Officially recognizing the Republic of China’s (ROC) sovereignty is “easy” and “the right thing to do,” former US secretary of state Mike Pompeo said yesterday in an interview with the Taipei Times in Taipei.
“It’s easy to do. It’s the right thing to do. It’s the morally proper thing to do. It’s not hard,” said Pompeo, who served from April 2018 to January last year under the administration of former US president Donald Trump.
“I think the moment calls for clarity, transparency and a deep recognition of the central idea that we’ve all known: that Taiwan is not a part of China,” he added, joking that the nation’s issuance of a visa for him to visit illustrates “its enormous independence from mainland China.”
Photo: Ann Wang, Reuters
In a speech earlier in the day, Pompeo made the same assertion that the US should offer Taiwan diplomatic recognition as a “free and sovereign country,” urging the US to move away from its long-time policy of “strategic ambiguity.”
“Today I come here as a private citizen, but it is an imperative to change 50 years of ambiguity. It is about America’s diplomatic recognition of the Republic of China, while the US should continue to engage the People’s Republic of China as a sovereign government,” Pompeo said at an event organized by the government-affiliated Prospect Foundation think tank.
“America’s diplomatic recognition of 23 million freedom-loving Taiwanese people, its legal, democratically elected government can no longer be ignored, avoided or treated as secondary,” he said.
Photo: Sam Yeh, AFP
“It is my view that the US government should immediately take necessary and long-overdue steps to do the right and obvious thing, that is, to offer the Republic of China America’s diplomatic recognition as a free and sovereign country,” he said.
“This is not about Taiwan’s future independence. It is about a recognition of an unmistakable, already existent reality,” he said. “There is no need for Taiwan to declare independence because it is already an independent nation. Its name is the Republic of China. The people and government of the United States should simply accept this fundamentally decent, morally right thing. Taiwanese people deserve the world’s respect for continuing down this free, democratic and sovereign path.”
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs yesterday declined to comment on Pompeo’s remarks, saying only that it respected his comments.
Photo: Sam Yeh, AFP
Taiwan-US relations have grown steadily over the past few years with bipartisan support in Washington, providing a solid foundation for Taipei to expand cooperation and partnerships between the countries across various domains, it said in a statement.
At a news conference hosted by Prospect Foundation executive director Lai I-chung (賴怡忠), Pompeo was asked to assess the likelihood of China invading Taiwan.
The level of risk across the Taiwan Strait cannot be assessed separately from Washington’s willingness to provide arms and training, or Taipei’s willingness to pay for them, Pompeo said.
“It turns on the willingness of the Western world to demonstrate that the cost for [Chinese President] Xi Jinping (習近平) engaging in that kind of activity are just too high,” he said.
Regarding whether he would run for US president in 2024, Pompeo said that he did “not know what will happen in 2023 or 2024,” but would continue on the “mission to protect democracy and freedom” in the US and around the world.
“We need to defend human dignity and sovereignty, and we need to draw this line between tyranny and democracy so cleanly and so crisply that we can preserve it for the next generation,” he said.
Asked about the purpose of his Taiwan visit, Pompeo said that he wanted to thank Taiwanese for being a good friend and partner of the US during his tenure as the US secretary of state, director of the CIA and senator.
“I wanted to come here because the people of Taiwan are so deeply wonderful and loving of the central ideas that we have in the American founding as well, this idea that liberty matters ... that freedom of speech matters,” he said.
Pompeo, who is visiting Taiwan for the first time, is due to leave today.
The visit follows a 30-hour stopover by a delegation of former US security officials sent by US President Joe Biden to assure Taiwan of the US’ commitment in light of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
EUROPEAN TARGETS: The planned Munich center would support TSMC’s European customers to design high-performance, energy-efficient chips, an executive said Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), the world’s largest contract chipmaker, yesterday said that it plans to launch a new research-and-development (R&D) center in Munich, Germany, next quarter to assist customers with chip design. TSMC Europe president Paul de Bot made the announcement during a technology symposium in Amsterdam on Tuesday, the chipmaker said. The new Munich center would be the firm’s first chip designing center in Europe, it said. The chipmaker has set up a major R&D center at its base of operations in Hsinchu and plans to create a new one in the US to provide services for major US customers,
The Ministry of Transportation and Communications yesterday said that it would redesign the written portion of the driver’s license exam to make it more rigorous. “We hope that the exam can assess drivers’ understanding of traffic rules, particularly those who take the driver’s license test for the first time. In the past, drivers only needed to cram a book of test questions to pass the written exam,” Minister of Transportation and Communications Chen Shih-kai (陳世凱) told a news conference at the Taoyuan Motor Vehicle Office. “In the future, they would not be able to pass the test unless they study traffic regulations
GAINING STEAM: The scheme initially failed to gather much attention, with only 188 cards issued in its first year, but gained popularity amid the COVID-19 pandemic Applications for the Employment Gold Card have increased in the past few years, with the card having been issued to a total of 13,191 people from 101 countries since its introduction in 2018, the National Development Council (NDC) said yesterday. Those who have received the card have included celebrities, such as former NBA star Dwight Howard and Australian-South Korean cheerleader Dahye Lee, the NDC said. The four-in-one Employment Gold Card combines a work permit, resident visa, Alien Resident Certificate (ARC) and re-entry permit. It was first introduced in February 2018 through the Act Governing Recruitment and Employment of Foreign Professionals (外國專業人才延攬及雇用法),
‘A SURVIVAL QUESTION’: US officials have been urging the opposition KMT and TPP not to block defense spending, especially the special defense budget, an official said The US plans to ramp up weapons sales to Taiwan to a level exceeding US President Donald Trump’s first term as part of an effort to deter China as it intensifies military pressure on the nation, two US officials said on condition of anonymity. If US arms sales do accelerate, it could ease worries about the extent of Trump’s commitment to Taiwan. It would also add new friction to the tense US-China relationship. The officials said they expect US approvals for weapons sales to Taiwan over the next four years to surpass those in Trump’s first term, with one of them saying