In his State of the Union address in 2002, then-US president George W. Bush used the expression “axis of evil” to describe Iran, North Korea and Iraq. The phrase was a deliberate evocation of the Axis powers of World War II — Nazi Germany, fascist Italy and imperial Japan — whose actions eviscerated the peace of the period between the two world wars and plunged the world into another conflagration.
The expression drew significant criticism in the US and abroad. Critics said that the three countries were not sufficiently aligned to be an “axis.”
However, hindsight shows that the Bush administration was half right. An axis of evil was forming, but the shock of the terror attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, distorted US foreign policy and diverted attention from the key protagonists: China and Russia.
Today, China’s rapid militarization, neo-imperialist foreign policy and Han-Chinese ultra-nationalism are well-documented, but it has taken Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine to rouse the international foreign policy establishment from its intellectual torpor over his similarly nefarious designs and revanchist foreign policy.
Perhaps nothing typifies the myopic nature of Western foreign policy over the past few decades more than former US president Barack Obama’s ridicule of then-Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney during a televised debate in 2012. Mocking Romney for warning that Russia posed the greatest geopolitical threat to the US, Obama said: “The 1980s are calling. They want their foreign policy back. The Cold War’s been over for 20 years.”
Since his 2002 address, the Bush administration’s warnings over Iran and North Korea have been vindicated. Iranian leaders and the Islamic Revolution Guard Corps have repeatedly vowed to “eradicate Israel off the face of the Earth,” while its scientists are on the cusp of developing nuclear weapons.
Meanwhile, North Korea continues to develop its nuclear arsenal and ballistic missile technology, while its leadership appears increasingly unpredictable.
However, by declaring a “war on terror,” the US and its allies threw everything but the kitchen sink at the Middle East in a fruitless search for “weapons of mass destruction” and regime change. Their tunnel vision over al-Qaeda and terrorism afforded Beijing the space to engage, virtually unchallenged, in an unprecedented peacetime military buildup.
Having spent decades remodeling itself to fight a terrorist insurgency in the desserts of Iraq and Afghanistan, the US military — and those of its allies — are unprepared to fight a state-on-state war.
There are concerning signs that China and Russia have formed an alliance of convenience. Many analysts suspect that when Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) met face-to-face prior to the Beijing Winter Olympics, they agreed to “scratch each other’s backs,” with China turning a blind eye toward Ukraine and Russia reciprocating as China invaded Taiwan. The cozy “bromance” between Putin and Xi might be turning into something more.
A CNN report said that a US diplomatic cable shared intelligence with Washington’s allies in Europe and Asia that showed the Kremlin approached Beijing for assistance in its invasion of Ukraine. The provision of military assistance from China to Russia would raise the prospect of a Cold War-style proxy conflict in Ukraine, akin to the wars in Vietnam and on the Korean Peninsula, with East ranged against West, democracies pitted against autocracies.
The globe appears to be dividing into two geopolitical hemispheres, with Taiwan, the US, European countries, India, Japan and South Korea on one side and an authoritarian bloc — China, Russia, Iran, Pakistan and North Korea — on the other.
As the world unwinds from a historically unprecedented period of peace, Taiwan finds itself on a new geostrategic fault line, and on the front line against the real “axis of evil.”
Jaw Shaw-kong (趙少康), former chairman of Broadcasting Corp of China and leader of the “blue fighters,” recently announced that he had canned his trip to east Africa, and he would stay in Taiwan for the recall vote on Saturday. He added that he hoped “his friends in the blue camp would follow his lead.” His statement is quite interesting for a few reasons. Jaw had been criticized following media reports that he would be traveling in east Africa during the recall vote. While he decided to stay in Taiwan after drawing a lot of flak, his hesitation says it all: If
When Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) caucus whip Ker Chien-ming (柯建銘) first suggested a mass recall of Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) legislators, the Taipei Times called the idea “not only absurd, but also deeply undemocratic” (“Lai’s speech and legislative chaos,” Jan. 6, page 8). In a subsequent editorial (“Recall chaos plays into KMT hands,” Jan. 9, page 8), the paper wrote that his suggestion was not a solution, and that if it failed, it would exacerbate the enmity between the parties and lead to a cascade of revenge recalls. The danger came from having the DPP orchestrate a mass recall. As it transpired,
Sitting in their homes typing on their keyboards and posting on Facebook things like, “Taiwan has already lost its democracy,” “The Democratic Progressive Party is a party of green communists,” or “President William Lai [賴清德] is a dictator,” then turning around and heading to the convenience store to buy a tea egg and an iced Americano, casually chatting in a Line group about which news broadcast was more biased this morning — are such people truly clear about the kind of society in which they are living? This is not meant to be sarcasm or criticism, but an exhausted honesty.
Much has been said about the significance of the recall vote, but here is what must be said clearly and without euphemism: This vote is not just about legislative misconduct. It is about defending Taiwan’s sovereignty against a “united front” campaign that has crept into the heart of our legislature. Taiwanese voters on Jan. 13 last year made a complex decision. Many supported William Lai (賴清德) for president to keep Taiwan strong on the world stage. At the same time, some hoped that giving the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) a legislative majority would offer a
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