And how should Taiwan greet the new century? We recommend using extreme caution. We are sorry not to be able to be more optimistic; after all, everyone likes to start the year on a feel-good note. But there is reason for gloom.
On Christmas Day, China took delivery of the first of two Sovremenny class destroyers in St Petersburg and, as regular readers of this newspaper might know, this is something destined to produce a huge shift in the balance of power in the East China Sea. The destroyer received last week and its sister, yet to be delivered, threaten to seriously undermine the supremacy of the US in the western Pacific. It is not that the US cannot sink them, but that if they are nuclear-armed and declared strategic assets by China, there would be a serious disincentive to do so, namely the possibility of a nuclear exchange. But in any military confrontation, leaving the destroyers afloat would present a huge obstacle to any effective US defense of Taiwan. It is hard not to see Christmas Day 1999 as bringing an attempted military solution to the Taiwan question a worryingly large step nearer.
Yet if the century that is ending was a century of colonialism for Taiwan, as is expressed elsewhere in this newspaper, then it was also a century of relative safety from external threat. Until 1945, external security was a matter for the Japanese Imperial Navy, while since 1950 the US has borne Taiwan's burden. While communist China might have talked about "washing Taiwan in blood" as part of its commitment to "liberation," Uncle Sam could always ensure that such words remained empty.
Taiwan's problem is now twofold.
First, there is obvious US reluctance to stand up to China on the Taiwan issue. The Clinton administration has in the past two years been extraordinarily abject in its desire to appease Beijing and there is no guarantee that its successor will be any tougher. The second problem is, of course, that the gap between the US and China in military strength is narrowing. This is not to say that China rivals the US in any way as a world power. But it doesn't have to. Taiwan is a regional issue, it is on China's doorstep and in this domain, the gap is narrowing fast.
All this is to say that the two pillars of Taiwan's security in the past few decades, China's military ineptness and US resolve to defend Taiwan, are not likely to be carried over too far into the new century. So what is Taiwan to do? The choice is to prepare to fight, or prepare to talk.
Perhaps that puts it too simplistically, considering that no one wants to fight and everyone would obviously prefer to talk. But if those talks produce demands that cannot be accepted, fighting might be the only choice left. Are Taiwanese ready to do this? Probably not, not in earnest, not in the dedicated way that would be needed to stave off China. Taiwanese do not think like Israelis. Can they? Should they want to? Only they can decide.
But they have to be aware that such a choice cannot be delayed forever. It is easy to blame the government here: who can deny that it has encouraged people to think that the status quo can last forever -- or at least until communist China itself undergoes seismic political change, producing a new regime more amenable to Taiwan's aspirations? This has infantilized people's perceptions of the issue, encouraging them to avoid serious questions and leaving them totally unprepared to make the grave decisions that the new century will inevitably bring.
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