Taiwan Tati Cultural and Educational Foundation

Weak defense, poor intelligence

Taipei Times Editorial

Recent news of a plan by the National Security Bureau, the nation’s top civilian intelligence agency, to introduce an award system to address low morale in the intelligence ranks is as a clear a demonstration of the state of affairs under President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) as we could get.

Amid cutbacks in the defense budget — with the Ministry of National Defense announcing last week that it had no choice but to defer payment on key defense items lined up for purchase from the US — and diminished emphasis on military exercises preparing for potential Chinese aggression, it is not surprising that Ma’s critics have pointed to his apparent lack of commitment to ensuring that Taiwan has the means and skills to defend itself.

Understanding Taiwan’s status

Hoonting

President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) said last Monday that the sovereignty of Taiwan was returned to the Republic of China (ROC) based on the Cairo Communique (1943), the Potsdam Declaration (1945), the surrender instrument of Japan (1945) and then-US president Harry Truman’s statement on Jan. 5, 1950.

It is nothing new that Ma and his Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) tend to ignore the existence of the Treaty of Peace with Japan of 1951, of which Article 2(b) stipulated that “Japan renounces the right, title and claim to Formosa and the Pescadores.”

Naphtha plant must be relocated

Chan Chang-chuan 詹長權

Looking back at major social events in Taiwan over the last century, I believe that late Yilan County commissioner Chen Ding-nan’s (陳定南) decision to not allow Formosa Petrochemical Corp to build the sixth naphtha cracker in his county had a great impact on the environment and the residents in that area. It was an historic event to which some additional thought should be given.

At the time, many officials spoke up in favor of Formosa Plastics Group when the government was making the environmental impact assessment of the plant, but they failed to examine the group’s environmental record both at home and abroad. In addition, they did not review Taiwan’s environmental protection standards to find out if they were perhaps too lax or whether law enforcement was accurate.

The true cost of peace with China

Taipei Times Editorial

In the field of international relations, there is a theory called “domestic audience cost.” According to this theory, the political leaders of a country might send out signals to intensify a conflict with an enemy state in the hope that this will function as a deterrent to the state in question. This is risky, however, because if they then pull back once conflict intensifies, they run the risk of disappointing their domestic audience. The cost of that could affect their political standing.

In democracies, the domestic audience cost is evaluated in regular elections where voters can punish those leaders that have disappointed them through their ballots. In authoritarian countries, however, there are no regular elections to highlight domestic audience cost.

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