The Scottish National Party’s (SNP) plan to hold an independence referendum in 2014 puts Scotland at the head of Europe’s separatist pack. While public opinion polls suggest the “no” campaign would prevail were a vote held today, attitudes may change as the referendum draws closer.
Much of the SNP leader Alex Salmond’s efforts to date have been devoted to persuading Scots that there are few risks in breaking away from the UK and that much would remain the same. His strategy was torpedoed last week from an unexpected quarter when Jose Manuel Barroso, the European Commission president, said an independent Scotland would not automatically qualify for EU membership and would have to apply like any other candidate country — a view with implications for those Catalans and others who wish for greater autonomy.
As in Catalonia, fiscal and financial considerations would play a large part in Scotland’s decision, given current high levels of public spending and the importance of public-sector jobs. Former British prime minister Gordon Brown, a Scot, said last week that breaking up the UK would lead to a “race to the bottom” on tax and public spending that would hurt ordinary people.
Like Catalonia, Spain’s Basque areas already enjoy significant levels of autonomy. Years of violent attacks and assassinations carried out by the armed Basque nationalist and separatist organization Euskadi Ta Askatasuna (ETA), meaning “Basque homeland and freedom,” gave prominence to separatist sentiment. Violence, though, was repudiated by most Basques and in October last year ETA announced a “definitive cessation of its armed struggle.” Spain’s Basques have their own president and parliament, its own police force and control of their own budget. However, if the Catalan movement gains traction, a knock-on effect is likely.
Elsewhere in the EU, Italy’s Northern League (Lega Nord) is nominally committed to the independence of “Padania,” its term for the country’s northern regions, but in practice it pursues a federalist agenda. At one time it advocated secession, but in recent years has been drawn into national politics and joined the last government of former Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi.
Bavaria, in southern Germany, has an even less vigorous separatist tradition dating back to the days of the pre-war Bavarian People’s party.
At the heart of the EU, though, in Belgium, the separatist tendencies of the French-speaking Walloons and Dutch-speaking Flemish are frequently aired.
In their recent op-ed “Trump Should Rein In Taiwan” in Foreign Policy magazine, Christopher Chivvis and Stephen Wertheim argued that the US should pressure President William Lai (賴清德) to “tone it down” to de-escalate tensions in the Taiwan Strait — as if Taiwan’s words are more of a threat to peace than Beijing’s actions. It is an old argument dressed up in new concern: that Washington must rein in Taipei to avoid war. However, this narrative gets it backward. Taiwan is not the problem; China is. Calls for a so-called “grand bargain” with Beijing — where the US pressures Taiwan into concessions
The term “assassin’s mace” originates from Chinese folklore, describing a concealed weapon used by a weaker hero to defeat a stronger adversary with an unexpected strike. In more general military parlance, the concept refers to an asymmetric capability that targets a critical vulnerability of an adversary. China has found its modern equivalent of the assassin’s mace with its high-altitude electromagnetic pulse (HEMP) weapons, which are nuclear warheads detonated at a high altitude, emitting intense electromagnetic radiation capable of disabling and destroying electronics. An assassin’s mace weapon possesses two essential characteristics: strategic surprise and the ability to neutralize a core dependency.
Chinese President and Chinese Communist Party (CCP) Chairman Xi Jinping (習近平) said in a politburo speech late last month that his party must protect the “bottom line” to prevent systemic threats. The tone of his address was grave, revealing deep anxieties about China’s current state of affairs. Essentially, what he worries most about is systemic threats to China’s normal development as a country. The US-China trade war has turned white hot: China’s export orders have plummeted, Chinese firms and enterprises are shutting up shop, and local debt risks are mounting daily, causing China’s economy to flag externally and hemorrhage internally. China’s
During the “426 rally” organized by the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and the Taiwan People’s Party under the slogan “fight green communism, resist dictatorship,” leaders from the two opposition parties framed it as a battle against an allegedly authoritarian administration led by President William Lai (賴清德). While criticism of the government can be a healthy expression of a vibrant, pluralistic society, and protests are quite common in Taiwan, the discourse of the 426 rally nonetheless betrayed troubling signs of collective amnesia. Specifically, the KMT, which imposed 38 years of martial law in Taiwan from 1949 to 1987, has never fully faced its
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