The end of the Iraq war has led us to a world drastically different from the one we had a month ago. Not only has the Middle East political landscape been fundamentally changed, but also the global geopolitical arrangements and the rules of international engagement have been radically reframed. Those changes present important political and security implications to Taiwan.
It is critically important to understand what kind of global structural arrangements the Iraqi war and North Korea crisis triggered in order to assess the impact on Taiwan.
One month ago, the world was confronting two WMD (weapons of mass destruction) issues simultaneously -- Iraq and North Korea. The question of whether to go to war with Iraq for its violation of UN resolutions has caused deep divisions within Europe, and consequently the unity of Europe has been undermined. Not only were there open disputes between Great Britain and the Continental European countries, but differences between Eastern and Western Europe also emerged.
The first casualty of these developments is the relationship between NATO and the EU. Another victim is the eastern expansion of the EU, due to the cloudy outlook of the European integration process.
In addition, France and the US look more like competitors than allies. This division has its roots in something deeper than personal differences between the current leaders on either side of the Atlantic. In fact, it is expected that after the conclusion of the Iraq war that Europe's future and its global outreach will remain uncertain for some time.
In Asia, the North Korean nuclear crisis and the differences between the US and South Korea in managing the crisis has resulted in uncertainty in the East Asian security architecture. The crisis management mechanisms created for the 1994 first North Korea nuclear crisis have broken down. In addition, the current ambiguous state of the Washington-Seoul alliance could spill-over to the US-Japan alliance and arouse China's anxiety, thus greatly affecting the stability of the Asia-Pacific region.
Fortunately, since the pattern of the international interactions in the North Korean crisis is very similar to the Iraqi issues in Western Europe, the process and outcome of the Iraqi war has greatly influenced the calculation of the Asian players in the North Korea crisis. Kim Jong-il and the Beijing leadership must have watched closely how former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein and France fared in this war.
South Korea and Japan also gauged their international response to the Iraq war according to their respective security needs in the Korean Peninsula, and the outcome of the Iraqi war would consequently have a significant impact on their attitudes toward North Korean nuclear issue.
The initiation of the North Korea-US-China trilateral "talks about talks" testifies to how the outcome of the Iraqi war has affected the behavior of the regional players in the Korean Peninsula nuclear crisis.
Besides the geopolitical architecture in both Europe and Asia, the third area being affected is the perceived rules of international engagements. The US military operation in Iraq is the first war under its "pre-emptive self-defense" policy.
The Iraqi war not only announces the death sentence for the arms-control mechanism -- the prevailing post-Cold war practice to meet the challenges of WMD -- it also seriously undermines the centrality and the credibility of the UN in global security affairs. The latter development is exactly the reversal of the first Iraq war, which pushed the UN to the apex of the post-Cold War global security framework.
Before new rules of engagement are firmly established, it can be expected that the international situation will be more fluxed and the stable friends and foes will be harder to identify. However, since the war has transformed the US from an international superpower into a global empire and the "reluctant sheriff" has become a fierce warrior, we probably will soon witness the dawn of the Pax Americana.
We need to ask the following questions:
First, in the post-Iraqi war era, what kind of challenges and opportunities does the decline of the UN and the reformulation of the international rules of engagement bring to Taiwan? How will this affect Taiwan's perception of the UN and its strategy for the participation in the "international civil community?"
Second, what are the challenges and opportunities for the "rebalancing" of the security architecture in the Asia-Pacific region? How does the newly adjusted US presence in this region affect Taiwan's surrounding security environment.
Third, to what degree will the cross-strait situation be affected by the changes of the regional environment surrounding Taiwan and China?
These are critical questions demanding immediate attention of the Taiwanese people.
Lai I-chung is director of foreign policy studies of Taiwan Thinktank. This is the first article in the series on "War on Iraq and the Korean Peninsula Crisis: View from Taiwan."
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