Doug Paal Returns to Taiwan

Taiwan government press entity, Central News Agency (CNA), reported on a July 27, 2008 meeting between Doug Paal and others with President Ma Ying-jeou in the Presidential Palace. Paal, a former CIA analyst and White House staffer under the George Bush administration in the early 1990s, served as AIT Director from 2002 to 2006. After he stepped down, he was quoted in one prominent U.S. journal as saying that the Pentagon had been encouraging pro-independence advocates in Taiwan.

Earlier this year, Paal joined the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace as Director of its China Program in Washington and Beijing. He recently published his outline for the next president's foreign policy. While at the NSC, he worked with International Republican Institute Director Lorne Craner. Before arriving in Taipei, he was founder and president of the Asia-Pacific Policy Center.

Other U.S. attendees included Bob Ross from Harvard, Steve Goldstein from Harvard, Bob Sutter from Georgetown, Jonathon Pollack from the Naval War College, and Michael Swaine, also from Carnegie. Attendees along with President Ma were new defacto ambassador Jason Yuan, Secretary General National Security Council Su Chi, and a Ministry of Foreign Affairs representative.

Most of the Central News Agency release was pro forma. However, what's interesting was a commentary from a Now News that analyzed why CNA posted such an unusual release:

由於馬英九接見包道格，事前並沒有預告行程，但府方卻在事後發布會晤新聞稿，外界認為，此一安排相當不尋常，一方面綠營最近不斷援引美國保守派人士、軍火商言論，質疑兩岸走得太近，可能會妨礙台美共同利益，已引起美國政府的憂慮，府方似有經由包道格公開表達華府對目前兩岸關係抱持歡迎的態度來消毒，另一方面，馬英九也藉此機會，強調不會藉著出訪進行政治操作，形同向對岸提出說明。

The essence of it is that the President's office may have released the contents of the meeting, and the delegation's glowing praise for the Ma administration's cross-Strait policies, as a means to head off criticism from others in Taiwan and abroad. Conservative U.S. think tanks, arms dealers, and other nefarious characters supposedly have been expressing concern over the pace of Ma's warming to China. The CNA release shows that the Ma administration can count on at least some Americans to approve of its policies.