The United States and China: The
Problem of Recognition - Hardy Cross Dillard
[courtesy:
Yale Review, Dec.1954; vol.44, no.2, pp.180-195]
American
and British dilemma about Communist China
In the eyes of some twenty-five
nations of the world, including in particular the United Kingdom, the revolution
which has gripped unhappy China spasmodically and with varying degrees of
intensity since 1927 reached its climax in December 1949, with the flight to
Formosa of Chiang Kai-shek and the remnants of his government. Accordingly,
within two weeks of the flight across the Formosan Straits, Great Britain
recognized (January 6, 1950) the ‘new’ government, which had even earlier been
recognized by the nine nations comprising the Soviet bloc and by Burma and
India. From then the revolution was over. But in the eyes of forty other
nations, including not only the United States but Australia and New Zealand, the
issue was not so simple. What attitude these governments would have taken in the
event Chiang Kai-shek’s Kuomingtang had been completely liquidated remains only
a matter of informed conjecture. The significant fact was that this regime had
not been liquidated. Recognition therefore was not merely a question of granting
it to one government but of withdrawing it from another. This posed and
continues to pose unique problems.
According to unofficial accounts,
Great Britain granted recognition to the Communist Government of China in order
to help maintain British trade relations, to safeguard her stake in China
(estimated at pounds 270,000,000), to protect Commonwealth interests in Hong
Kong, and to mesh her policy with that of Burma and India. Though asserted to be
consonant with both diplomatic practice and international law, the recognition
was yet granted with notable lack of enthusiasm and was received by the
Communist leaders with equally cautious skepticism.
Indeed it was not until the Geneva
Conference that the Communist Government even agreed to accredit a charge
d’affaires to London. Whether Britain accomplished or failed to accomplish her
purposes by extending recognition is not altogether clear. What is clear is that
she felt no large political, economic, or strategic interests were to be
promoted by a policy of non-recognition. She took an attitude that attaches
little extralegal importance to recognition. It tidies up title to property, it
furnishes some means of protecting investments and nationals, and it regularizes
treaty relations. It has little symbolic and only limited practical
significance.
Rightly or wrongly, American ways of
thought are conditioned by a different experience and a different sense of
identification with the Far East. The Pacific War from Pearl Harbor to the end
was, in a sense, ‘our’ war, and competed with that in Europe. It was not merely
a secondary front as in English eyes. The loss of China to the Communists came
as a sequel to that war. Even if this loss is not attributable to lack of
American foresight (and no one who has carefully read the celebrated MacArthur
hearings of 1951 can fail to see that the issues were too complicated for such
an oversimplified assertion), it is yet identified with loss of American
prestige. Non-recognition keeps alive the hope that the decision is not
irreversible. Recognition thus has symbolic value at home.
It also has such a value abroad. To
recognize the Communist government would be considered – according to this view
– a signal of retreat, if not of defeat, in the Cold War. As such, its
repercussions would be profoundly felt among all the free peoples of the Far
East, including 12,500,000 ‘Overseas Chinese’ spread over a dozen areas
stretching from Japan to Sarawak, for whom Formosa remains a bastion of freedom
and hope. More important, it would mean the displacement of a friendly ‘ally’ by
a self-avowed ‘enemy’ and would thus impair our future security and impose a
strain on our sense of moral fitness and integrity.
Many of our military leaders have
proclaimed Formosa a link in the Western Pacific defense chain more vital than
Korea – where the United States suffered casualties only slightly fewer than in
the First World War and greater than in four or her other wars combined. To deny
Korea to the Communists while handing them Formosa does not appeal to the
American sense of realism. Furthermore, to jeopardize the safety of 10,000,000
friendly Chinese on Formosa while refusing to repatriate 22,500 prisoners of war
who were either afraid or unwilling to return to their country of origin, fails
to appeal to the American sense either of realism or fair play.
Opponents of the American view are,
of course, not insensitive to the peculiar difficulties attending the Formosa
question. The promise to return Formosa to ‘China’ was made at Cairo (1943) and
confirmed at Potsdam (1945), yet technically it was still part of the Japanese
empire at the time of the flight of the Generalissimo. Its present status
remains anomalous, even following the peace treaty signed with Japan (to which
neither Mao’s government nor Chiang Kai-shek’s was a signatory). The Cairo and
Potsdam promises did not visualize the present tragic stalemate, and hence
suggestions have been made that Formosa be declared an independent state, or
that she be neutralized, or that she be put under the special aegis of the
United Nations, or all three. It is not likely that any of these solutions would
prove acceptable to American opinion, especially as they leave unresolved the
difficult problem (to be mentioned later) of seating ‘The Republic of China’ in
the Security Council of the United Nations and in its 45 other organs.
This cleavage in political views
produces a dilemma, the resolution of which is extraordinarily complex.
Furthermore, American diplomacy has lost much of its capacity for maneuver owing
to the hard channels set by public opinion and the exigencies of domestic
politics. This is an adventitious rather than a necessary consequence of
democratic control over foreign policy, since public opinion will respond not
alone to specific issues but to the way those issues are framed and presented by
political leaders.
Issue of Recognition
For several centuries the issue of
recognition has been framed, presented, and discussed in the setting of legal
criteria. Basically two types of such criteria have been used. One type, which
stresses objective factors, follows what might be called the classical
tradition; the other, which stresses subjective factors, departs from this
tradition. Great Britain and the United States have each used both types in
their history. At the present time Great Britain is applying to the recognition
of China the objective test (sometimes inaccurately called the de facto test)
while the United States refuses to do so.
Stated sharply, the objective test,
declares that recognition is concerned not with opinions but with facts. Whether
the facts are good or bad, pleasant or unpleasant, is equally irrelevant. The
criterion purports to be simple and clear. It is stripped of all subjective,
moral overtones in deference, it is siad, to the complexities of human life and
the need for the orderly management of international relations. ‘We recognize
Communist China’, a conservative British member of parliament is quoted as
saying, ‘as we recognize a rainy day in summer or Mount Everest. We recognize it
because it is there.’
The objective test looks exclusively
to ‘effectiveness’ of governmental control. If the new government commands the
obedience of the bulk of the inhabitants in the territory and appears to be
reasonably permanent, it should, according to this view, be recognized as the
legitimate government of the territory. Evidence of the obedience of the people
is gathered simply from their manifest behavior in rendering military service,
paying taxes, and otherwise failing to resist the normal processes of
government.
The ‘subjective’ test is more complex
and much more difficult to apply. At least three variants should be noted. One
variant looks exclusively to the origin of the government; another
ignores the origin but insists, as a price for recognition, that the government
be subsequently approved by the people; while still another, by all odds the
most significant, insists that the government, be ‘able and willing’ to live up
to its international obligations. Elements of all three of these variants are
visible in various statements of contemporary American policy.
American Policy: Jefferson vs.
Seward
Despite present adherence to the
subjective test, the main stream of American policy has undoubtedly tended to
support the objective view, since this view alone is consistent with our own
origins and our own vigorous espousal of the ‘right of revoltion’. Perhaps the
most celebrated of the nineteenth century statements supporting this view is
contained in a letter from Jefferson as Secretary of State to Gouverneur Morris,
then Minister to Paris. Morris, asking for instructions and guidance, had
written that another revolution had been effected; that it was bloody and that
‘he found himself in a state of contingent responsibility of the most delicate
kind’. Jefferson replied: ‘We surely cannot deny to any nation that right
whereon our own Government is founded – that every one may govern itself
according to whatever form it pleases, and change these forms at its own will;
and that it may transact its business with foreign nations through whatever
organ it thinks proper, whether king, convention, assembly, committee,
president, or anything else it may choose.’
The objective test, as announced by
Jeffeson, was an emphatic reply to the efforts by the Holy Alliance to resist
the apocalyptic fervor generated by the French Revolution by denying the right
of recognition to any government whose origins were tainted by violence.It was
reaffirmed by successive secretaries of state, including both Webster and
Buchanan, the latter stating unequivocally that ‘We do not look behind the
existing government to involve ourselves in questions of legitimacy.’
The origins of the objective view
antedated Jefferson by at least a century and a half; but, since its early
American formulation was intimately linked to the ‘right of revolution’, it is
not surprising to find deviations both in theory and practice when that right
became the object of doubt. The Civil War period gave rise to such doubts, as
did the Bolshevik revolution of 1917-18.
The ‘subjective’ view was introduced
by Seward, who refused to accord recognition to the new governmets of
‘republican’ states unless the government was constitutionally legitimate.
Seward somewhat disingenuously claimed that he was moved to take this attitude
by reflecting ‘upon national trials of our own’. Lying back of his attitude,
however, were changed notions of the right of revolution reflected in the
writings of Union theorists who asserted that revolutions directed against
democracy were not legitimate since democracies, unlike tyrannies, provided a
rational alternative to the use of violence. For logical and practical reasons
to be noted hereafter, the Civil War deviation from the objective test did not
recommend itself and was for the most part abandoned until partially restored at
the time of the Soviet Revolution.
Initial Non-recognition of Soviet
regime and Latin American nations by the USA
The official United States attitude
regarding the nonrecognition of the Soviet regime articulated by Colby, as
Secretary of State in 1920, differed somewhat from that adopted by Seward.
Whereas Seward had placed emphasis on legitimacy of origin, the nonrecognition
of the Soviet government was placed primarily on two other grounds. The first
emphasized the lack of subsequent legitimation and the second stressed Soviet
unwillingness to live up to the requirements of international intercourse and
the obligations of international law as evidenced by its repudiation of the
Imperial Government’s debts and its official espousal of hostile propaganda
directed against other governments.
The notion that a government should
not be recognized unless it has subsequently commanded the ‘approval’ – as
opposed to the mere ‘obedience’ – of the people has been the object of lively
debate and its bearing on contemporary policy is evident. Those who approve the
doctrine ascribe its American origins to Jefferson, who is thus quoted, as
usual, on both sides of a controversial issue. Four months prior to the letter
previously mentioned, he had written Morris that ‘It accords with our principles
to acknowledge any government to be rightful which is formed by the will of the
nation, substantially declared.’
It is more than likely that
Jefferson, who shared the optimism so prevalent in the eighteenth century,
expected that popular consent would almost automatically confirm and acclaim the
credentials of governments that had been created by the popular will. It is
possible, too, that theorists then doubted whether any revolutionary government
was in fact firmly in the saddle which failed to accord this right to the
people. In any event the test was capable of such elasticity of application that
it did not become a major issue until Wilson’s time. Besides applying it to
support the nonrecognition of the Soviet Government, Wilson also applied it in
Latin America.
In practice it had little to commend
it. Its application in Latin America, according to both hostile critics and
detached observers, resulted rather in compulsion, corruption, and rigged
elections (to provide evidence of the popular will) than in a free expression of
approval or concent. ‘You cannot’, so the saying goes, ‘shoot people into
self-government.’ It may be added that you cannot unilaterally supervise them
into it either. Furthermore, a rigid application of the test today would rule
out the claim to recognition of over half the governments of the world.
The idea that consent may be
evidenced by a ‘supervised’ election (as in Greece in 1948) would be appealing
if the international society were strong enough to support it. Meanwhile,
experience clearly discloses that supervision by powerful states, whatever their
motives, inspires a feeling of resentment that is likely to be heightened rather
than diminished by the lofty reasons usually given for minding the smaller
nations’ business. Nor is this all. The transmission of power from one
government to another is often accompanied – as witness the Nazis – with
impeccable solicitude for constitutional forms. This makes it almost impossible
to determine whether the new government actually registers the will of the
people or merely commands it.
Difficulties determining an elusive
‘popular consent’ led to a device whereby the test was preserved in form while
abandoned in substance. This was accomplished by simply declaring that popular
consent could be shown by ‘long-continued acquiescence.’ Thus when pressed to
explain the reasons for our continued nonrecognition of the Soviet regime,
Charles Evans Hughes, in a famous letter to Samuel Gompers written in 1924,
declared that while the United States Government put stress on the value of
expressed popular approval, ‘it has never insisted that the will of the people
of a foreign state may not be manifested by long-continued acquiescence in a
regime actually functioning as a government.’ The day appears still distant when
the international community will be able to compel powerful governments to
subject their legitimacy of origin to the process of a controlled plebiscite. In
the absence of such control, the test seems weak at both theoretical and
practical levels.
The final variant of the subjective
test – ‘ability and willingness’ to live up to international obligations – is
said to have originated with President Hayes; yet it, too, derived its chief
impetus from Woodrow Wilson, who applied it with considerable vigor between 1910
and 1913 in Mexico, Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, and elsewhere. While the
proclaimed object was to stabilize conditions in those areas, it became the
subject of widespread criticism at home and abroad. It was widely characterized
as a meddling, ‘do-gooder’ policy in which questionable motives were masked by
misplaced idealism, to the great detriment of the practical conduct of foreign
affairs. Nonetheless, after its revival at the time of the Bolshevik Revolution
in 1917 it was used until 1933 as one of the chief justifications for the
refusal of the United States to recognize the Soviet government, a government
which other nations had, for the most part, recognized by 1924.
The recognition of the Soviet
government, advocated then, as earlier, by many eminent Republicans as well as
Democrats, marked a partial return to the more classical tradition which, in
effect, dominated the officially declared policy of the United States until the
Second World War. A reversion to subjective criteria after the Second World War
was not, however, altogether without analogies drawn from another quarter.
Recognition of New States
The recognition of new ‘states’ (e.g.
Israel) in contradistinction to that of new ‘governments’ had also traditionally
been attended by a dispute as to the weight to be given purely subjective as
opposed to mere objective criteria. Institutional developments in the period
between the two world wars, including in particular the procedural devices set
up in the Covenant of the League of Nations for determining aggression (Articles
XI through XVI) and the adoption of the Kellogg-Briand Peace Pact of 1928, had
stimulated a novel movement, culminating in the famous Stimson Doctrine of
nonrecognition (1931). This doctrine proclaimed that the credentials of
illegitimate power were tainted and hence the absorption of old states or the
creation of new ones, contrary to the obligations of theCovenantand the
principles of the Pact, would not be attended by recognition. Since the policy
was to be applied in the face of facts it represented a clear triumph of the
subjective over the objective view. For these proclaimed reasons the United
States and many other nations refused to extend recognition to Manchukuo during
the entire period of its existence and for similar reasons it refuses today
(unlike Britain) to recognize absorption by the USSR of Estonia, Latvia and
Lithuania.
Whatever may be true of the
recognition of new states, the application of subjective tests for the
recognition of new governments is, according to many critics, impractical and
illogical. To say that a government must be ‘able’ to live up to its
international obligations is simply a tautological way of saying that it must be
an ‘effective’ government; while, to say that it must be ‘willing’ to do so, is
not likely to induce compliance, especially as nonrecognition strips away the
normal means of applying diplomatic pressure. Thus frustration and futility are
compounded. Stated somewhat differently, the use of nonrecognition as a
‘sanction’ for enforcing obligations is likely, according to this view, to be a
fruitless exercise in moral finger shaking, an exercise calculated to irritate
its object without compelling it to deliver the goods.
Enough has been said, perhaps, to
point up the origins and differences between the two tests. Their application by
the United States and Great Britain can hardly be characterized as uniform or
consistent. Great Britain, for instance, applied the ancient test of legitimacy
of origin when it dealyed for three years the recognition of the successor
government of the king of Serbia following his assassination in 1903. The
failure to recognize was not considered to be without moral significance.
Likewise in 1912 she delayed the recognition of the government of Sun Yat-Sen,
following the downfall of the Manchu dynasty, until the republican regime had
been fortified by evidence of subsequent legitimation. She took a similar view
in 1870, delaying her recognition of the Third Republic of France, and again in
1910 when she took a dim view of the new government of Portugal. Furthermore,
both the United States and Great Britain refused to recognize the new government
of Argentina, claiming it had failed to gear its policies to those states of
South America that were anti-Nazi. The Second World War imposed other strains,
explained by the exigencies of the war, on traditional doctrine. The various
governments-in-exile exercised no effective control over the bulk of the
inhabitants of their territories during the time of the Nazi occupation; yet
they were freely recognized for practical and symbolic reasons. And examples
could be easily multiplied.
Despite these deviations it is safe
to assert that the predominant test applied by both the United States and Great
Britain to revolutionary governments has been the objective one. (In the
eighteenth and early nineteenth century the United States was more ready to
extend recognition than Great Britain; in the twentieth century the situation is
reversed.) This test is more consistent with traditional tenets of
international law and more compatible with the institutional pattern of
international society than is the subjective.
The Right of Revolution
One aspect of the objective test in
relation to the ‘right of revolution’ deserves mention. It may be quite
reasonable to proclaim, as the Union theorists did at the time of the Civil War,
that no revolution within a democratic order is legitimate, since democracy
affords a rational alternative to the use of violence. But this theory, whatever
its domestic uses and virtues, can have no logically valid application to the
international order so long as states insist on retaining the full attributes of
soverignty. One of the attributes of soverignty is that one soverign state is
free of interference in its domestic affairs by another. This principle is
underlined and emphasized in Article II of the United Nations Charter.
The international order, therefore,
provides no rational alternative to the use of violence, so long as violence is
contained within the bounds of a particular state. Since it provides no
alternative to the domestic status quo, it cannot assume the function of
perpetuating it. ‘Treason’, the gravest of all offenses against authority, thus
has no place in the presently constituted international order. It is partly for
this reason that the subjective test based on legitimacy of origin has
not found wide acceptance. This is not truce, however, of the other variants of
the subjective test. Whether they can be accomodated as part of a logically
coherent international order or whether the objective test is to be preferred
will depend on a searching appraisal of the kind of international order the
nations consider practical and worthwhile. This hinges on value judgments that
lie at the very heart of the differences separating the objective and subjective
views.
Objective and Subjective Views of
Recognition
Basically, the objective view
espoused by Great Britain rests on the notion that the international society,
quaintly known in former times as the ‘family of nations’, is best served by
promoting ‘order’. International law, therefore, is directed less at attaining
justice than at avoiding chaos; less at promoting democracy than at accomodating
it; less at injecting ideologies into the welter of international relations than
at tempering their impact. In the classical tradition order is paramount. To
recognize a fact is to register an opinion as to whether it exists while
avoiding a disturbing judgment as to whether it is good or bad, dangerous or
harmless. This spirit of restraint may offend reformers who insist on asserting
moral values; it should not offend those who hold that order is a precondition
to attaining all other values. So runs the argument. Under this view membership
in the international community whether of states or governments is almost
automatic and in any event is not like a private election to a society of church
elders.
The subjective view espoused by the
United States challenges the premise on which the whole position rests. In
supporting ‘moral’ criteria the United States is, in effect, exhibiting a
willingness to reach beyond order as a key value and to introduce, instead,
values of a different kind, such as decency, justice or freedom as conceived by
the dominant traditions of the West. So viewed, the United States’ position is
in keeping with certain other contemporary movements, notably those to ‘outlaw
war’ and to make ‘aggression’ a legally punishable offense. It is thus part of a
broader general attitude which, in recent years, has been the object of critical
attack by Mr.George Kennan, Mr.Hans Morgenthau, and other ‘realists’, who see in
appeals to moral values a misplaced application of ideas relevant to individual
conduct but out of place in the harsh world of power politics. Linked with legal
criteria these values, so it is asserted, tend to put diplomacy into a strait
jacket, thereby inhibiting its freedom of action and cramping its capacity to
reconcile conflicting interests through patient compromise and adjustment.
This basic value dispute finds an
exact counterpart in the division of opinion concerning the related issue of
representation in the United Nations. The problem of representation technically
hinges on the validation of governmental credentials which, in turn, involves
disputes as to the veto, the double veto, and Rule 30 of the Security Council
Rules of Procedure. It also raises the question of a two-thirds as opposed to a
majority vote in the General Assembly and what relation membership in the
General Assembly bears to that in the 45 other organs of the United Nations.
These vexing questions need not detain us. Fundamentally the issue reveals the
same underlying cleavage between two ways of looking at the international order
and the values it is intended to serve.
According to the objective view, the
issue of Chinese representation is reduced to a simple question as to which of
two governments does in fact represent the state of China. The state of
China is already a member of the United Naitons and, as a member, is legally
entitled to be represented by some government or other; to deny this right to a
government exercising effective control over the territory and commanding
obedience from the overwhelming majority of the inhabitants is, in effect, to
deny to the state, itself, the basic right to be represented. The homely
analogy is drawn of a lawyer and his client. The credentials of the lawyer
(i.e., his right to represent his client) are not tarnished because his client
may be a wicked fellow. You may deal with wicked individuals in many ways – as
by suspending their right to enjoy the company of their fellows – but you do not
confuse the punishment inflicted on them with the nature of their right to be
heard. So it is with the United Nations.
The objectivists further point out
that criteria exist for refusing to admit new states and for expelling or
suspending the membership of others. These criteria, which are set out in
Article IV of the Charter, correctly emphasize the ability and willingness of a
state to live up to the obligations of the Charter. But these criteria have
nothing whatever to do with the fact of representation; indeed, to assert
the binding quality of obligations as a condition to the right of representation
is to presuppose the existence of a government capable of carrying them out.
This is the logical and legal argument advanced by those who see in the
continued refusal to seat the Communist government of China a violation both of
law and logic. The logical argument is forcible enough to suggest that its
denial must rest on grounds which not only question the conclusion but challenge
the premise.
The subjectivists challenge the
premise by categorically asserting that as a group acting collectively the
members of an international society can jolly well do what they choose so long
as they not violate their own charter or international law. The subjectivists
argue that if they choose to impose conditions on representation as well as
conditions on membership, what is there in law or logic to deny them the right
to do so? In the absence of a specific inhibition (and the Charter of the United
Nations is silent on the point), the majority are legally privileged to deny
representation to any state whatever unless, to repeat, there is some restraint
on freedom of action required by international law.
Whether international law imposes
such a restraint is hotly disputed. The objectivists claim it does, because to
deny ‘China’ the right to be represented is to deny that the state is
‘independent’. The practical fact that the Communist government has been
officially declared an aggressor in the Korean conflict has tended, however, to
lift the argument out of the more abstract realm of theory, since clearly the
principles and purposes of the Charter do not permit the opening of the United
Nations’ doors to a government branded as its enemy.
The issue of seating the Chinese
Communist representative has been raised about 150 times in the 46 organs of the
United Nations. Inevitably the attempt was made to find criteria to judge the
adequacy of representation. It is perhaps significant that projected
‘subjective’ tests, notably those proposed by Cuba, have not been found
acceptable; nor, on the other hand, have tests limited to the single objective
norm of ‘effectiveness of control’ won the approval of the majority. The upshot
of many committee meetings and debates is telescoped in the single sentence that
‘the question should be considered in light of the Purposes and Principles of
the Charter and the circumstances of each case.’ This vague standard leaves
adequate scope for the continued application of the diplomatic process – a
process which up to this point has been wielded with singular success by the
United States.
It may be argued that allusions to
the ‘Purposes and Principles’ of the Charter automatically rule out the
Communist Government; and so it should, so long as that government is condemned
of aggressive action directed against United Nations forces. Once the aggression
is deemed ‘officially’ ended, the picture may change, in which event we may
expect a renewal of the argument with its focus sharpened on the purposes of the
organization as revealed by its Charter.
The long-range purposes and
principles of the Charter permit conflicting interpretations and reflect varying
value judgments. Two contrasting views should, in particular, be noted. On the
one hand it is alleged, as by Great Britain, that the organization is not an
exclusive club designed to accommodate like-minded nations with similar
governments and ideologies. Nothing in the Charter bars Communist governments.
On the contrary, the organization can
only accomplish its mission – to keep the peace and to promote conditions making
for peace – if it is universal in scope. Clearly if it is to exercise a
restraining influence on the conduct of recalcitrant governments, those
governments in particular should be represented. Opposed to this is the view,
supported by the United States, which affirms that the Charter rules out nations
that are not ‘peace-loving’. In addition, the Charter presupposes the
willingness of its members to make the organization work, i.e., to accomplish
its purposes and principles.
To admit the Communist government of
China, as its record clearly shows, is not to promote the purposes and
principles of the Charter but to thwart them. It is to invite additional
obstructionism and frustration already made distressingly familiar by the
conduct of other Communist governments. The minimum requirement for recognizing
the credentials of any government should be demonstrated badge of good faith –
not one tarnished by the blood of its own members and not one bent on reducing
the organization to a state of feverish futility. These two contrasting views
appear to be implicit in the larger conflict of values to which illusion has
already been made.
Practical Consequences of
Recognition
If we turn from theory and values to
the practical consequences of recognition, the same dilemmas remain.
International law (one school excepted) and diplomatic practice agree that the
failure to recognize need not imply a complete severance of relations; nor need
it imply an absurd disregard of facts. The recognized government of Chiang
Kai-shek was not vested by the United States with responsibility for the
mistreatment of American consuls in Mukden and elsewhere or for intervening in
the Korean conflict. And the nonrecognition of his government by Great Britain
did not prevent her from esstablishing a consulate atTaihoku in Formosa.
During the days of mutual
nonrecognition between the Soviet Union and the United States some trade was
carried on between them, and both governments not only engaged in international
conferences but became co-signatories of multilateral pacts such as the
Kellogg-Briand Peace Pact of1928. Furthermore, joint membership in international
organs does not automatically imply recognition, as both past experience in the
League of Nations and current practice in the United Nations Organization
demonstrate. At the same time, the consequences flowing from recognition are
legally important, and there is no doubt that a state of long-continued
nonrecognition is politically inconvenient, though the Iron Curtain may have
made this inconvenience of less consequence than previously. All this suggests
that the significance of recognition has been exaggerated. No doubt this would
be true were it not for the status of Formosa, the critical position of the
‘Republic of China’ in the United Nations, and the symbolic significance that
recognition commands in the United States.
The dilemma, therefore, remains.
Whether the British objective view or the American subjective view is better
calculated to promote the total security and to advance the basic values
cherished by the West may be debatable. What is not debatable is that the
division between the two greatest powers of the free world imposes an added
strain on free-world solidarity. The elimination of that strain must be sought
by combining diplomatic skill with legal imagination.
The great virtue of ‘law’ in
resolving diemmas consists in its capacity to narrow the area of conflict and to
give to the solution of controversy an impersonal quality. This reduces the
opportunity for the hardening of emotionally-charged attitudes and frees
diplomacy from the rigid channels so frequently imposed by public opinion. Yet,
the resolution of the present dilemma by recourse to legal criteria, as our
story shows, would hardly be possible short of agreement on deeper problems of
value. On the other hand, the resolution of the dilemma by diplomacy must depend
on circumstances difficult to control and now only dimly seen. To do nothing at
all is not to solve problems, but to live through them and to await rather than
to control events.
Conclusion
Most of the governments of the world owe their origins to
revolutionary violence, and the history of prior revolutions appears to show
that ultimately ideal solutions, registering moral values, must make a rough
compromise with the realities of power and the facts of life. If this is so,
consideration should perhaps be given to the vexing problem of Formosan
independence and even to an amendment to the Charter of the United Nations
which, despite the many difficulties attending the use of the veto, would alter
the status now occupied in the Security Council by the Republic of China.
Diplomacy and law should join hands to reduce to manageable proportions a
dilemma now merely awaiting the drift of events. After all, the art of
statesmanship requires that events be molded, not merely endured.
