Iraq is a far-away country of which Taiwanese know little. And the George W. Bush administration in the US is the warmest toward Taiwan since, perhaps, the Eisenhower presidency in the 1950s. So should Taipei unequivocally throw its support behind the Bush administration's plans to engineer regime change in Iraq, as some DPP lawmakers were suggesting last week?
A gesture of friendship and solidarity from Taiwan will certainly not do the nation any harm, given the flak that Washington is taking from countries which used to be close allies. And it is worth noting that, if a war goes ahead without UN blessing, the UN might also absent itself from any part in clearing up the post-war mess. Given that a UN commitment to anything usually means Taiwan's exclusion, our government should be ready at the earliest opportunity to let the Americans know of our willingness to do whatever we can to help with the reconstruction effort.
That said, there is reason to worry about Bush's policy. It is worth remembering that the first Gulf War was paid for largely by Japan and Saudi Arabia, whereas the burdens of the coming war and its aftermath might have to be met out of America's pocket alone. And the Iraq war -- and we are assuming that war is inevitable -- is just the first stage of the huge task of recasting the Middle East in a modern democratic form. This is likely to be hugely expensive -- some estimates of the cost of a tough war followed by an extended occupation of Iraq reach US$1 trillion -- nearly four times Taiwan's annual GDP.
On top of this large expenditure comes Bush's tax cuts, estimated to take another trillion dollars out of the US treasury. A trillion here, a trillion there and soon you're talking about real money. Can the US really afford it?
Then there is North Korea. How this situation will play itself out nobody knows and the potential for mayhem is huge.
Oh, and Osama bin Laden is still alive, and his al-Qaeda organization still flourishes.
Pleasant as the support of the Bush administration might be now, the long-term scenario is worrying. Of course things might go swimmingly, the war may be short, the remaking of the Middle East relatively painless, the North Koreans might blink, bin Laden might be captured or killed. But perhaps not.
In which case the government might like to consider this scenario: It's 2010, the Republicans have been ousted in the 2008 election by a US electorate burdened with a crippling budget deficit, steep tax hikes to try to balance the books and an economy in recession. After a number of extremely bruising and hugely expensive foreign adventures, the new government has been elected on a basis of limited fiscal resources being devoted to domestic projects. It is in no mood to reshape the world.
And all this just around the time that China's military becomes a match for Taiwan's, just around the time of the 100th anniversary of the 1911 revolution, which some PLA officers are contemplating as the date for unification being completed or else. And all this amid a new world order in which international rules of good behavior -- the UN Charter for example -- have been replaced by the unilateral definition of "national interest" by powerful states and the impossibility or reluctance of anybody to stand in their way.
Is this worrying? It certainly should be. Bask in the warm glow of Bush administration approval and support as Taiwan might today, it should at least be aware of the possibility of US overstretch, and a future retreat from international involvement as extreme as the current administration's bold commitment. This would hardly be good for Taiwan. Better then to think about what to do do now. Forewarned is forearmed.
Because much of what former US president Donald Trump says is unhinged and histrionic, it is tempting to dismiss all of it as bunk. Yet the potential future president has a populist knack for sounding alarums that resonate with the zeitgeist — for example, with growing anxiety about World War III and nuclear Armageddon. “We’re a failing nation,” Trump ranted during his US presidential debate against US Vice President Kamala Harris in one particularly meandering answer (the one that also recycled urban myths about immigrants eating cats). “And what, what’s going on here, you’re going to end up in World War
Earlier this month in Newsweek, President William Lai (賴清德) challenged the People’s Republic of China (PRC) to retake the territories lost to Russia in the 19th century rather than invade Taiwan. He stated: “If it is for the sake of territorial integrity, why doesn’t [the PRC] take back the lands occupied by Russia that were signed over in the treaty of Aigun?” This was a brilliant political move to finally state openly what many Chinese in both China and Taiwan have long been thinking about the lost territories in the Russian far east: The Russian far east should be “theirs.” Granted, Lai issued
On Tuesday, President William Lai (賴清德) met with a delegation from the Hoover Institution, a think tank based at Stanford University in California, to discuss strengthening US-Taiwan relations and enhancing peace and stability in the region. The delegation was led by James Ellis Jr, co-chair of the institution’s Taiwan in the Indo-Pacific Region project and former commander of the US Strategic Command. It also included former Australian minister for foreign affairs Marise Payne, influential US academics and other former policymakers. Think tank diplomacy is an important component of Taiwan’s efforts to maintain high-level dialogue with other nations with which it does
On Sept. 2, Elbridge Colby, former deputy assistant secretary of defense for strategy and force development, wrote an article for the Wall Street Journal called “The US and Taiwan Must Change Course” that defends his position that the US and Taiwan are not doing enough to deter the People’s Republic of China (PRC) from taking Taiwan. Colby is correct, of course: the US and Taiwan need to do a lot more or the PRC will invade Taiwan like Russia did against Ukraine. The US and Taiwan have failed to prepare properly to deter war. The blame must fall on politicians and policymakers