US strategy in the East Asian region will be affected if the pan-blue camp continues to lean toward China and remains unwilling to show that Taiwan is determined to defend itself, a US academic said on Friday.
Robert Sutter, a visiting professor of Asian studies at Georgetown University, made the comments while attending a conference on East Asian Security and Taiwan held by the Elliott School of International Affairs at George Washington University.
Sutter also offered a pessimistic view of Taiwan's future, saying that China's growing strength could result in Taiwan becoming further isolated in the international arena, while pushing the US and Taiwan further apart.
He said that President Chen Shui-bian (
Regardless of whether the US will have a Democrat or Republican president after 2008, the administration will place China in the mainstream and a trend toward marginalizing Taiwan will become unavoidable, he said.
Former US Ambassador to China James Lilley, who also attended the event, said that Americans are realists and that the situation was not as bad as Sutter described it.
Lilley nonetheless added that the US was annoyed by Taiwan's unwillingness to defend itself while asking for US protection, and that the US and Taiwan should work together in examining how Taiwan could effectively defend itself.
He said that although the US and China are monitoring each other's military development and Beijing still uses the US as the virtual enemy in its military exercises, they were moving away from military confrontation toward economic cooperation.
The development of the Chinese market is an unstoppable trend and the US is hoping to become part of that trend through cooperation with Taiwanese businesses, he added.
Taiwan's representative to Washington David Lee (
Lee said that Taiwan fully understood that maintaining strong defense capabilities was a premise for maintaining peace and the ability to deter any action that may endanger regional security.
An Emirates flight from Dubai arrived at Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport yesterday afternoon, the first service of the airline since the US and Israel launched strikes against Iran on Saturday. Flight EK366 took off from the United Arab Emirates (UAE) at 3:51am yesterday and landed at 4:02pm before taxiing to the airport’s D6 gate at Terminal 2 at 4:08pm, data from the airport and FlightAware, a global flight tracking site, showed. Of the 501 passengers on the flight, 275 were Taiwanese, including 96 group tour travelers, the data showed. Tourism Administration Deputy Director-General Huang He-ting (黃荷婷) greeted Taiwanese passengers at the airport and
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One person was killed and another seven injured today when a tourist shuttle bus plunged 30m to 40m down a ravine in Nantou County, the Tourism Administration said. The bus is suspected to have suddenly accelerated out of control near the flower center of the Sun-Link-Sea Forest Recreation Area, a popular attraction during cherry blossom season. Of the eight onboard, a 66-year-old man was killed, four were seriously injured and three sustained minor injuries, including the driver. The Nantou County Police Department said it received a report of the incident at 12:15pm and dispatched seven teams to assist. All surviving passengers have been transferred
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