The Taipei Times has not given prominent coverage on the developments in Kosovo that led to the proclamation of a new European state on Sunday. The international community has, however, paid close attention for years as it is connected with some of the most important issues facing the world today.
For example: Can foreign countries recognize Kosovo in view of UN Declaration 1244, which does not map out independence as an option? Is the moral right for independence based on the wish of a not ethnically homogeneous nation or on the brutal repression by the former Serbian government of Slobodan Milosevic?
Will the EU mission be handicapped by the lack of a new UN resolution? Will the EU's determination be hindered by the significant resistance of countries harboring breakaway movements within their borders? Is the contamination effect of Kosovo really so strong that Russia finds it necessary to actively support the radical movement in Serbia?
Does the Serbian government truly reflect the long term wishes of its people in taking the issue to each and every international forum?
Let's also take a look at the difficult next steps that some of the actors need to reflect on.
Can the international community work out a concept of limited sovereignty tailor-made to solve Kosovo's situation?
Will Kosovo's move be followed by Republika Srpska in Bosnia and will Montenegro recognize Kosovo?
The Republic of Kosovo is a child born under complicated circumstances. Certainly it is of concern to everyone interested in these key issues of national identity. I wish Taipei Times readers could be better briefed about all the complicated but interesting aspects of this unique development.
Bengt Johansson
Sweden
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