Washington should play the “Taiwan card” against China, former US ambassador to the UN John Bolton said in an opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal.
“America has a diplomatic ladder of escalation that would compel Beijing’s attention,” said Bolton wrote in the article, published on Sunday on the paper’s Web site.
Bolton, now a senior fellow at the conservative American Enterprise Institute in Washington, said that for a new US president willing to act boldly, there are opportunities to halt and then reverse China’s “seemingly inexorable march toward hegemony in East Asia.”
He says that the US’ next president should insist that China reverse its territorial acquisitiveness, including abandoning its South China Sea bases and undoing the ecological damage its construction has caused.
“China is free to continue asserting its territorial claims diplomatically, but until they are peacefully resolved with its neighbors, they and the US are likewise free to ignore such claims in their entirety,” Bolton said.
If Beijing refuses to back down in the South China Sea, the next US president could receive Taiwanese diplomats officially at the US Department of State and upgrade the status of US representation in Taipei from a private “institute” to an official diplomatic mission, he said.
Bolton said that from there, the US could invite Taiwan’s president to travel officially to the US and allow the most senior US officials to visit Taiwan to transact government business.
Ultimately, the US could restore full diplomatic recognition, he said.
“Beijing’s leaders would be appalled by this approach,” said Bolton, who has a reputation for being controversial.
He said that China must understand that by creating so-called provinces in the South China Sea, it risks causing itself to lose control — perhaps forever — of Taiwan.
“Even were China to act more responsibly in nearby waters, of course, Taiwan’s fate would still be for its people to decide,” he said.
He says that president-elect Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) has been cautious, but that she has not rejected “the bedrock DPP [Democratic Progressive Party] platform of independence from China.”
Bolton says that most of the Republican hopefuls for the US presidential election this year are determined “to replace the vacuum that exists where the US’ China policy should be.”
This may involve modifying or even jettisoning the “one China” policy, along with even more far-reaching initiatives to counter Beijing’s “rapidly accelerating political and military aggressiveness,” he said.
Bolton said that China might act against Taiwan before the next US president takes office this time next year.
“Too many foreigners continue echoing Beijing’s view that Taiwan is a problem only resolvable by uniting the island and the mainland as one China. Taiwan’s freedom isn’t a problem. It is an inspiration. Let Beijing contemplate that fact on the ground,” Bolton said.
The majority of parents surveyed in northern Taiwan favor the suspension of all on-site classes at schools from the junior-high level and below amid a surge in domestic COVID-19 infections, parent groups said yesterday. About 84.4 percent of respondents in a survey of 2,912 parents in northern Taiwan, where the outbreak is the most serious, said they supported suspending classes, the Action Alliance on Basic Education, the Taiwan Parents Protect Women and Children Association, and the Taiwan Love Children Association said. The groups distributed questionnaires to parents in New Taipei City, Taipei, Keelung, Taoyuan and Hsinchu city and county from Saturday morning
‘LONE WOLF’: The suspect was difficult to locate, as he did not use a cellphone, did not contact family and often lived in abandoned sites or parks, police said Taipei police on Thursday morning arrested a man accused of numerous burglaries and at least 14 incidents of sexual assault spanning more than 20 years, in what might be the nation’s most notorious crime spree in recent years. Sixty-year-old Tu Ming-lang (涂明朗) — who was yesterday placed in judicial detention, after a judge determined he was a flight risk without a fixed address — faces multiple charges of sexual assault and burglary, police said. A task force comprised of various law enforcement agencies arrested Tu as part of an investigation into an April 28 burglary in Daan District (大安), in which a
ASEAN BATTLEGROUND: Japan and Australia could be drawn into Pacific tensions as China sets its sights on the Diaoyutai Islands and further beyond the first island chain Tensions between China and the US in the Indo-Pacific region are expected to intensify, the National Security Bureau and Ministry of Foreign Affairs said, recommending that Taiwan continue to emphasize its shared values and interests to encourage resistance to Chinese aggression. US commitments in the Indo-Pacific region are expected to continue unabated despite the war in Ukraine, as Beijing takes advantage of the conflict to expand its influence in the region, the agencies said in reports delivered to the legislature’s Foreign Affairs and National Defense Committee on Sunday, ahead of a hearing yesterday on regional developments and trends. Although Russia’s invasion of
ONLINE REPORT: Confirmed cases filling out the online contact tracing report can check a box to indicate that a close contact had received a booster dose, an official said The guidelines for diagnosing COVID-19 have been revised to include people aged 65 or older who test positive with a rapid test that is confirmed by a healthcare worker, the Central Epidemic Command Center (CECC) said yesterday, as it reported 65,794 new local infections. The CECC had first announced the change on Monday, before publishing the new guidelines. Starting today, people aged 65 or older, regardless of whether they are undergoing home quarantine, home isolation or self-disease prevention, can be classified as a confirmed COVID-19 case by a healthcare professional, based on a positive result from an antigen rapid test, said
RSS