In mid-May, The Washington Post published a thoughtful, timely, well-reasoned and thankfully provocative opinion piece by Gary Schmitt of the American Enterprise Institute calling for the normalization of relations with Taiwan. I would like to echo that call, as well as give further reasons why and how it could be done.
Over the past 45 years, in addition to the issue of American and Japanese abandonment of Taiwan in favor of China in the early 1970s, one problem that has prevented closer ties between Japan and Taiwan, and has worried U.S. policymakers and diplomats over the years, has been that of the disputed Senkaku Islands, which have historically been a part of Japan (1895-1945; 1972-) and are under Japanese administration today. (From 1945 to 1972, the islands were under U.S. military occupation and administrative control.)
Following the completion of a study in 1968 by the U.N. Economic Commission for Asia and the Far East which found possible oil and other mineral reserves in the area and the signing of the Okinawa Reversion Agreement in June 1971 (just as the Nixon administration was coordinating then-National Security Adviser Henry A. Kissinger's surprise visit to Beijing), Taiwan and China competitively both began to announce, quite belatedly, their claims over the islands, none of which is particularly valid or relevant.