Former US president Bill Clinton will visit Taiwan in mid-September at the invitation of a local media group, stirring up more publicity than a small typhoon even before he whirls through Taipei. Just a few months out of office, Clinton has been quick to jump on the lecture circuit -- and for some very, very big bucks. Like former US president George Bush and former British prime minister Margaret Thatcher, Clinton looks likely to spend years as a rent-a-speaker, vigorously defending his time in office and pontificating on both foreign and domestic affairs.
Clinton's presidency polarized the US and people around the world. His endless stream of scandals left him morally bankrupt and will serve to exclude him from the list of the greatest US presidents. However, his two terms coincided with the development of the "new economy" that brought the US and global economies into a period of speedy growth and low inflation. That was also why he remained popular among the US electorate despite the spate of scandals.
For Taiwan, his eight years in the White House brought a complex mix of blessings and doom -- not unlike a sauna bath in which one alternates between plunges of hot and cold water. Clinton visited Taiwan four times while he was Arkansas governor -- which gave him a familiarity with Taiwan rare among US officials. During his visits as governor, Clinton met with Taiwan's political leaders and gained a first-hand experience of its economic development. He reportedly even developed a fondness for Taiwan's "bottoms-up" drinking culture. After becoming president, Clinton made public remarks about how he liked his visits to Taiwan.
Clinton was also quick to respond during the 1996 missile crisis, when Beijing was trying to influence Taiwan's first direct presidential election. He deployed two aircraft carriers to the seas near Taiwan -- a move that deterred further expansion of the Chinese military exercises and prevented an irreversible development in the Taiwan Strait. The people of Taiwan owe him one for that.
But Clinton ended up causing the most serious damage to Taiwan since the US severed relations in 1979. Despite his personal feelings of fondness toward Taiwan, Clinton announced his "three no's" policy during a visit to Shanghai in 1998 -- no independence for Taiwan; no "one Taiwan, one China;" and no membership for Taiwan in organizations that require statehood. The announcement ended years of US ambiguity toward the Taiwan sovereignty issue. It helped block Taiwan's diplomatic potential and soundly tipped US policy in favor of Beijing.
Clinton's "three no's" left former president Lee Teng-hui (
Clinton's four visits to Taiwan came while this nation was still an authoritarian state. His presidency coincided with Taiwan's transformation into a democracy and its improvements in human rights policy. Per-haps his fifth visit will help fill in what is missing from his understanding of Taiwan and its democratic, economic and social development. It is never too late for Clinton to get a new understanding of Taiwan and for Taiwan to get a new understanding of him.
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