Legal argument flawed
HoonTing (雲程) has broken new ground in the search for a collective security mechanism for Taiwan.
In contrast, Hofstra University law professor Julian Ku has argued that Taiwan should be left to fend for itself against a Chinese invasion. He has incorrectly stated that it is illegal to defend Taiwan against a Chinese invasion. Professor Ku has made the argument that defending Taiwan is illegal under UN Charter Article 51 — the right to collective self-defense.
The geopolitical problem in northeast Asia is that there has not been a multilateral treaty signed for collective self-defense against Chinese interference. Since Japan signed the San Francisco Peace Treaty in 1951, there has been only the bilateral mutual defense treaty signed with the US. Japan signed the bilateral defense treaty on the same day that it signed the peace treaty.
The US and South Korea signed a bilateral defense treaty in 1955. The US-ROC Mutual Defense Treaty was also signed in 1955, but then former US president Jimmy Carter’s administration terminated this bilateral treaty in 1980. The Taiwan Relations Act is a substitute for this termination, but the treaty-making powers were examined in Goldwater versus Carter (1983).
There is an argument that the executive branch can exercise their monopoly over foreign affairs, but the court states they had not examined the issue of the termination in terms of actions by the commander-in-chief. The People’s Liberation Army (PLA) has attempted to drive a wedge between the bilateral security arrangements in Northeast Asia with the conflicts over the Diaoyu Islands (釣魚).
The solution for collective self-defense lies in the trilateral relationship between the US and Japan, South Korea and Taiwan.
While Professor Ku argues that collectively defending the island of Taiwan is illegal, the “San Francisco System” fosters the continuation of the 1950s’ geopolitical problems of the Korean Peninsula and Taiwan.
Hoon Ting, however, explores historical concepts of derecognized exiled governments and their roles in the geopolitical situation of Northeast Asia. Some exiled governments are sponsored by their recognizing states, and this bilateral military relationship between the US and its co-belligerent exiled government (eg, Free French on Continental France) demonstrates they were the instruments of both foreign policy and military strategy.
The San Francisco System underwrites the security of the ROC and casts a shadow whenever creating collective security arrangements for Northeast Asia.
US policy makers must become cognizant that the geopolitical history of the Korean War Armistice is rooted in the San Francisco System. US Foreign policy has military ramifications for the protection of both South Korea and Taiwan, but then termination of mutual defense treaties was never examined by the US Supreme Court in Goldwater versus Carter.
Perhaps it is time to reexamine treaty-making powers in US jurisprudence before the PLA lawyers adopt the international law advice of Professor Ku.
US leadership in our collective security arrangement must be reformulated before blue-helmeted PLA troops start invading Taiwan under the legal auspices of Article 51 of the UN Charter.
I look forward to further research on the topic.
Seung Mi Hong
Seoul, South Korea
When 17,000 troops from the US, the Philippines, Australia, Japan, Canada, France and New Zealand spread across the Philippine archipelago for the Balikatan military exercise, running from tomorrow through May 8, the official language would be about interoperability, readiness and regional peace. However, the strategic subtext is becoming harder to ignore: The exercises are increasingly about the military geography around Taiwan. Balikatan has always carried political weight. This year, however, the exercise looks different in ways that matter not only to Manila and Washington, but also to Taipei. What began in 2023 as a shift toward a more serious deterrence posture
Reports about Elon Musk planning his own semiconductor fab have sparked anxiety, with some warning that Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC) could lose key customers to vertical integration. A closer reading suggests a more measured conclusion: Musk is advancing a strategic vision of in-house chip manufacturing, but remains far from replacing the existing foundry ecosystem. For TSMC, the short-term impact is limited; the medium-term challenge lies in supply diversification and pricing pressure, only in the long term could it evolve into a structural threat. The clearest signal is Musk’s announcement that Tesla and SpaceX plan to develop a fab project dubbed “Terafab”
China’s AI ecosystem has one defining difference from Silicon Valley: It is embrace of open source. While the US’ biggest companies race to build ever more powerful systems and insist only they can control them, Chinese labs have been giving the technology away for free. Open source — making a model available for anyone to use, download and build on — once seemed a niche, nerdy topic that no one besides developers cared about. However, when a new technology is driving trillions of dollars of investments and leading to immense concentrations of power, it offered an antidote. That is part of
In late January, Taiwan’s first indigenous submarine, the Hai Kun (海鯤, or Narwhal), completed its first submerged dive, reaching a depth of roughly 50m during trials in the waters off Kaohsiung. By March, it had managed a fifth dive, still well short of the deep-water and endurance tests required before the navy could accept the vessel. The original delivery deadline of November last year passed months ago. CSBC Corp, Taiwan, the lead contractor, now targets June and the Ministry of National Defense is levying daily penalties for every day the submarine remains unfinished. The Hai Kun was supposed to be
RSS