The message from Nicaragua seems to be clear: If Chen Shui-bian
How did we come to such a pass and where do we go to from here?
To take the blame, look no further than the criminally incompetent Chiang Kai-shek
Taiwan's diplomatic allies degenerated to a motley assortment of states which were either ideological anti-communist zealots or fellow pariahs -- and often both. And here was the start of checkbook diplomacy. It was easy to funnel some cash into the coffers of a Central American dictator or two, ostensibly showing anti-communist solidarity, in reality paying him off for keeping on Taiwan's side. It was easy and it was cheap. By the end of the 1980s Taiwan's diplomatic list read like a litany of the world's most notorious, and most buyable, right-wing thugs, El Salvador, Haiti, Paraguay ....
Unfortunately for Taiwan the Cold War ended and some of its more notorious friends went out of business. The so called "third wave" of democratization didn't do Taiwan any good at all, as friendly generals were replaced by democratic regimes with big ideas about raising their country's living standards. Taiwan found buying a man was easy -- and cheap. Buying an entire democratic regime was a very different proposition. Thus Taiwan's diplomatic expenditures ballooned and, simply by nature of the more open process that exits within democracies the true nature of the relationship between Taiwan and its allies became ever more clear.
So much for history. But what can be done? Probably what is being done, albeit very slowly and perhaps too late. Taiwan has to find a place for itself among NGOs or economic organizations which are not driven by the notion of sovereignty. Taiwan should have been doing this for the past decade, but Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) thinking is so steeped in its "one Republic of China" backwardness that change here defeated even Lee Teng-hui
Currently the specter haunting MOFA is that of Nicaragua jumping into Beijing's camp and taking a couple of other allies with it. But, in reality, the old way of doing things has reached the end of the road anyway. Things will not be worse in any practical sense -- the ability to trade, ability to travel, ability to enforce legal agreements -- than they are now, whether Taiwan has 30 allies or three. Perhaps what is needed after all is a humiliating meltdown in diplomatic relations which can prompt a purge of MOFA's dead wood.
Could Asia be on the verge of a new wave of nuclear proliferation? A look back at the early history of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), which recently celebrated its 75th anniversary, illuminates some reasons for concern in the Indo-Pacific today. US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin recently described NATO as “the most powerful and successful alliance in history,” but the organization’s early years were not without challenges. At its inception, the signing of the North Atlantic Treaty marked a sea change in American strategic thinking. The United States had been intent on withdrawing from Europe in the years following
My wife and I spent the week in the interior of Taiwan where Shuyuan spent her childhood. In that town there is a street that functions as an open farmer’s market. Walk along that street, as Shuyuan did yesterday, and it is next to impossible to come home empty-handed. Some mangoes that looked vaguely like others we had seen around here ended up on our table. Shuyuan told how she had bought them from a little old farmer woman from the countryside who said the mangoes were from a very old tree she had on her property. The big surprise
The issue of China’s overcapacity has drawn greater global attention recently, with US Secretary of the Treasury Janet Yellen urging Beijing to address its excess production in key industries during her visit to China last week. Meanwhile in Brussels, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen last week said that Europe must have a tough talk with China on its perceived overcapacity and unfair trade practices. The remarks by Yellen and Von der Leyen come as China’s economy is undergoing a painful transition. Beijing is trying to steer the world’s second-largest economy out of a COVID-19 slump, the property crisis and
Former president Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) trip to China provides a pertinent reminder of why Taiwanese protested so vociferously against attempts to force through the cross-strait service trade agreement in 2014 and why, since Ma’s presidential election win in 2012, they have not voted in another Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) candidate. While the nation narrowly avoided tragedy — the treaty would have put Taiwan on the path toward the demobilization of its democracy, which Courtney Donovan Smith wrote about in the Taipei Times in “With the Sunflower movement Taiwan dodged a bullet” — Ma’s political swansong in China, which included fawning dithyrambs