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US Taiwan Policy

The relationship between the United States and China is one of the most important
issues in the twenty-first century, and is, ultimately, hostage to conditions across
the Taiwan Strait. This book is the first to attempt to trace the historical origin of
what is known as the ‘Taiwan issue’ in US–China relations from a constructivist
perspective, based on detailed archival research.
The analysis used supplements the mainstream rationalist approach by
developing a new theoretical perspective on US Taiwan policy that incorporates
constructivism’s emphasis on identity, norms and discourse analysis. Whilst the
potential utility of such an approach has been gestured towards in the past, scholars
have never previously developed or elaborated upon it to any significant extent.
Here, this approach is used to re-examine the Truman administration’s decision
to protect Taiwan by military means following the outbreak of the Korean War,
and to investigate how the ‘one China’ policy was established in relation to the
process of rapprochement during President Nixon’s first term in office. The book
also considers the contemporary challenges posed to the ‘one China’ policy by the
increased importance of promoting human rights and democracy in US foreign
policy, arguing that the current US China policy is guided by a new strategy based
on ‘engagement plus hedging’.
This book will appeal to students of US foreign policy, discourse analysis,
Asian security, international security and IR theory in general.

Øystein Tunsjø is a Senior Research Fellow, Norwegian Institute of Defence

Studies, Oslo, Norway. He holds a PhD in International Relations from the
University of Wales, Aberystwyth, UK.
Asian Security Studies
Series Editors: Sumit Ganguly, Indiana University, Bloomington and
Andrew Scobell, US Army War College

Few regions of the world are fraught with as many security questions as Asia.
Within this region it is possible to study great power rivalries, irredentist
conflicts, nuclear and ballistic missile proliferation, secessionist movements,
ethno-religious conflicts and inter-state wars. This book series publishes the best
possible scholarship on the security issues affecting the region, and includes
detailed empirical studies, theoretically oriented case studies and policy-relevant
analyses as well as more general works.

China and International Institutions Religion and Conflict in South and

Alternate paths to global power Southeast Asia
Marc Lanteigne Disrupting violence
Linell E. Cady and Sheldon W. Simon (eds)
China’s Rising Sea Power
The PLA navy’s submarine challenge Political Islam and Violence in Indonesia
Peter Howarth Zachary Abuza

If China Attacks Taiwan US–Indian Strategic Cooperation into

Military strategy, politics and economics the 21st Century
Steve Tsang (ed.) More than words
Sumit Ganguly, Brian Shoup and
Chinese Civil–Military Relations Andrew Scobell (eds)
The transformation of the People’s
Liberation Army India, Pakistan and the Secret Jihad
Nan Li (ed.) The covert war in Kashmir, 1947–2004
Praveen Swami
The Chinese Army Today
Tradition and transformation for the 21st China’s Strategic Culture and Foreign
century Policy Decision-Making
Dennis J. Blasko Confucianism, leadership and war
Huiyun Feng
Taiwan’s Security
History and prospects Military Strategy in the Third
Bernard D. Cole Indochina War
The last Maoist war
Edward C. O’Dowd
Asia Pacific Security China’s War on Terrorism
US, Australia and Japan and the new Counter-insurgency, politics and internal
security triangle security
William T. Tow, Satu Limaye, Martin I. Wayne
Mark Thomson and Yoshinobu Yamamoto
US Taiwan Policy
China, the United States and South-East Constructing the triangle
Asia Øystein Tunsjø
Contending perspectives on politics,
security and economics
Evelyn Goh and Sheldon W. Simon

Conflict and Cooperation in Multi-

Ethnic States
Institutional incentives, myths and counter-
balancing
Brian Dale Shoup
US Taiwan Policy
Constructing the triangle

Øystein Tunsjø
First published 2008
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada
by Routledge
270 Madison Ave, New York, NY 10016

This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2008.

“To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge’s
collection of thousands of eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk.”
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa
business
© 2008 Øystein Tunsjø
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or
utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now
known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in
any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing
from the publishers.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Tunsjø, Øystein.
US Taiwan policy : constructing the triangle / Øystein Tunsjø.
p. cm. – (Asian security studies)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. United States–Foreign relations–Taiwan. 2. Taiwan–Foreign
relations–United States. 3. United States–Foreign relations–China.
4. China–Foreign relations–United States. 5. Taiwan–Foreign relations–
China. 6. China–Foreign relations–Taiwan. I. Title.
JZ1480.A57T28 2008
327.7305124’9–dc22 2007036112

ISBN 0-203-93035-5 Master e-book ISBN

ISBN10: 0–415–45202–3 (hbk)

ISBN10: 0–203–93035–5 (ebk)
ISBN13: 978–0–415–45202–1 (hbk)
ISBN13: 978–0–203–93035–9 (ebk)
For Hege and Axel
Contents

Acknowledgements x
Abbreviations xii

1 Refocusing the study of US Taiwan policy 1

2 Discourses and the origins of the ‘Taiwan issue’ 1949–50 20

3 Opening space on the Taiwan question 1969–72 51

4 Contemporary challenges in US Taiwan policy 76

5 Debating US strategy towards China 101

6 Understanding US Taiwan policy: the linkage between

history and theory 120

Notes 129
Bibliography 170
Index 190
Acknowledgements

My sincere thanks are owed to many people who either directly or indirectly have
proved invaluable to the process of researching and writing this book. I began
working on this project as a PhD student at the University of Wales, Aberystwyth
and I owe a particular debt of gratitude to my PhD supervisors, Patrick Finney
and Ian Clark, whose support, advice and assistance have been invaluable to this
study. To be a recipient of their knowledge, insight, encouragement and advice
has been a privilege, and has pushed me far beyond what I could have achieved
alone.
I am also grateful to others who have generously given of their time and
expertise. Colin Mackerras, who first introduced me to China’s fascinating history,
has shared with me his exceptional knowledge and experience. Ulla Holm, Phil
Cunliff, Patricia Bradshaw, Christopher Coker, Johannes Rø, Stein Tønnesson and
Cian O’Driscol have read various drafts and provided valuable feedback. Will
Bain and Jan Selby provided guidance and pushed me in the right direction while
the project was in its initial stages. I would also like to thank the Department of
International Politics, Aberystwyth, Lise and Arnfin Hejes Fond and the Eckbo
legat for their financial support. To all my friends and peers at Aberystwyth I am
very grateful. In particular I would like to thank Wayne, Phil, Scott, Sara, Cian,
Nick, Rens, Tom, Ching Chang, Jay, Adam, Carl, Darren, Seb, Columba, Dick
and the Harriers and many others besides who all made my stay in Aberystwyth
enjoyable and enriched my time as a PhD student.
The book has been completed while working as a researcher at the Norwegian
Institute for Defence Studies. I was extremely fortunate to be able to join this
Institute and I would like to thank my colleagues there for creating such a hospitable
climate for research and writing. Anna Therese Klingstedt, the Institute’s editor,
has guided me through the most frustrating parts of preparing a manuscript for
publication. It has also been a pleasure working with Routledge and I have been
very impressed by their professionalism, feedback and speedy turnaround. I would
especially like to acknowledge Andrew Humphrys, the military and strategic
editor, for being so approachable and supportive. Thanks are also due to three
anonymous reviewers who provided concise and constructive suggestions.
While writing this thesis, I was grateful to have the support of Ragnhild Evjen
Andersen who employed her English language editing skills. Moreover, it gives me
 Acknowledgements xi
great pleasure to acknowledge the support of those individuals who helped during
my research at libraries and archives in the United States. I am indebted to Jan
Cornelius for his hospitality while I was staying in Washington. The staffs at the
National Archives and the Library of Congress in Washington were professional
and always willing to give generously of their time. At the Truman Presidential
Library I was received with a spirit of generosity and enthusiasm that still takes
my breath away. The Harry House, in Independence, Missouri, not only provided
me with excellent accommodation, it was also an inspiration to know that I was
staying at the childhood home of President Truman.
It seems almost customary to leave them until the end, but it goes without
saying that my biggest debt is to my family who have lived this project with
me. The Tunsjøs, the Smiths, the Smedstads and the Leinaas have supported me
through seemingly endless years of education. Even if they have been far away,
their affection never felt distant and while somewhat in wonder at the length
of time the project has required, they have all continued to be supportive. I am
especially indebted to my father for providing me with the opportunity to study
for so many years. Without his relentless encouragement, patience, humour and
enduring support this book might never have seen the light of day.
Writing a monograph has its pleasures, but they pale before the other rewards
that life has to offer. I have dedicated this book to my wife, Hege, and my son,
Axel. Although Hege and Axel have not received the attention they deserve,
Hege’s patience, love and companionship have been unwavering. Hege’s loving
and caring personality has soothed the wounds inflicted by times of yearning and
has made me able to go through the process of writing this book. I could not have
done it without her.
Abbreviations

AIT American Institute in Taiwan

APEC Asian-Pacific Economic Cooperation Forum
ARF ASEAN Regional Forum
ASEAN Association of South East Asian Nations
CCNAA Coordination Council for North American Affairs
CCP Chinese Communist Party
CIA Central Intelligence Agency
CRS Congressional Research Service
CTC Congressional Taiwan Caucus
DNSA Digital National Security Archive
DoD Department of Defense
DPP Democratic Progressive Party
EU European Union
FRUS Foreign Relations of the United States
GRC Government of the Republic of China
HAK Henry A. Kissinger
HSTL Harry S. Truman Library
IGO Intergovernmental organisations
INGO International non-governmental organisations
IR International Relations
JCS Joint Chiefs of Staff
KMT Kuomintang
MDT Mutual Defense Treaty
MFN Most Favoured Nation
NARA National Archives and Record Administration
NK North Korea
NPM Nixon Presidential Material
NSA National Security Archive
NSC National Security Council
NSSM National Security Study Memorandum
QDR Quadrennial Defense Review
OECD Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development
PRC People’s Republic of China
 Abbreviations xiii
RG 59 Record Group 59
RN Richard Nixon
ROC Republic of China
ROK Republic of Korea
SCO Shanghai Cooperation Organization
Telecons Telephone Conversations Transcripts
TRA Taiwan Relations Act
UN United Nations
UNSC United Nation Security Council
1 Refocusing the study of US
Taiwan policy

United States (US)–China relations today encompass a broad range of issues

essential to the peace, prosperity and stability of East Asia and the world.
Undoubtedly, the question of US–China relations is one of the most important
issues that will shape international politics in the twenty-first century. As many
writers have argued, US–China relations are, ultimately, hostage to the conditions
across the Taiwan Strait and the ‘Taiwan issue’ remains one of the few potential
areas of conflict where US preponderance could be challenged militarily by
another major power.
Taiwan’s successful transition to democracy and its pride in its achievements
have deprived Taiwan and China of their common objective of a unified one-
China and increased Taiwanese impulses towards independence. Conversely,
China views Taiwan as a renegade province and has, as evidenced by its most
recent anti-secession law, threatened to use force if the island takes steps towards
establishing formal independence. Although since 1972 US policy has recognised
that Taiwan is part of China, Washington has indicated it would intervene if China
tried to take Taiwan by force. It is therefore essential to broaden our understanding
of this pivotal relationship and examine historically the shifting foundations for
Taiwan’s independence and the adherence of the US to the one-China principle.
My key research question asks to what extent the Taiwan issue in US China
policy is a shifting discursive construct tied to US identity and American
representations of China and Taiwan. To date there has been no attempt to trace
from a constructivist perspective the historical origin of what is known in US–
China relations as the ‘Taiwan issue’. Accordingly, this study’s main claim to
originality is to offer the first rigorous and detailed critical constructivist analysis
based on original and detailed archival research of the construction of the Taiwan
issue in US China policy.
In the official documents and records examined, I have identified four
discursive representations of the Taiwan issue since 1949: Taiwan as representing
all of China (the ‘red menace’ discourse), the status of Taiwan as ‘undetermined’,
Taiwan as ‘independent’, and the status of Taiwan as ‘determined’ (meaning
there is one-China and that Taiwan is part of China). Although labels such as
‘determined’ and ‘undetermined’ may seem awkward to a discourse analyst, they
have been chosen because they have been articulated by state officials, elaborated
2 Refocusing the study of US Taiwan policy
on in key documentary sources and identified through discursive practices. They
are therefore not replaced by labels more easily grasped by discourse analysis.
Similarly, because I work with different source material in Chapters 4 and 5, I do
not keep to the labels identified in Chapters 2 and 3.
However, this does not imply that there is no relation between the discursive
representations of the Taiwan issue throughout this study. On the contrary, when
juxtaposing these different periods, there is something similar about the discursive
representations which highlights how the ongoing process of constituting an
American identity constructs a particular US Taiwan policy and how the practices
of US Taiwan policy produce and reproduce US identity. For instance, the
underlying representations that guide the contemporary engagement discourse
in US China policy, which acknowledges the one-China principle, resemble
previous discursive practices of the ‘determined’ discourse which has its roots in
the Truman and Nixon administrations’ position that Taiwan was part of China,
and an emphasis on China’s vital and constructive role in world affairs. Equally,
the current containment discourse shares similarities with the ‘red menace’ and
the ‘independence’ discourses in its focusing on the threatening aspects of the
Communist regime and the binary opposites that differentiate the political systems
on either side of the Taiwan Strait. Finally, the nuances in contemporary US
Taiwan policy can be traced back to the ambiguity embedded in the ‘undetermined’
discourse, a central aspect of US Taiwan policy since 1949.
Thus, by problematising the origins of the Taiwan issue in US China policy and
focusing on the discursive representations that produce meanings and possibilities
within the situation statesmen face, this analysis draws attention to the way US
Taiwan policy shapes and impinges on the status of Taiwan in international affairs.
Building on the premises of constructivist international relations theory, which take
the contingent and social construction of policy more seriously than do rationalist
approaches, I aim to illuminate the processes through which the architects of US
Taiwan policy produced and reproduced identities, constituted new knowledge
and pursued new meanings to construct and sustain particular representations of
China, the US, Taiwan and the relations between these countries.1
In other words, this study endeavours to investigate the discourses that enable
US decision-makers to represent the world in specific ways. It also aims to discuss
the emergence of different discourses of US Taiwan policy which have been
pertinent in structuring the possibilities that facilitated certain courses of action
and to rediscover what made a particular action more reasonable, imaginable and
desirable.
By representation I mean the ways in which the Taiwan issue has been
represented discursively by policymakers, scholars and others in the US. Critical
constructivists do not deny the existence of a material world outside their heads,
but they oppose the notion that ‘phenomena can constitute themselves as objects
of knowledge independent of discursive practices’.2 Thus, representations are
always the result of an interpretive construction of the world out there, which
cannot be known purely and directly, but only grasped through lenses which are
based on language, categories and social practices. Representations sustain a
 Refocusing the study of US Taiwan policy 3
particular discursive understanding but they are inherently unstable and always in
the process of being produced and reproduced.
To scrutinise the prevailing discourses and representations within a particular
decision-making environment and encourage greater reflexivity about how
identities help to specify which objects are to be protected and which constitute
threats, a critical constructivist approach aspires to explore how discursive
representations, which are seen as a priori and constitutive for action, shape
identities and interests. Such an analysis, then, opens up the possibility of new
kinds of questions and answers, allowing us to deal with US Taiwan policy and
the complexity of the Taiwan issue with fresh insight.
To contextualise my research project, the introduction starts by looking
at the literature on US–China relations to question the rationalist assumptions
underpinning this scholarship and point out that, despite a number of excellent
studies examining US–China relations since 1949, few analysts have focused on
US Taiwan policy. Indeed, rarely does any study of US–China relations examine
the effects US Taiwan policy has had on the status of Taiwan. In the second section
of the chapter, the work of various constructivists is introduced and this study’s
main theoretical and methodological assumptions are laid out. The final section
provides some background on the main sources used, presents a chapter outline,
and offers a brief preview of the overall argument of the book.

Challenging mainstream approaches

For an overall picture of US–Chinese relations, Harry Harding’s A Fragile
Relationship and Rosemary Foot’s The Practice of Power stand out as the major
contributions to the field. Harding’s analysis emphasises the different cycles in
US–China relations between 1972 and 1992, which he characterises as a pattern
of ‘progress and stagnation, crisis and consolidation’.3 According to Harding,
the most significant dynamics which push the relationship in different directions
are found in geopolitical and strategic concerns, ideological differences and
economic interests. While acknowledging the influence of all these three elements,
Harding believes that ideology and economics remain subordinate to geopolitical
concerns.4
Foot takes a broader perspective and examines the relationship from 1949
onwards in a predominantly thematic overview, which focuses on the diplomatic,
economic, strategic and domestic political aspects of the relationship. Although
she recognises the powerful influence of the realist perspective and the important
strategic underpinnings of US–Chinese relations in this period, Foot dissociates
herself from the central assumption of Harding’s assessment. As Foot argues,
‘American relations with China were embedded in a wider structure of relationships
at the global and domestic levels; they also embraced areas other than bilateral
concern about the global strategic balance’.5
Adopting a similar approach, David Shambaugh utilises international relations
theory and the ‘level of analysis’ approach to US–Chinese relations.6 Recognising
the lack of primary data, Shambaugh leaves out the so-called ‘idiosyncratic/
4 Refocusing the study of US Taiwan policy
individual’ level and focuses instead on global systemic, societal and governmental
levels of analysis.7 Noting the dramatic shift within the relationship from war
and hostility on the Korean peninsula during the 1950s, to coming close to a de
facto alliance after normalisation of relations in 1979 and then a sharp downturn
after the Tiananmen Square massacre in 1989, Shambaugh acknowledges that it
is difficult to find a ‘consistent equilibrium’. As he argues, ‘[i]t is a relationship
fraught with high emotions, misperceptions, and considerable historical baggage.
Even when the two nations’ objective national interests coincided, these subjective
factors eventually tended to introduce tensions into the relationship’.8
Taking up the issue of ideology, Richard Madsen concurs that perceptions held
within the broader American public indeed played a role in shaping US–China
policy. Assumptions derived from Americans’ own moral values and expectations
have been projected onto China, and intensified disputes over human rights issues,
political liberalisation and independence movements.9 To search for the place of
ideology in American foreign policy, Michael H. Hunt’s Ideology and US Foreign
Policy provides the best introduction, and his book also contains several sections
on the approach of the US to China.10 As an account of Chinese perceptions of
Americans, David Shambaugh’s Beautiful Imperialist, China Perceives America,
1972–1990, stands out as a unique and substantial study of Chinese interpretations
and images of the United States.11
Though various accounts emphasise ideological, cultural, societal and
economic issues, the theme that has enjoyed most prominence within the literature
on Sino-American relations throughout the Cold War, and especially since the
rapprochement in 1971–2, has been strategic considerations and balance of power
logic. The strategic aspects of US foreign policy which focused on containing
Communist China prior to the process of rapprochement can be followed in the
groundbreaking work of John L. Gaddis, while Harding provides a starting point
for a realist account of US–China relations since rapprochement.12
Although these studies provide useful insights into US–China relations
during the Cold War and the early 1990s and, when supplemented with more
contemporary analyses, undoubtedly broaden and enrich our understanding, it
should be noted that they do not draw extensively on archival material.13 More
importantly, few studies have been written on US–China–Taiwan relations and
most scholars have tended to focus on particular crises.14 Tucker’s contribution is
still the major exception, although recently available accounts have supplemented
Tucker’s analysis of what Bush has declared to be still ‘relatively unstudied
issues’.15 Not previously examined, however, is the way in which discourses and
representations work to construct a particular status for Taiwan.
As members of the Allied coalition during the Second World War, the heads of
state of China, the US and the United Kingdom (UK) jointly signed on 1 December
1943 the Cairo Declaration stipulating that ‘all the territories Japan has stolen from
the Chinese, such as Formosa, Manchuria, and the Pescadores, shall be restored
to the Republic of China’.16 In October 1949, after several years of civil war, the
victorious Communist forces established the People’s Republic of China (PRC)
in Beijing while Chiang Kai-Shek and his defeated Kuomintang (KMT) withdrew
 Refocusing the study of US Taiwan policy 5
to Taiwan, and proclaimed Taipei the temporary capital of the Republic of China
(ROC). The Truman administration was initially interested in some form of
reconciliation with the newly established PRC regime. However, stalemate across
the Taiwan Strait was solidified when the United States dispatched its Seventh
Fleet to the Taiwan Strait in June 1950 in the aftermath of the Korean War.
Small-scale fighting in the Taiwan Strait continued throughout the 1950s and
1960s over a string of islands (Quemoy and Matsu), but the situation eventually
settled into deadlock. Through a number of historic visits in 1971 and 1972, Nixon
and Kissinger laid the foundations for rapprochement and later normalisation of
US–China relations and shifted US Taiwan policy towards acknowledging the
one-China principle, which saw Taiwan as part of China. The Republic of China
was expelled by the United Nations National Assembly and simultaneously the
PRC was admitted to the United Nations (UN) in 1971 as representing China.
Despite a number of communiqués acknowledging the importance of improving
US–Chinese relations and reaffirming the one-China principle, the ‘Taiwan
issue’ has developed into one of the most enduring stand-offs originating in the
Cold War.
The reversals and shifts in US Taiwan policy have generally been explained in
terms of strategic calculations and balance of power logic. On this view, with war
on the Korean Peninsula, Taiwan became strategically important as an essential
link in the offshore island chain of bases and key to the southern flank of US
operations.17 The balance of power, however, had changed by the late 1960s and
early 1970s with the animosity in Sino-Soviet relations escalating into border
clashes and US military superiority waning in relation to the Soviet Union. The
structural imperatives of the international system, therefore, prompted the rationale
to overcome conflicting interests in US–China relations, and accordingly the US
changed its Taiwan policy.18 Although the contemporary picture is more mixed, a
number of studies emphasise the strategic value of Taiwan and the need to support
Taiwan as an independent entity in any attempt to contain the ‘rise of China’.19
Unsatisfied with the kind of interest-based, balance of power explanations in
mainstream literature that ‘treat interests and structures as if they were objective,
hard, substantial realities of the kind that are uncovered and explained by natural
science’, I would instead argue that the current theoretical understanding of the
rationalist approach is insufficient and that we now have other theoretical tools
with which to re-examine current literature on US–Chinese relations and the
Taiwan issue.20
As Ninkovich has observed, ‘as objects of study, interests are slippery because
they have no objective existence apart from the way people constitute and interpret
them’.21 Noting that a concern with the way identities are constantly constituted
and reconstituted in social interaction has not been central to dominant approaches
examining US Taiwan policy, this study explores the central role of discourses
and emphasises the effects of a contingent construction of US identity and the
representations which constituted its ‘national interests’.
There are significant analytical and methodological differences between an
analysis inspired by constructivism and the rationalist assumptions underpinning
6 Refocusing the study of US Taiwan policy
most traditional accounts of US Taiwan policy. This is reflected in the different
kinds of questions such analyses seek to answer. Preoccupied with a form of causal
explanation, traditional accounts emphasise ‘why’ questions. By moving from
‘why’ to ‘how-possible’ questions, we can illuminate the context of and facilitate
an understanding of the ‘why’ questions, and ‘inquire into the practices that enable
social actors to act, to frame policy as they do, and to wield the capabilities they
do’.22
Consequently, in Chapter 2 I do not ask why it was necessary, but rather how
it was possible for the US to decide to intervene in the Taiwan Strait in response
to North Korea’s attack on South Korea in June 1950. In other words, the North
Korean attack had to mean something before US decision-makers could decide
on the appropriate response. Likewise, the central question asked in Chapter 3 is
not why President Nixon and National Security Advisor Kissinger changed US
Taiwan policy in the early 1970s, but how it was possible to consider alternatives
which had previously been understood as unrealistic. Kissinger and Nixon
might have been convinced that there was a strategic rationale behind US–China
rapprochement; however, this says next to nothing about how the conflicting
dynamics underpinning a new Taiwan policy would be reconciled.
Indeed, moving from the view that Taiwan represented all of China, to seeing
Taiwan’s status as undetermined and eventually to acknowledging that Taiwan
was part of China, suggests that the ‘interest’ guiding the Nixon administration’s
Taiwan policy was not in fact objective and unitary but rather split and contradictory.
Instead of framing the Nixon administration’s Taiwan policy according to state-
centric balance of power logic, we need a theoretical and methodological approach
that scrutinises the discursive conditions of possibility that shape and constitute
the parameters for action.
Moreover, the analysis in Chapter 4 is primarily concerned with identifying
how the re-writing and re-production of US identity in the post-Cold War era
interrelates with increased attention on the binary opposites that differentiate the
political systems on either side of the Taiwan Strait, which provide commonsensical
arguments that undermine and challenge official US adherence to the one-China
principle. Thus by tracing the changing representations of China and Taiwan within
American policymaking circles, the analysis highlights how the debate about US
Taiwan policy replicates the figurations of past discursive representations, which
work to construct Taiwan and the PRC as two distinct kinds of subjects. Finally, I
do not focus on Taiwan’s role in a strategy that contemplates engagement on the
one hand, and on the other the containment of an emerging China in contemporary
world affairs. Rather, by drawing on hedging and risk management I aim to develop
a conceptual tool that encapsulates the complexities embedded in developing a
US strategy for dealing with the rise of a major power.
Shifting from ‘why’ to ‘how-possible’ questions, then, opens up the possibility
of new kinds of questions and answers about US Taiwan policy, and the type of
intersubjective political context in which changes to the status of Taiwan could
be meaningfully introduced and, therefore, embraced. In other words, rather than
framing the issue in zero-sum terms such as whether ‘why’ or ‘how-possible’
 Refocusing the study of US Taiwan policy 7
questions are more important or appropriate, we should treat these as different
kinds of questions which have different methodological entailments and recognise
that answers to them may have different implications for the way we understand
the means by which the Taiwan issue was finessed.
A central theme in this study is then that more scepticism is needed when
assessing the claims to knowledge of rationalist approaches and that such a
reservation provides an important starting point from which to investigate how one
might look differently at the Taiwan issue. Rather than assuming that ‘the truth’ is
out there and discoverable, a more modest conception of what knowledge is must
acknowledge that ‘perfect objectivity, unmediated and therefore undistorted, is
not part of the human condition’.23
The aim is not to jettison rationalist approaches entirely. Rather, it is to
develop a new theoretical and analytical perspective on US Taiwan policy that
supplements the rationalist approach by incorporating the emphasis on identity,
norms and discourse analysis found in constructivism. While some scholars have
gestured towards the potential utility of such an approach, it has been neither
elaborated nor developed to any significant extent.24 Two exceptions might be
Goh’s constructivist-inspired analysis of US–Chinese rapprochement during the
1960s and 1970s and Lynch’s hermeneutical and Habermasian approach which
underlines the relatively greater significance of the logic of communicative
engagement as opposed to strategic engagement in contemporary US–Chinese
relations.25
So, there has been little work so far that theoretically explores the interactions
within this triangular relationship while tracing historically using archival sources
the origins of what is known today as the ‘Taiwan issue’. A central theme in
my thesis, then, is to provide theoretical and analytical guidance to re-examine
aspects of this triangular relationship which to date has been inadequately tackled.
‘Applying theory’, as Costigliola has noted, ‘need not mire written history
in endless relativism. Rather, theory can enable fresh topics and new ways of
thinking about the past.’26
Although a focus on discourse analysis and critical constructivism cannot
encapsulate any ultimate reality, such an analysis is concerned with the way
discourse(s) construct a particular reality which constitutes the Taiwan issue in
US China policy. By the label critical I am referring to approaches that take more
elements of the policymaking problematic and take less as given.27 Mainstream
positivist approaches in international relations tend to take as the starting point of
their analysis a certain reality as given, which limits what social construction can
mean and the possibility of analysing identity formation as a discursive process.28
Theoretical guidance, then, is indispensable in order to grasp the underlying
dynamics of US Taiwan policy.

Theoretical and methodological assumptions

My core theoretical and methodological objective is to explore how critical
constructivism can shed new light on US Taiwan policy during and after the
8 Refocusing the study of US Taiwan policy
Cold War. The approach can be divided into four steps. The first step is to reflect
critically on Alexander Wendt’s notion of a ‘via media’ or a ‘middle ground’
between rationalist and reflectivist approaches to world politics.29 The next
step is to examine in more detail the tension between conventional and critical
constructivism and acknowledge the danger of lumping constructivism into one
homogenous school of thought.
In response to repeated calls for constructivists to cease their discussion of
‘metatheory’, this study emphasises the comparative advantage of using a critical
constructivist method to explain US Taiwan policy since 1949. This brings
me to the third and fourth steps: my theoretical and methodological approach.
Closely related to a critical constructivist approach, discourse theory provides
the conceptual framework for this study. Finally, the concepts of predication,
presupposition and subject positioning are important methodological tools that
guide my analysis.
In International Relations (IR), constructivism has emerged as ‘the officially
accredited contender to the established core of the discipline’ and has been claimed
to be ‘one of the most important theoretical developments of the last decades’.30
‘Constructivism as a phenomenon has become inescapable’ within a ‘field that
has been described as undergoing or having undergone a constructivist turn’.31
The ‘success story’ owes much of its current appeal to Wendt’s ambitious project
to develop a ‘via media’ between rationalist and reflectivist approaches to world
politics in what has been labelled the Third Debate in the historiography of the
discipline of IR theory.32
Wendt himself terms this approach ‘structural idealism’, a philosophical
position that represents both an ‘idealist’ and a ‘holist’ or ‘structuralist’ account.33
Scientific realism plays an important part in finding ‘a “via media” through the
Third Debate by reconciling what many take to be incompatible ontological
and epistemological positions’.34 Wendt sides with the post-positivist or the
reflectivist camp when it comes to ontology, which he sees as more important
than epistemology. However, on epistemological questions, Wendt sides with
the positivists, and argues that ‘social science is an epistemologically privileged
discourse that gives us knowledge, albeit always fallible, about the world out
there’.35
Given Wendt’s commitments to a positivist social science, the central problem
with the ‘middle ground’ or the ‘via media’ position is that Wendt has shifted the
‘constructivist turn’ in IR in the direction of rationalists in order to be acceptable to
more mainstream approaches. In that process, something has been lost. As Smith,
among others, has pointed out, by embracing the epistemological underpinnings
of rationalism, conventional constructivism as understood in Wendt’s terms
‘fundamentally misconceives the nature of the social world, and limits the range
of possibilities for a social theory of international relations based on it’.36
With epistemological differences checked for, in a conventional reading
constructivist ontology is arguably compatible with the so-called ‘normal’
scientific criteria of rationalist approaches to international relations.37 However,
this move has ‘normative overtones’ and brings us to what Persram criticises as
 Refocusing the study of US Taiwan policy 9
‘a strategic use of constructivism’.38 Consequently, Maja Zehfuss cautions us that
if conventional constructivism is seen as satisfying the need for a critical stance
within the field of IR, ‘it may become a licence to ignore and exclude other critical
approaches’.39
Thus Keohane praises Wendt for his commitment to more traditional and
restricted modes of inquiry as Wendt convincingly shows ‘that one does not have
to swallow the contaminated epistemological water of postmodernism in order
to enjoy the heady ontological wine of constructivism’.40 Others seem grateful to
Wendt for laying ‘to rest the notion that constructivism is necessarily postmodern,
devoid of an objective referent … [And] his discussion of scientific realism ought
to be required reading for any student of international relations …’.41 Indeed,
Katzenstein, Keohane and Krasner maintain that work they bracket together as
post-modernism ‘falls clearly outside the social science enterprise’.42
To pull constructivism off its somewhat shaky middle ground, we need to
acknowledge the impossibility of constructing a philosophically principled
middle way that mixes ‘positivistic epistemology with post-positivist ontology’.43
Dispensing with notions of secure foundations often engenders the charge of
relativism. With no Archimedean points to settle epistemological and ontological
differences, the task is endless and it is perhaps necessary to recognise that the
middle ground ‘has no particular virtues but many of the disadvantages of the
positions it tries to mediate’.44 Such a position, however, does not necessarily
portend a descent into nihilism.
Rather, following Guzzini, this study argues that constructivism is in need
of a reconstruction, thus, in a nutshell, acknowledging that constructivism is
‘epistemologically about the social construction of knowledge, and ontologically
about the construction of social reality’.45 Before we look at how this philosophical
position influences my theoretical and methodological propositions, it is necessary
to propose a more nuanced view of the various approaches to what has been
labelled constructivism.
Constructivism is not a unified body of theory. Katzenstein et al. categorise
three broad clusters: conventional, critical and postmodern.46 John G. Ruggie
differentiates between three different variants: neo-classical constructivism,
postmodernist constructivism and a third constructivist variant located on the
continuum between these two.47 I shall concentrate on the distinction between
conventional and critical constructivists.48 Such a distinction is similar to Wendt’s
differentiation between ‘thin’ and ‘thick’ constructivism.49
I recognise the fact that considerable differences exist within each of these
branches and that some scholars would reject any categorisation. Furthermore, by
drawing this distinction I am not arguing that there is no relationship between these
different strands of constructivism. In some areas they overlap and complement
each other, so they should not be regarded as mutually exclusive. When examining
the usefulness of conventional approaches I limit my analysis to normative and
systemic constructivists. I proceed in two ways. On the one hand, I aim to show
that normative constructivism needs to take much greater account of how a
particular norm could be given meaning and significance by decision-makers at
10 Refocusing the study of US Taiwan policy
specific times and places.50 On the other hand, I seek to broaden the narrowly
defined systemic constructivism associated with Wendt.51
As shown by a wide-ranging empirical work on the diffusion of Western norms
to the Third World,52 global norms and apartheid,53 a chemical weapons ‘taboo’,54
the use of land mines55 and political change,56 norms do matter. Nevertheless, to
encapsulate how norms define and reformulate an understanding of interest and
limit a range of acceptable policy choices, a further push towards ‘reconstructing
the social discursive context that made possible that particular understanding of
that norm’ is needed.57
As Hopf argues, ‘normative constructivism’s focus on norms per se excessively
narrows constructivism’s theoretical domain, depriving it of its own sociological
ontology’.58 Once our empirical findings suggest that decision-makers adopt a
particular norm, we need to go one step further and trace how that norm could
be given meaning and significance by the decision-makers. Hence, to account for
the rejection or adoption of any particular norm, the principal point must be to
establish the ‘configurations of intersubjective meanings that made possible the
very thinkability or imaginability of these choices’.59
Systemic approaches, usually associated with Wendt, hold that identities and
interests are formed through processes of interstate interaction, and illuminate
how states’ identities are shaped by interaction at the systemic level.60 However,
systemic constructivism remains insufficient to account for the construction and
variety of identities possessed by a state at the domestic level. An important aim
is therefore to recognise that identity construction takes place at different levels.
State identity is a product of both the domestic and the international realm and it is
unlikely that either context will dominate in the construction of state identity.61
Wendt does not consider how states constitute themselves as subjects in the
first place. Wendt succinctly states this view in explaining that Social Theory of
International Politics ‘is a book about the international system, not about state
identity formation’.62 Wendt’s commitment to develop a systemic theory follows
Waltz in emphasising the necessity to ‘treat states as, at some level, given for
purpose of systemic IR theory’.63 This is exactly where Wendt’s analysis becomes
problematic.
On the one hand, it is maintained that the world is socially constructed; on
the other hand, conventional constructivists take a certain ‘reality’ as given
as the starting point of inquiry. Wendt’s unitary actor, with its preconceived
identity, places severe limits on what social construction can mean. What is at
stake here, of course, is that ‘states are socially constructed, but they can only
be socially constructed as unitary actors’.64 In short, Smith asks ‘how Wendt’s
social constructions get constructed given that his world is composed of pre-social
actors with stable identities’.65
The focus on ideas, norms, identities and cultures as ‘one more aspect of “the
real” of international relations, or one more “cause” underlying foreign policy,
that needs to be incorporated into our analysis’ threatens to absorb constructivism
as a mere ‘facelift of the mainstream’.66 Accordingly, much of the success of
conventional constructivism has been ‘paid for by a neglect of some basic ideas of
 Refocusing the study of US Taiwan policy 11
constructivism’.67 A common concern among critical scholars, then, is that Wendt
has sacrificed the possibility of studying the ‘multidimensionality of identity
formation’ and explicitly sided with more mainstream approaches.68
Wendt himself acknowledges that states are only unitary actors analytically,
not in fact. Indeed, Wendt postulates that ‘[t]hose ideas were no doubt formed in
social interaction with other actors prior to the Encounter, but they are exogenous
here’.69 Thus Wendt concedes that it is ‘striking how little empirical research has
been done investigating what kinds of interests state actors actually have’ and
finds that ‘there are important dangers, both theoretical and political, to leaving
the internal construction of state identity unexamined’.70
A rewarding but challenging task is therefore not to prejudice analysis by
singling out one particular level of analysis. Indeed, critical constructivists
recognise that there is no theoretical reason to assume that the process of the
construction of state identity occurs only, or even most importantly, at the interstate
level. Instead they hold that state identities are a product of both the domestic and
the international level.71
By drawing on critical constructivism, this book focuses on the processes of
social construction that have constituted US identity at a particular time. It is
guided by three interrelated analytical principles: ‘(i) What is understood as reality
is socially constructed (ii) Certain agents or groups of agents play a privileged role
in the production and reproduction of these realities, which reflect, enact, and reify
relations of power (iii) A critical constructivist approach problematises dominant
constructions, offers guidelines for the transformation of common sense, and
facilitates the imagining of alternative constructions of reality’.72
Such a critical constructivist position does not reject the existence of a world
external to thought. However, there is a tendency to talk about things being either
real or ‘merely constructed’. The constructed world thus construed is somehow less
tangible, less trustworthy. Critics of constructivism appear here to be contesting
the idea that the world is a figment of our imagination and has no materiality,
which was never any constructivist’s claim.73
Referring to something as socially constructed is not at all the same as
saying that it does not exist. Because this misunderstanding persists, it should
be repeated that the ‘discursive character of an object does not, by any means,
imply putting its existence into question’.74 Constructivists would not deny that
nuclear weapons exist, that their use has an apocalyptic effect on human life or
that a number of states possess nuclear capabilities. ‘On this a constructivist and
the most empiricist of arms-control experts can agree.’75 However, as pointed
out by Weldes et al., constructivism is interested in how we get from here to
such widely shared propositions that the United States is threatened by Russian
and Chinese, but not by British or Israeli, nuclear weapons, that Iran’s nuclear
potential is more threatening than the US’s nuclear arsenal and that states are
safer with nuclear weapons than without them.76 Rather than being self-evident,
threats and corresponding national interests are fundamentally matters of
interpretation. Thus, it is this discursive constitution of the threat represented by
nuclear weapons that Weldes et al. refer to as ‘ “construction,” and it means not
12 Refocusing the study of US Taiwan policy
that the weapons have been made up but that their meaning has been molded in
discourse’.77
Recognising that reality is socially constructed does not, for example, mean
that one has to deny that the US Seventh Fleet was interposed in the Taiwan
Strait following North Korea’s attack on South Korea in June 1950. Indeed, any
interpretation of these events, to be plausible, must recognise and account for
these actions. The meanings articulated by those actions, however, are contingent
and contested. As we shall see in the next chapter, Washington emphasised the
‘neutralising’ intentions behind the decision to interpose the Seventh Fleet in the
Taiwan Strait, while the British saw it as an unnecessary provocation and the PRC
denounced it as ‘armed aggression against the territory of China …’.78 As Weldes
points out, then, ‘what is at issue in the claim that national interests are socially
constructed is meaning and its social effects, not physical existence’.79
Meta-theory matters, but this study is more interested in showing concretely the
way in which discourse operates and demonstrating how US Taiwan policy since
1949 has been driven by discursive representations, which are intersubjectively
articulated and socially constructed. With this in mind, this book seeks to reconcile
theory and empirical research by demonstrating the advantages of applying
critical constructivist thinking to a specific area of investigation. The remedy to
this problem brings me to a discussion of my method and source material.
The concept of discourse has different meaning to various theoretical traditions
in the social sciences.80 The work of these approaches has been taken up in
different theories and disciplines, producing somewhat different and overlapping
theorisations and analyses of ‘discourses’. The discourse theory utilised in this
study differs from positivist, realist and Marxist accounts and is closer to the
poststructuralist traditions of Foucault, Laclau and Mouffe than the work of
Derrida and Kristeva or the critical discourse analysis developed by Fairclough
and Wodak.81 My objective is to draw upon these traditions in order to examine
the construction of various discourses of the Taiwan issue in US China policy.82
Borrowing selectively from a long tradition of discourse theory opens up new ways
of interpreting and evaluating empirical material essential to our understanding of
US Taiwan policy.
Howarth identifies three basic categories central to discourse theory: the
discursive, discourse and discourse analysis. By discursive Howarth argues that
‘all objects are objects of discourse, in that a condition of their meaning depends
upon a socially constructed system of rules and significant differences’.83 The
discursive realm is not equivalent to ‘ideas’, but incorporates material as well
as ideational factors. Thus, against the prejudice of the ‘mental character of
discourse’, Laclau and Mouffe state that ‘we will affirm the material character
of every discursive structure’.84 For example, the ideas, policies and actions of
the Nixon administration’s Taiwan policy can be seen as a discursive field. Not
only did it consist of ideas (a ‘new era’ of American foreign policy and ‘Nixon
doctrine’) it also included certain practices (‘strong leadership’, ‘official
visits to the PRC’, ‘withdrawal of troops’, and ‘changing voting patterns in
the UN’).
 Refocusing the study of US Taiwan policy 13
The category of discourse refers to ‘historically specific systems of meaning
which form the identities of subjects and objects … discourses are contingent
and historical constructions, which are always vulnerable to those political forces
excluded in their production, as well as the dislocatory effects of events beyond
their control’.85 A discourse is intrinsically open-ended and incomplete. Its exterior
limits are constituted by other discourses that are themselves also open, inherently
unstable and always in the process of being articulated.86 Discourses, then, are
constantly modified and transformed by what we say, think and do.
The final category proposed by Howarth is discourse analysis which ‘refers
to the process of analysing signifying practices as discursive forms. This means
that discourse analysis treats a wide range of linguistic and non-linguistic
material – speeches, reports, manifestos, historical events, interviews, policies,
ideas, even organisations and institutions – as “texts” or “writings” that enable
subjects to experience the world of objects, words and practices’.87 Accordingly,
social relations are not purely linguistic phenomena and there are no ontological
differences between the linguistic and behavioural aspects of social practices.88
Discourse analysis, then, can be differentiated from the study of linguistics.
Whereas linguistics examines the rules of language that underlie particular
statements, ‘the description of the events of discourses poses a quite different
question: how is it that one particular statement appeared rather than another?’89
In other words, there is a difference between what one could say linguistically
under the rules of grammar and logic, and what is actually said. The question,
as Edkins points out, focuses on ‘[w]hy do we, in fact, say some things and not
others?’90
Particular aspects of the world may be represented differently by various
discourses, so we are generally in the position of having to consider the
relationship between different discourses. Discourses are identified through
prominent representations and they articulate different constructions of identity.
However, discourses do not define one particular policy, but structure the policy
space within which concrete decisions are made. Establishing what form any
discourse about US Taiwan policy took, as well as how the Taiwan issue in
US China policy was constructed, requires careful empirical analysis. Different
discourses structure the world differently and can be understood, according
to Hansen, ‘as framings of meanings and lenses of interpretation, rather than
objective, historical truth’.91
Finally, discourse theory does not endeavour to uncover the true and underlying
meanings of texts and social practices that are somehow deliberately concealed
by ideological practices and propaganda.92 Instead, comparing public rhetoric
with private statements suggests that rhetoric reflects fundamental assumptions
guiding policymaking. Nixon and Kissinger expressed different views on the
Taiwan issue in their discussions with the Chinese leadership and in the Shanghai
Communiqué. However, to be effective, the shift in US China policy was embedded
in the language of the determined discourse because it ‘constituted the framework
in which policymakers deal with specific issues and in which the attentive public
understands those issues’.93
14 Refocusing the study of US Taiwan policy
Public statements are often intended, perhaps even primarily, to persuade and
to mobilise. Weldes points out, however, that ‘precisely the same language and
arguments – in short, the same rhetoric – appears in documents not intended for
public consumption’.94 NSC 68 gives a telling example. As Gaddis observed,
‘portions of it sounded as though they had been intended for the floor of Congress,
or some other conspicuous public platform … This is not what one would expect
in a top secret document destined not to be public for a quarter of a century.’95 In
short, as Weldes persuasively argues, the criticism that the language of national
interest is ‘mere rhetoric’ and so cannot help us to understand state action rests
‘upon an unsustainable distinction between rhetoric, on the one hand, and truth
or objectivity on the other. Gaddis’ surprise at the language deployed by the
authors of NSC 68 is a function precisely of this common but ultimately untenable
distinction.’96
My understanding of discourse analysis is anchored in these theoretical
commitments. The next step is then to explain the methodological tools that
enable me to examine how discursive practices constitute subjects and objects,
rendering some courses of action more reasonable than others based on a
particular representation of subjects and the relations between them. As Adler
has recognised, methodology is the major missing link in constructivist theory
and research: ‘a coherent constructivist methodological approach also means
approaching research less as a predictive enterprise than as an effort to explain
how past and present events, practices and interests became possible and why they
occurred in time and space the way they did’.97
Borrowing from Doty and Milliken, the concepts of predication, presupposition
and subject positioning are important analytical categories that enable me to get at
how discursive practices and representations shape policy options and choices.98
Predication is linked to the system of signification and is suitable for the study of
language practices in texts (e.g. diplomatic documents, theory articles, transcripts
of interviews), the main research materials for international relations discourse
analysts. Laclau and Mouffe used the term nodal points to refer to privileged
discursive points that fix meaning and establish positions that make predication
possible.99 Thus, ‘[p]redication involves the linking of certain qualities to particular
subjects … by extracting from the documents the descriptive characteristics,
adjectives, adverbs, and capabilities attributed to the various subjects’.100
A predicate affirms a quality, attribute or property of a person or thing. For
instance, to state that ‘[t]he United States will work for a just and secure peace:
just, because it fulfils the aspirations of peoples and nations for freedom and
progress; secure, because it removes the danger of foreign aggression’, establishes
the United States as a particular kind of subject with these qualities.101 As Doty
explains, ‘attributes attached to subjects are important for constructing identities
for those subjects and for telling us what subjects can do’.102
Predication also occurs through practices of articulation. In the process of
articulation, linguistic predicates are ‘combined and recombined to produce
contingent and contextually specific representations of the world’.103 To paraphrase
Weldes, in the construction of the Taiwan issue, for example, an articulation of
 Refocusing the study of US Taiwan policy 15
the PRC leaders as authoritarian establishes a particular set of meanings in US
representations of the Taiwan issue which constitutes the ROC and the PRC as
different entities.104
Weldes argues that ‘articulations are never simply produced once and for
all’, but keep being continuously reproduced and rearticulated. In other words,
‘alternative representations are always possible’.105 This contingency of discourse
is embedded in Laclau and Mouffe’s characterisation of the practice of articulation
as ‘the construction of nodal points which partially fix meaning … [T]he partial
character of this fixation proceeds from the openness of the social, a result, in its
turn, of the constant overflowing of every discourse by the infinitude of the field
of discursivity’.106
Presupposition deals with other important textual mechanisms that create
background knowledge and in doing so construct a particular kind of world
in which certain things are recognised as true.107 One of the most important
aspects of a discourse is its capacity to naturalise. Naturalisation occurs through
presupposition, which creates background knowledge that is taken to be true, which
entails an implicit theorisation of how the world works and also an elaboration of
the nature of its inhabitants.108
Subject positioning constitutes the final part of this process of producing
meaning. The rhetorical strategies found in discourses entail the positioning
of subjects and objects vis-à-vis one another. What defines a particular kind of
subject is, in large part, the relationship in which that subject is positioned relative
to other kinds of subjects.109 According to Doty, some of the important kinds of
relationships that position subjects are those of opposition, identity, similarity and
complementarity.110
The process of subject position is also related to the notion of interpellation.
Although the following analysis does not examine individuals’ self-understanding
or how concrete individuals are interpellated by, or ‘hailed’ into those subject
positions, the analysis notes that subject positions ‘are created when social
relations are depicted’.111 A variety of subject positions are constructed within
a state’s discursive understanding of ‘our state’ and ‘their state’, or ‘us’ and
‘them’. The central subject position is, of course, that of the relevant state itself.
Moreover, the field of discursivity establishes the United States as ‘a particular
kind of subject, with a specific identity and the specific interests attendant upon
that identity’.112
‘The United States’, rather than, say, individual American citizens becomes the
primary object of security as a result of the interpellation of this subject position.
As Weldes demonstrates, ‘since “we” Americans are freedom-loving democrats
and civilised Westerners, it makes sense to claim that “our” U.S. actions abroad
are designed to promote liberty and freedom, not self-interest or tyranny. Since
“we” are concerned American patriots, the United States clearly has the right to
do all that it deems necessary to protect the American way of life.’113 Thus each
subject position is located within specific power relations, enabling particular
ways of operating in the world and characterised by particular interests attendant
upon that identity or subject position.
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