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.”
The gutting of Voice of America (VOA) and Radio Free Asia (RFA) by US President Donald Trump’s administration poses a serious threat to the global voice of freedom, particularly for those living under authoritarian regimes such as China. The US — hailed as the model of liberal democracy — has the moral responsibility to uphold the values it champions. In undermining these institutions, the US risks diminishing its “soft power,” a pivotal pillar of its global influence. VOA Tibetan and RFA Tibetan played an enormous role in promoting the strong image of the US in and outside Tibet. On VOA Tibetan,
Former minister of culture Lung Ying-tai (龍應台) has long wielded influence through the power of words. Her articles once served as a moral compass for a society in transition. However, as her April 1 guest article in the New York Times, “The Clock Is Ticking for Taiwan,” makes all too clear, even celebrated prose can mislead when romanticism clouds political judgement. Lung crafts a narrative that is less an analysis of Taiwan’s geopolitical reality than an exercise in wistful nostalgia. As political scientists and international relations academics, we believe it is crucial to correct the misconceptions embedded in her article,
Sung Chien-liang (宋建樑), the leader of the Chinese Nationalist Party’s (KMT) efforts to recall Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Legislator Lee Kun-cheng (李坤城), caused a national outrage and drew diplomatic condemnation on Tuesday after he arrived at the New Taipei City District Prosecutors’ Office dressed in a Nazi uniform. Sung performed a Nazi salute and carried a copy of Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf as he arrived to be questioned over allegations of signature forgery in the recall petition. The KMT’s response to the incident has shown a striking lack of contrition and decency. Rather than apologizing and distancing itself from Sung’s actions,
US President Trump weighed into the state of America’s semiconductor manufacturing when he declared, “They [Taiwan] stole it from us. They took it from us, and I don’t blame them. I give them credit.” At a prior White House event President Trump hosted TSMC chairman C.C. Wei (魏哲家), head of the world’s largest and most advanced chip manufacturer, to announce a commitment to invest US$100 billion in America. The president then shifted his previously critical rhetoric on Taiwan and put off tariffs on its chips. Now we learn that the Trump Administration is conducting a “trade investigation” on semiconductors which
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