likelier truth, one suspects, is that what occurred was a considerable error in judgment at high levels of the political administration that arose out of a miscalculation, made above the head of the Foreign Ministry, perhaps, even in the teeth of what might well have been the Ministry’s own discreet advice to the contrary. That is to say that the decision to accede to a Taiwanese outpost here was almost certainly made close to that point in the political ladder where the buck stops.
One understands, of course, that it is in the nature of this kind of diplomatic circumstance that the Foreign Ministry is made to carry the proverbial ‘can.’ That being said, if we are to be honest about the whole affair, blame for the blunder has to be ‘kicked upstairs’ where, it seems, it rightly belongs.
The foreign policy ‘short note’ on this issue has to do with the position of the People’s Republic of China that Taiwan is in fact a rogue state and that its proper configuration would make Taiwan part of the People’s Republic of China. Any interpretation that departs from what Beijing regards as a universal axiom amounts to a diplomatic ‘no, no’ as far as the Chinese are concerned.
Taipei, of course, refuses to take the PRC’s position lying down, its response, long packaged in a combination of relentless globe-trotting attended by aggressive economic diplomacy (since realizing statehood in 1950 Taiwan has been a considerable economic success) designed to corral the low-hanging fruit which underdeveloped countries like Guyana are perceived to represent, into providing the international recognition which it needs as a matter of its very national security.
China, of course, has long made its own considerable international diplomatic and economic investments in ensuring that the ‘one China’ policy holds firm. Its own robust response last week to the announcement of the establishment of a Taiwan official office here was sufficiently stern to send the Guyana Government scurrying into an embarrassing diplomatic somersault.
Public responses to the Government of Guyana’s announced agreement to have a Taiwanese outpost set up here may have made Takuba Lodge the ‘whipping boy’ over what appeared to be Guyana’s shocking ‘walk aside’ from the ‘One China’ policy. A more measured analysis would appear to point to an altogether different reality. As it might be expected to do in such a situation, that Foreign Ministry, it appears, is being required to shoulder the blame though the available evidence suggests that the decision may well have been triggered by some irresistible blandishment offered by Taipei, one which, perhaps, our own political administration might have found hard to turn away.
After all, insofar as we are told, do the lights not remain forever turned on in Taipei where beaver-like Foreign Ministry officials seek to configure and implement a million ways to roll back Beijing’s ‘One China’ policy?”
