Washington should play the “Taiwan card” against China, former US ambassador to the UN John Bolton said in an opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal.
“America has a diplomatic ladder of escalation that would compel Beijing’s attention,” said Bolton wrote in the article, published on Sunday on the paper’s Web site.
Bolton, now a senior fellow at the conservative American Enterprise Institute in Washington, said that for a new US president willing to act boldly, there are opportunities to halt and then reverse China’s “seemingly inexorable march toward hegemony in East Asia.”
He says that the US’ next president should insist that China reverse its territorial acquisitiveness, including abandoning its South China Sea bases and undoing the ecological damage its construction has caused.
“China is free to continue asserting its territorial claims diplomatically, but until they are peacefully resolved with its neighbors, they and the US are likewise free to ignore such claims in their entirety,” Bolton said.
If Beijing refuses to back down in the South China Sea, the next US president could receive Taiwanese diplomats officially at the US Department of State and upgrade the status of US representation in Taipei from a private “institute” to an official diplomatic mission, he said.
Bolton said that from there, the US could invite Taiwan’s president to travel officially to the US and allow the most senior US officials to visit Taiwan to transact government business.
Ultimately, the US could restore full diplomatic recognition, he said.
“Beijing’s leaders would be appalled by this approach,” said Bolton, who has a reputation for being controversial.
He said that China must understand that by creating so-called provinces in the South China Sea, it risks causing itself to lose control — perhaps forever — of Taiwan.
“Even were China to act more responsibly in nearby waters, of course, Taiwan’s fate would still be for its people to decide,” he said.
He says that president-elect Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) has been cautious, but that she has not rejected “the bedrock DPP [Democratic Progressive Party] platform of independence from China.”
Bolton says that most of the Republican hopefuls for the US presidential election this year are determined “to replace the vacuum that exists where the US’ China policy should be.”
This may involve modifying or even jettisoning the “one China” policy, along with even more far-reaching initiatives to counter Beijing’s “rapidly accelerating political and military aggressiveness,” he said.
Bolton said that China might act against Taiwan before the next US president takes office this time next year.
“Too many foreigners continue echoing Beijing’s view that Taiwan is a problem only resolvable by uniting the island and the mainland as one China. Taiwan’s freedom isn’t a problem. It is an inspiration. Let Beijing contemplate that fact on the ground,” Bolton said.
South Korean K-pop girl group Blackpink are to make Kaohsiung the first stop on their Asia tour when they perform at Kaohsiung National Stadium on Oct. 18 and 19, the event organizer said yesterday. The upcoming performances will also make Blackpink the first girl group ever to perform twice at the stadium. It will be the group’s third visit to Taiwan to stage a concert. The last time Blackpink held a concert in the city was in March 2023. Their first concert in Taiwan was on March 3, 2019, at NTSU Arena (Linkou Arena). The group’s 2022-2023 “Born Pink” tour set a
CPBL players, cheerleaders and officials pose at a news conference in Taipei yesterday announcing the upcoming All-Star Game. This year’s CPBL All-Star Weekend is to be held at the Taipei Dome on July 19 and 20.
The Taiwan High Court yesterday upheld a lower court’s decision that ruled in favor of former president Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) regarding the legitimacy of her doctoral degree. The issue surrounding Tsai’s academic credentials was raised by former political talk show host Dennis Peng (彭文正) in a Facebook post in June 2019, when Tsai was seeking re-election. Peng has repeatedly accused Tsai of never completing her doctoral dissertation to get a doctoral degree in law from the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) in 1984. He subsequently filed a declaratory action charging that
The Hualien Branch of the High Court today sentenced the main suspect in the 2021 fatal derailment of the Taroko Express to 12 years and six months in jail in the second trial of the suspect for his role in Taiwan’s deadliest train crash. Lee Yi-hsiang (李義祥), the driver of a crane truck that fell onto the tracks and which the the Taiwan Railways Administration's (TRA) train crashed into in an accident that killed 49 people and injured 200, was sentenced to seven years and 10 months in the first trial by the Hualien District Court in 2022. Hoa Van Hao, a
RSS