In mid-December, two US senators, John McCain and Chris Murphy, joined thousands of demonstrators in Kiev, Ukraine, to protest a move by Ukrainian President Victor Yanukovych to strengthen ties with Russia.
McCain said: “We are here to support your just cause; the sovereign right to determine [Ukraine’s] own destiny freely and independently. And the destiny you seek lies in Europe.”
Murphy added: “Ukraine’s future stands with Europe, and the US stands with Ukraine.”
A few days earlier, US Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland had also visited the protesters on Kiev’s Independence Square, speaking words of encouragement and helping to distribute food.
Her visit came after the strong statement from US Secretary of State John Kerry, which criticized recent actions of the Ukrainian government.
The US response followed weeks of demonstrations by pro-EU protesters in Kiev, who were angered by the Nov. 21 decision by Yanukovych’s pro-Russian administration to break off negotiations with the EU and to instead move to create stronger ties with Russia.
What does this have to do with Taiwan?
There are several similarities between Taiwan and Ukraine.
Both countries have made democratic transitions: Taiwan from the late 1980s to early 1990s, and Ukraine following the collapse of the former Soviet Union.
Both countries have experienced several changes in government administration that have been timely.
In Taiwan, the pro-democracy Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) came to power in 2000, while in Ukraine, the 2004 Orange Revolution brought pro-democracy leaders Viktor Yushchenko and Yulia Tymoshenko into power.
This was followed by the 2008 election of President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) and the similarly timed election of Yanukovych in 2010.
The arrest and imprisonment of former president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) on corruption charges was followed a few years later by the May 2010 jailing of Ukrainian opposition leader Tymoshenko.
In both cases, international observers saw the convictions as persecution in a biased court system.
The EU required Ukraine to release Tymoshenko from prison as a requirement during the negotiations.
In both countries, there is a strong public desire to move closer to a Western democratic system.
In Ukraine, this is reflected by mass demonstrations in support of association with the EU, and in Taiwan this can be observed in the white-shirt and black-shirt demonstrations expressing concern over attempts to draw Taiwan closer to China.
It is important for the US to view these similarities clearly and to adjust its policies so that Taiwan moves closer to democracy.
Allowing a nation that has just recently made the transition to democracy to drift under the repressive and undemocratic control of China is not in line with the nation’s core values.
Perhaps it would be good if McCain, Murphy and Nuland visit demonstrators in Taipei and speak words of encouragement there too.
Nat Bellocchi served as chairman of the American Institute in Taiwan from 1990 to 1995. The views expressed in this article are his own.
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