The bombshell book by former US national security adviser John Bolton, The Room Where It Happened: A White House Memoir, has sparked intense debate. Unlike Americans, who are focusing on US President Donald Trump’s ability to govern, local media have highlighted chapter 10, “Thunder Out of China,” and used that as a basis for how they view the future development of US-Taiwan relations.
For example, on page 288, Trump compares Taiwan to the tip of one of his Sharpie pens and China to the Oval Office’s Resolute desk, and on page 290, Bolton predicts that after Trump’s abandonment of the Kurds, Taiwan could be next.
It is not clear whether Bolton’s motivation for publishing this book was to take revenge on Trump or to wade in as an influence in the US presidential campaign. Perhaps only those involved know what is true.
What Taiwanese should be paying attention to is whether there might be pro-China forces in the nation trying to use the book to manipulate public opinion, once again creating the narrative that the US is “abandoning Taiwan.”
Regardless of whether the US will stand up for Taiwan, there is no doubt that the nation must be prepared to resist China’s threats. Discussing whether the US will abandon Taiwan is a red herring in the contest between the government and the opposition.
Trump’s China policy has been influenced by US National Security Advisor Robert O’Brien, who succeeded Bolton nine months after he was sacked, and his positions on the Taiwan issue and US national security. Observers had expected O’Brien to continue Bolton’s hardline, hawkish China stance, and even China’s assessment was that O’Brien is a hawk disguised as a dove, whose anti-Chinese stance remains unchanged, although he might use more peaceful means.
In his book While America Slept: Restoring American Leadership to a World in Crisis, O’Brien bluntly states that the US in the past made the mistake of ignoring Chinese expansion, and he strongly criticizes former US president Barack Obama’s administration, and its stance on foreign policy and military buildup.
Bolton, by the way, wrote a blurb for the book’s dust jacket.
O’Brien is familiar with the Taiwan issue. Not only did he visit the nation in 2016 and does he have a good understanding of the political and economic situation on both sides of the Taiwan Strait, but as early as in 2011, he started to urge the US to sell Taiwan F-16C/D fighters to narrow the military gap with China.
US Deputy National Security Adviser Matthew Pottinger, who O’Brian selected for the post, is a retired marine who worked as a journalist stationed in China. He was once while reporting beaten and detained by police in Beijing, and as a result, some say Pottinger is the man around Trump who China fears most.
Prior to filling the position, Pottinger appeared with Taiwan’s then-deputy minister of foreign affairs Hsu Szu-chien (徐斯儉), who is now deputy secretary-general of the National Security Council. Their position on countering China’s non-peaceful rise is consistent with that of Trump: The premise for “making America great again” is to strengthen cooperation with allies. Adequate military power is the only guarantee of having the strength to maintain peace.
Since President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) took office, Taiwan, one of the US’ democratic allies, has been continuously deepening its autonomy and strengthening its national defense. There is no need to panic because of a couple of paragraphs in Bolton’s book.
Chen Kuan-fu is a graduate law student at National Taipei University.
Translated by Lin Lee-kai
In November last year, a man struck a woman with a steel bar and killed her outside a hospital in China’s Fujian Province. Later, he justified his actions to the police by saying that he attacked her because she was small and alone, and he was venting his anger after a dispute with a colleague. To the casual observer, it could be seen as another case of an angry man gone mad for a moment, but on closer inspection, it reflects the sad side of a society long brutalized by violent political struggles triggered by crude Leninism and Maoism. Starting
The year 2020 will go down in history. Certainly, if for nothing else, it will be remembered as the year of the COVID-19 pandemic and the continuing impact it has had on the world. All nations have had to deal with it; none escaped. As a virus, COVID-19 has known no bounds. It has no agenda or ideology; it champions no cause. There is no way to bully it, gaslight it or bargain with it. Impervious to any hype, posturing, propaganda or commands, it ignores such and simply attacks. All nations, big or small, are on a level playing field
US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s announcement on Saturday that the US was to drop self-imposed restrictions on meetings between senior Taiwanese and US officials had immediate real-world effects. On Monday, US Ambassador to the Netherlands Pete Hoekstra met Representative to the Netherlands Chen Hsing-hsing (陳欣新) at the US embassy in The Hague, with both noting on social media the historic nature of this seemingly modest event. Modest perhaps, but their meeting would have been impossible before Pompeo’s announcement. Some have welcomed this move, thinking that it is long-overdue and a step in the right direction to normalizing relations between
The US last week took action to remove most of the diplomatic red tape around US-Taiwan relations. While there have been adjustments in State Department “Guidelines on Relations with Taiwan” and other guidance before, no administration has ever so thoroughly dispensed with them. It is a step in the right direction. Of course, when there is a policy of formally recognizing one government (the People’s Republic of China or PRC) and not another (the Republic of China or ROC), officials from the top of government down need a systematic way of operationalizing the distinction. They cannot just make it up as
RSS