So far the US diplomat Donald Keyser stands accused only of making an unauthorized trip to Taiwan, a bureaucratic quibble of Lilliputian dimensions. The FBI has hinted, however, that there may be more charges to come, and it has been widely speculated here that these might be seriously damaging to Taiwan-US relations. Yet one of the most revealing things said about the whole case appeared in The New York Times a week ago, where a former State Department official was reported as saying that Keyser would have stuck out in a way he did not had he shown a pro-Taiwan inclination. "I don't know of any senior officials who are pro-Taiwan," the former official was quoted as saying.
We do not know if Keyser was in fact spying for Taiwan. But we can say that it is hard to blame Taiwan if he was. When the staff of the foreign ministry of the world's hyperpower is virtually unanimous in its opposition to your interests, it is certainly useful to know exactly who is saying what to whom. Israel spies in Washington for similar reasons.
What is really needed on the US side, however, is a vigorous reinterpretation of exactly where its interests lie. Some readers commented yesterday on the strong anti-US strain of the protests on Saturday over the special arms budget. "No to the US" and "The US gets the money, we get the debt" were the slogans on a photograph that ran in this newspaper. Another one showed a skit in which Uncle Sam helped Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) strangle the working class. We even wondered if showing such photographs was a wise idea. Would it not, some in the newsroom asked, give the impression that Taiwanese were anti-American?
In the end we decided that it would show the truth -- and ran the pics. And the truth is that some people in Taiwan are anti-American. They are anti-American because they are pro-China. That the US should sell Taiwan weapons with which to defend itself, thereby enabling it to remain independent despite China's aggressive irredentism, angers supporters of Chinese nationalism, who look upon unification with China as a divine mission. They also see it as but one step on the path to China becoming a regional and perhaps global hegemon, in which will figure some settling of old scores, particularly against Japan.
The US has a clear strategic interest in not seeing that hegemony come about. A Chinese takeover of Taiwan would leave China dominating the sea lanes around Japan, US influence in the western Pacific eclipsed and US power severely diminished. Only a decision to actually pull out of the region and leave it as a Chinese "sphere of influence" could make such a truncation of its power acceptable, and we do not think the US is likely to want to do that. So the answer to the question "why should the US care about Taiwan?" is simple enough: because if China takes Taiwan, US regional and perhaps global hegemony stands to go the same way as that of the British Empire. It's that simple.
If the US has a strategic interest in seeing Taiwan remain independent from China, you might expect it to support those forces on Taiwan which share that goal. But so far it hasn't. It is no secret that US policy on Taiwan has tended to be pro-blue. It has favored the Chinese Nationalist Party; Washington wanted Lien Chan (連戰) to win the presidential election both in 2000 and 2004 and the Democratic Progressive Party and President Chen Shui-bian have been regularly castigated as "troublemakers" and "hotheads" whose behavior might provoke conflict with China.
There is here a staggering contradiction. Washington needs to understand that its friends in the pan-blue camp were toting the anti-US banners on Saturday, while the "hotheads" in fact want what the US wants -- the continuation of Taiwan's independent status. It is, therefore, high time that the US began to understand where its interests lie and who supports those interests, and to show some support for those supporters. George W. Bush slapped down Chen last December over plans to "change the status quo" -- which Chen had, in fact, never made -- in a manner that could have cost Chen the election. Who then would be in power today? The crowd airing their anti-US feelings on Saturday. So here's a message to the Americans: It's time to rethink your priorities. Try to understand who your real allies are.
In the US’ National Security Strategy (NSS) report released last month, US President Donald Trump offered his interpretation of the Monroe Doctrine. The “Trump Corollary,” presented on page 15, is a distinctly aggressive rebranding of the more than 200-year-old foreign policy position. Beyond reasserting the sovereignty of the western hemisphere against foreign intervention, the document centers on energy and strategic assets, and attempts to redraw the map of the geopolitical landscape more broadly. It is clear that Trump no longer sees the western hemisphere as a peaceful backyard, but rather as the frontier of a new Cold War. In particular,
As the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) races toward its 2027 modernization goals, most analysts fixate on ship counts, missile ranges and artificial intelligence. Those metrics matter — but they obscure a deeper vulnerability. The true future of the PLA, and by extension Taiwan’s security, might hinge less on hardware than on whether the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) can preserve ideological loyalty inside its own armed forces. Iran’s 1979 revolution demonstrated how even a technologically advanced military can collapse when the social environment surrounding it shifts. That lesson has renewed relevance as fresh unrest shakes Iran today — and it should
The last foreign delegation Nicolas Maduro met before he went to bed Friday night (January 2) was led by China’s top Latin America diplomat. “I had a pleasant meeting with Qiu Xiaoqi (邱小琪), Special Envoy of President Xi Jinping (習近平),” Venezuela’s soon-to-be ex-president tweeted on Telegram, “and we reaffirmed our commitment to the strategic relationship that is progressing and strengthening in various areas for building a multipolar world of development and peace.” Judging by how minutely the Central Intelligence Agency was monitoring Maduro’s every move on Friday, President Trump himself was certainly aware of Maduro’s felicitations to his Chinese guest. Just
On today’s page, Masahiro Matsumura, a professor of international politics and national security at St Andrew’s University in Osaka, questions the viability and advisability of the government’s proposed “T-Dome” missile defense system. Matsumura writes that Taiwan’s military budget would be better allocated elsewhere, and cautions against the temptation to allow politics to trump strategic sense. What he does not do is question whether Taiwan needs to increase its defense capabilities. “Given the accelerating pace of Beijing’s military buildup and political coercion ... [Taiwan] cannot afford inaction,” he writes. A rational, robust debate over the specifics, not the scale or the necessity,
RSS