by Ira Shapiro
The administration hit back forcefully, responding with a nine-page memo and a thirty-five page historical index created by the State Department: “The Senate’s role is in giving advice and consent to the making of the treaty is made. Thereafter execution and performance of its terms relating to its duration or termination are delegated by the Constitution to the nation’s chief executive.”
Speaking on his own, Jimmy Carter continued to make clear his view that no Senate help was needed: “I really don’t believe that any resolution is needed. I think our legislative proposal and the announcement made about normalization—the combination of those two—is adequate.” Carter’s willingness to pursue the national interest irrespective of political consequences represented one of his greatest strengths. But his insensitivity to politics often endangered some of his most important undertakings. In this instance, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee would be crucial in deciding the issue.
Taiwan posed the first major issue for Church as Foreign Relations Committee chairman. The Panama Canal fight had shown that he brought legislative experience, knowledge of the world, and eloquence to the major fights. Despite his initial approval of Carter’s decision to recognize the People’s Republic, Church thought Carter had badly mishandled the Taiwan part of the problem. He characterized the administration’s recent agreement as “woefully inadequate to the task, ambiguous in language, and uncertain in tone.” The political pressure on Church from home was severe; both Houses of the Idaho legislature had already petitioned Congress and the president “to maintain diplomatic relations and the mutual defense treaty with the Republic of China.” Church set out to rescue the China agreement, knowing it would require building a broad consensus in Congress and the country.
Javits was the ranking Republican on the Foreign Relations Committee. He and Church had come to the Senate in the same year, worked on many crucial issues together, from civil rights to war powers, and maintained great mutual respect for each other’s abilities. They approached the problem from the same starting point, because Javits also favored recognizing mainland China, but thought that Carter had seriously shortchanged the U.S. commitment to Taiwan. Javits always relished tackling the toughest foreign policy and legislative issues, and the Taiwan issue fell decisively into that category.
ON FEBRUARY 5, CHURCH banged the gavel to begin the Foreign Relations Committee’s hearings on Taiwan. Twelve senators, seven Democrats and five Republicans, attended the hearing, underscoring the importance of the moment. Church laid out the key issues concisely. President Carter’s action in extending diplomatic recognition to the People’s Republic of China “gives long overdue acknowledgement of one of the central realities of Asian affairs, the existence of the government which actually exercises jurisdiction over the most populous and second largest nation on Earth,” Church noted. But “we must also face another reality: The importance the United States must attach to the future security and well-being of the people of Taiwan. . . . The task of embracing China without deserting Taiwan will require a high order of diplomatic skill and legislative ingenuity.”
In his opening statement Javits dismissed the notion that Carter had exceeded his authority in terminating the mutual defense treaty. He disassociated himself from the senators angry about insufficient consultation, noting his understanding that the People’s Republic had accepted the American proposition more rapidly than expected, leaving the Carter administration with little time to consult. He repeated his view that the administration had not gone far enough in proposing how we would take care of Taiwan’s security. And he noted that a congressional judgment was plainly required.
Speaking for the administration, Deputy Secretary of State Warren Christopher reminded the committee that our NATO allies and more than 100 other nations had already recognized the People’s Republic of China. He reviewed assurances by Chinese Vice Premier Deng Xiaoping that China intended to resolve the Taiwan issue peacefully. In response to Church’s questions, Christopher noted that the issue of China renouncing force had been explored at the time of the Shanghai Communiqué, and the best that could be done—then and now—is that the United States would make a statement that it expected the Taiwan matter to be resolved peacefully and the People’s Republic of China would not contradict that statement. To Church, that background made it even more important for Congress to state the American view and its expectation that there would be no resort to force in resolving the Taiwan issue.
Church and Glenn, surmounting their personal differences, were working on a statement that affirmed America’s “deep and abiding concerns for the people of Taiwan” and asserted the United States’ determination to maintain good relations with Taiwan, to continue to sell them defensive weapons, and to act appropriately in the event of an attack. Church stated that Carter’s legislation would be “substantially revised. Ambiguities in the bill leave far too many questions unanswered.” Reacting, however, against some of the hawkish rhetoric being used, Church observed that some proposals being floated would have committed the United States to Taiwan’s defense even more explicitly than the mutual defense treaty that was being abrogated.
As in the earlier fights over the Panama Canal and the F-15s to Saudi Arabia, the negotiations were intense and marred by occasional miscommunications. On February 8, Church endorsed a Javits resolution that would have labeled an attack on Taiwan “a common danger to the peace and security . . . of the United States.” This language came directly from the old mutual defense treaty. The Javits draft pledged that the United States “would maintain its capacity in the Western Pacific to resist armed attack and other forms of external activities that would jeopardize the territorial and functional integrity of Taiwan.” After strong opposition from the Carter administration, expressed by Christopher, Church withdrew his support, saying that “this was a tentative proposition. It was hastily drawn up.” When Javits pointed out that Church had approved circulating the draft, Church said that didn’t mean that he was “bound to it.” This irritated Javits and reminded people on the committee of Church’s on-again, off-again approach to the F-15s the previous year. But they kept working away, seeking language that would achieve a broad consensus.
World events threatened to derail the effort. On February 17, China launched a major cross-border attack into Vietnam, plunging six miles deep into Vietnamese territory with air support. That Chinese action, coming at a crucial juncture in Congress’s deliberation, troubled many members. Percy noted that “the Chinese invasion of Vietnam has made it even more imperative that the Chinese understand . . . our concern for Taiwan.” But notwithstanding China’s incursion, Church and Javits, working continually with their staffs and consulting with the administration, agreed on legislative language.
On February 22, the Foreign Relations Committee unanimously approved a statement of support for Taiwan and the legislation establishing a new basis for Taiwanese relations. The Church-Javits language stated that the United States “will maintain its capacity to resist any resort to force or other forms of coercion that would jeopardize the security or social or economic system of the people of Taiwan.” It also stated that any use of force against Taiwan would be “a threat to the peace and security of the Western Pacific area and of grave concern to the United States.” Previously, the committee rejected a Percy amendment that stated “any effort to resolve the Taiwan issue by other than a peaceful means” would be considered “a threat to the security interests of the United States.” The differences between the Church-Javits and Percy formulations seemed small, but they were enormous. Church-Javits was a strong statement of U.S. policy and concern, but it did not continue to language of the mutual security treaty or constitute a commitment by the United States to go to war over Taiwan. The Carter administration could accept Church-Javits, and both Peking and Taipei could live with it.
The formulation met the high standard that Church had set at the beginning of the hearings—“diplomatic skill and legislative ingenuit
y.” Immediately, it gained the same broad support in the full Senate that had it received in the Foreign Relations Committee. Helms had threatened to filibuster the nomination of Leonard Woodcock, the former president of the United Auto Workers, to be Ambassador to China. But now, Helms folded his tent quickly, and the former UAW president was confirmed by an overwhelming 82–9, which included such staunch conservatives as Goldwater and Strom Thurmond. Even Helms had kind words for the committee’s language. It was a stunning turnabout.
On March 13, the Senate approved the Taiwan bill with the Church-Javits language by a vote of 90–6. The House adopted a similar bill by a vote of 345–55. The Senate approved the final conference report on the Taiwan Relations Act by a vote of 85–4. President Carter wavered before signing it, because some of his advisers wanted him to veto the bill lest the PRC leaders conclude that he had negotiated in bad faith. But on April 10, he signed the legislation. Later that year, Goldwater’s legal challenge to the President’s termination of the 1954 treaty failed.
The Carter administration’s recognition of the PRC, combined with the Taiwan Relations Act, constituted what Harvard’s John K. Fairbank called “a great diplomatic achievement.” Fairbank, the dean of China scholars in the United States, believed that the results far surpassed anything that China experts had anticipated: “Since Peking now has latent sovereignty, we need not confront Chinese nationalism. Since Taiwan will be defensible, we have not ‘abandoned’ it.”
Although PRC officials objected to the Taiwan Relations Act, they went along with it. When Church and four other committee members visited China in mid-April, Deng told them that the act had almost derailed the normalization process. But Deng’s comments took up only a few minutes of an otherwise positive meeting that focused on the long-term interest of the United States and China in establishing good relations. In Taiwan, initial rage about the U.S. decision to recognize China gave way to reluctant acceptance. When Carter first announced the agreement, angry demonstrators had taken to the streets, breaking the windows of a car containing Deputy Secretary of State Christopher. The enactment of the Taiwan Relations Act calmed the situation by placing the United States and Taiwan in “a unique relationship,” which managed to maintain a significant level of U.S. commitment to the island, even while fundamentally altering it. Church received expressions of “deepest appreciation” from the Republic of China’s premier and “profound gratitude” from Taiwan’s Deputy Representative in the United States.
The Taiwan Relations Act constituted a remarkable legislative and political accomplishment. At the outset, it had appeared that the China/Taiwan debate might be prolonged and bitter. Within a period of weeks in early 1979, the Senate, led by Church and Javits, had completely transformed the political environment. The committee’s hearings had educated the Hill and the country, and the senators’ determination to find a way to embrace China without abandoning Taiwan had managed both to reflect the public mood and calm it. The American people basically supported the position of Church and Javits, rather than the position of Reagan, Helms, and Dole.
The United States would no longer ignore the reality of China. Nor would we pretend that there were two Chinas. Our policy would be to recognize China and continue to support Taiwan. Thirty years later, both China and Taiwan are prospering, and Taiwan has become a vibrant democracy. China has made no moves to forcefully incorporate the “renegade province” into China. In fact, political and economic relations have deepened between China and Taiwan.
Of course, it was a different time. This was how the Senate worked in the era when it was still great. Issues were taken on the merits, and faced, no matter how tough they were. Nominees got judged on their merits, irrespective of partisan politics. The national interest dictated the result. It was the last great Senate, and it would not last much longer.
chapter 14
ENERGY BATTLES AFTER THE IRANIAN REVOLUTION
IN THE SEA OF PROBLEMS CONFRONTING CARTER AND THE CONGRESS from 1977 through 1979, healthy economic growth had been the Democrats’ lifeline. The U.S. economy was in its fifth year of expansion since the deep recession triggered by the OPEC oil embargo of 1973. Manufacturing employment had reached an all-time high, employing 19 million Americans. Industrial capacity was beginning to be strained, causing inflation to rise to 9 percent, with food prices rising especially quickly. But oil prices had been stable for a year.
The Iranian Revolution ended that stability, changing the economic picture almost overnight. After the revolution, Iranian oil production virtually stopped. Global oil production at the beginning of 1979 was down 2 million barrels a day from the last quarter of 1978. OPEC members used the tight world oil market created by the loss of Iranian production to raise the price of oil 17 percent. A week later, OPEC announced another 9 percent increase. Shortly thereafter, the cartel hit the world’s oil-consuming nations with its largest increase yet. Gasoline prices rose 55 percent in the first three months of the year. Carter’s economic advisers estimated that the inflation rate in America could reach 15 percent. Within weeks, the American economy slowed dramatically. The country faced the specter of energy shortages, soaring inflation and a looming recession. Theodore White wrote: “There was a contagion of fear.”
Jimmy Carter had devoted the first two years of his presidency trying to convince America that its increasing dependence on foreign oil threatened our country’s future. As memory of the 1973 OPEC embargo receded, the public’s intensity of concern had eased, and energy legislation bogged down in acrimonious debate. Now, as oil prices skyrocketed and produced long lines at gas stations across the country, the energy crisis was no longer abstract or somewhere in the distant future.
If the powerful reverberations from the Iranian Revolution were not bad enough, on March 28, a pump failed at Three Mile Island, the nuclear power station near Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, and emergency crews had to rush to shut down the plant before its overheated core could melt down. One hundred thousand residents fled their homes, while across the country, Americans fearfully hoping for the best quickly lost confidence in nuclear power as an alternative to dependency on foreign oil.
Carter and the Congress now plunged into a third consecutive year of grueling battles over America’s energy crisis. On April 5, saying “the future of the country we love is at stake,” Carter announced a three-pronged strategy for building energy security. He called for a massive effort to develop synthetic fuels as an alternative to oil. He advocated the creation of an Energy Mobilization Board, which would be able to cut through federal, state, and local regulation in order to expedite the building of synthetic fuels plants, to replace fossil fuels and enable American energy independence. And he proposed the gradual decontrol of oil prices and other measures, aimed at forcing Americans to “use less oil and pay more for it.” Because loosening controls on oil prices would primarily benefit the oil industry, Carter also asked Congress to create a windfall profits tax, with the proceeds going to an Energy Security Fund.
The debate over the windfall profits tax would soon take center stage. The administration estimated that decontrol would raise gas prices by 5 cents a gallon by 1982 and reduce foreign oil imports by 600,000 barrels a day, mostly from stimulated domestic production following higher prices. The administration officials also estimated that oil company revenue would jump $10.7 billion in 1981 if the windfall profits tax was not imposed. They indicated that the tax proceeds would go to credits for low-income homeowners, expanded mass transit, and development of synthetic fuels.
Scoop Jackson, the chairman of the Energy Committee, strongly supported Carter’s proposal for an Energy Mobilization Board to expedite the production of synthetic fuels. He saw it as a big proposal, appropriate for the magnitude of the threat from OPEC. The EMB reminded Jackson of the World War II Defense Production Board, which cut through red tape and helped make possible the rapid buildup of the war effort. The Defense Production Board, however, had done its work during a national war effort
and before the enactment of environmental laws and regulations. More fundamentally, the United States knew how to build planes and tanks. No one knew how to build synthetic fuels plants, and whether, or how quickly, synthetic fuels could be made an alternative to oil.
The Senate had already consented to lifting price controls. Its fiercest debate would be about the windfall profits tax: its size and what the money would be used for. Chuck Percy gave an early indication of the direction of the debate, saying that “if a windfall profits tax on oil company profits is necessary . . . then full credit should be given to oil companies for plowing back profits into discovery and development of new energy sources.”
In the crisis atmosphere, the issue heated up quickly. Russell Long and other members from oil states had promoted the idea of a “plowback,” giving a tax break for any oil profits spent on new exploration. On April 26, the administration estimated that its proposed windfall profits tax would require oil companies to pay back only $1.7 billion in 1982 out of an estimated $14.5 billion in extra profits. Carter was not supportive, protesting that any additional “plowback” would be a travesty. Carter would recall in his diary: “Everyone was trying to demagogue decontrol and windfall profits tax.” He decried the irresponsibility of Congress in refusing to give him authority to ration gasoline and impose conservation measures in an emergency. “Congress is disgusting on this particular subject,” he wrote.