It has been an epic display of brinkmanship.
The US State Department, after perhaps a year of holding up processes that would have delivered promised arms to Taiwan, has relented and will reactivate the deals prior to the US presidential election, possibly allowing delivery to be approved by Congress before the current session ends.
The reasons for the reversal are unclear at this time, though pressure had been building on the State Department over the status of the arms for an extensive period — pressure from Taiwan lobbyists in the Congress, from military sources, from Paul Wolfowitz in his capacity as chairman of the US-Taiwan Business Council and as a foreign policy hawk and, ironically enough, from the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) government after years of blocking the deal in opposition.
In recent months it became clearer that moves were under way behind the scenes to get this problem fixed before US President George W. Bush ends his presidency. Wolfowitz, for one, was oddly optimistic in a speech in Taipei in July, linking passage of the deal to Bush’s personal honor. Wolfowitz might have known something that most others did not; even think tank identities with extensive connections in the US political and military spheres had grown awfully pessimistic as time wore on.
The importance of the effort to unfreeze the arms deal cannot be understated as far as US foreign policy is concerned. As a number of analysts have suggested, leaving the problem to next year would have left both a Republican and Democratic president with an unnecessary burden. Starting a term as US president by releasing arms to Taiwan would be far more damaging to US-China ties than releasing them in the dying days of the current presidential term.
The release of arms also lets the next president craft a China policy relatively unsullied by the ham-fisted behavior of everyone involved in recent years.
As encouraging as the news is, the State Department’s decision is more than likely to have been motivated by limiting damage with China rather than optimizing Taiwan’s ability to defend itself. In this respect Taiwan continues to fall behind and rapidly so, not just in terms of arms procurements and combat readiness but also in terms of the ideological hollowness of Taiwan’s government, the political exhaustion of ordinary people and President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) refusal in rhetorical and practical terms to treat Taiwan as a genuine polity and Taiwanese people as his compatriots and masters.
Such national symbolism, or its weakness, is no small matter. At the same time that the weapons issue is being brought to a head, voices in Congress are making louder noises about Taiwan’s commitment to its relationship with the US amid Taipei’s attempts to mollify and move closer to Beijing.
Many members of Congress could be criticized for failing to heed warnings of Ma’s ideological handicap in this regard, but in the end Taiwanese must look to themselves, not overseas, for the real reasons that China is growing as a threat every day. Lulled by habit and pragmatism, Taiwanese remain vulnerable on too many fronts.
In the near future, however, it is hoped that the State Department, which has so much influence over policy and its implementation, can play a more constructive and supportive role in US-Taiwan relations than it has done under the Bush administration.
Father’s Day, as celebrated around the world, has its roots in the early 20th century US. In 1910, the state of Washington marked the world’s first official Father’s Day. Later, in 1972, then-US president Richard Nixon signed a proclamation establishing the third Sunday of June as a national holiday honoring fathers. Many countries have since followed suit, adopting the same date. In Taiwan, the celebration takes a different form — both in timing and meaning. Taiwan’s Father’s Day falls on Aug. 8, a date chosen not for historical events, but for the beauty of language. In Mandarin, “eight eight” is pronounced
In a recent essay, “How Taiwan Lost Trump,” a former adviser to US President Donald Trump, Christian Whiton, accuses Taiwan of diplomatic incompetence — claiming Taipei failed to reach out to Trump, botched trade negotiations and mishandled its defense posture. Whiton’s narrative overlooks a fundamental truth: Taiwan was never in a position to “win” Trump’s favor in the first place. The playing field was asymmetrical from the outset, dominated by a transactional US president on one side and the looming threat of Chinese coercion on the other. From the outset of his second term, which began in January, Trump reaffirmed his
Having lived through former British prime minister Boris Johnson’s tumultuous and scandal-ridden administration, the last place I had expected to come face-to-face with “Mr Brexit” was in a hotel ballroom in Taipei. Should I have been so surprised? Over the past few years, Taiwan has unfortunately become the destination of choice for washed-up Western politicians to turn up long after their political careers have ended, making grandiose speeches in exchange for extraordinarily large paychecks far exceeding the annual salary of all but the wealthiest of Taiwan’s business tycoons. Taiwan’s pursuit of bygone politicians with little to no influence in their home
Despite calls to the contrary from their respective powerful neighbors, Taiwan and Somaliland continue to expand their relationship, endowing it with important new prospects. Fitting into this bigger picture is the historic Coast Guard Cooperation Agreement signed last month. The common goal is to move the already strong bilateral relationship toward operational cooperation, with significant and tangible mutual benefits to be observed. Essentially, the new agreement commits the parties to a course of conduct that is expressed in three fundamental activities: cooperation, intelligence sharing and technology transfer. This reflects the desire — shared by both nations — to achieve strategic results within
RSS