At a time when the US is on the verge of attacking Iraq, North Korea's actions will depend on whether the US is willing and able to fight wars in two separate regions at the same time.
US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has repeatedly stated that the US does have that ability, but while Iraq is being compelled to turn over its weapons of mass destruction by military threats, the US has consistently stressed that it has no intention of invading North Korea and instead will use diplomacy to settle the crisis.
However, the US is now also considering moving part of its forces stationed in South Korea away from Seoul to avoid fanning the flames of South Korean nationalism and to get beyond the range of North Korean artillery.
Some US experts and Democratic congressmen fear that once the Yongbyon nuclear reactor begins operations, 8,000 spent fuel rods could be reprocessed within months to refine enough plutonium for between four and six nuclear weapons. This would pose a threat to the US and the rest of the world at least as serious as that posed by Iraq. They are frustrated that the Bush administration is ignoring Pyong-yang's threat -- a crisis which has implications for the peace and stability of the Korean Peninsula and Northeast Asia as the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.
Pyongyang has acknowledged its nuclear plans while Baghdad has strenuously denied having any such plans. But Washington sees Iraq as the primary enemy in its "axis of evil." If Pyongyang completes the manufacture of nuclear weapons and successfully avoids an attack by the US, the Asian-Pacific security environment will then contain one more volatile unknown quantity.
The US must look squarely at North Korea and send key negotiators as soon as possible. Although North Korea would not go so far as to launch a major attack on US forces, it could create small skirmishes in the Demilitarized Zone and distract the US as it tries to concentrate on Iraq. Pyongyang has methods of sowing discord between the US and South Korea and casting the shadow of a nuclear threat over Japan.
Neither the crisis in Iraq nor that in North Korea will impact Taiwan directly, which reduces the complexity of preparing a response plan. Nevertheless, Taipei must not be lax in observing the responses of the US and Japan, in analyzing China's reaction to US actions and in establishing its own comprehensive crisis management mechanisms.
Lin Cheng-yi is a research fellow at the Institute of European and American Studies at Academia Sinica.
As it has striven toward superiority in most measures of the Asian military balance, China is now ready to challenge the undersea balance of power, long dominated by the United States, a decisive advantage crucial to its ability to deter blockade and invasion of Taiwan by the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). America expended enormous treasure to develop the technology, logistics, training, and personnel to emerge victorious in the Cold War undersea struggle against the former Soviet Union, and to remain superior today; the US is not used to considering the People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN)
The annual summit of East Asia and other events around the ASEAN summit in October and November every year have become the most important gathering of leaders in the Indo-Pacific region. This year, as Laos is the chair of ASEAN, it was privileged to host all of the ministerial and summit meetings associated with ASEAN. Besides the main summit, this included the high-profile East Asia Summit, ASEAN summits with its dialogue partners and the ASEAN Plus Three Summit with China, Japan and South Korea. The events and what happens around them have changed over the past 15 years from a US-supported, ASEAN-led
Lately, China has been inviting Taiwanese influencers to travel to China’s Xinjiang region to make films, weaving a “beautiful Xinjiang” narrative as an antidote to the international community’s criticisms by creating a Potemkin village where nothing is awry. Such manipulations appear harmless — even compelling enough for people to go there — but peeling back the shiny veneer reveals something more insidious, something that is hard to ignore. These films are not only meant to promote tourism, but also harbor a deeper level of political intentions. Xinjiang — a region of China continuously listed in global human rights reports —
President William Lai’s (賴清德) first Double Ten National Day address had two strategic goals. For domestic affairs, the speech aimed to foster consensus on national identity, strengthen the country and unite the Taiwanese against a Chinese invasion. In terms of cross-strait relations, the speech aimed to mitigate tensions in the Taiwan Strait and promote the coexistence and prosperity of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) in China and the Republic of China (ROC). Lai is taking a different stance from previous Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) administrations on domestic political issues. During his speech, he said: “The PRC could not be the
RSS