Taiwan Tati Cultural and Educational Foundation

Billions later, is Taiwan any safer?

Taipei Times Editorial

Though welcome, the US$6.4 billion US arms sale to Taiwan announced by Washington on Friday will not bring much in terms of Taiwan’s ability to defend itself. All the items in the package, with the exception of the 60 UH-60M Black Hawk helicopters, had been approved — and then delayed — by former US president George W. Bush’s administration. In other words, since large parts of the package were first announced in 2001, Taiwan’s military has been treading water, while China has sprinted ahead with the modernization of its military.

None of the items in the package will make a substantial difference. While the PAC-3 missile defense system can bolster the defense of certain key targets, it is not sufficient to deter an attack, especially as the sale is likely to result in a decision by the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) to add short and medium-range missiles to the 1,500 it already aims at Taiwan and step up its missile program.

Endorsement of Lobo sullies Taiwan's democracy

Taiwan News Editorial

President Ma Ying-jeou's attendance at last Wednesday's inauguration of Honduran President Porifino Lubo of the conservative National Party of Honduras sullied the reputation of Taiwan's hard-won democracy and marked a grave diplomatic misjudgement.

Ma, who is concurrently chairman of the rightist ruling Chinese Nationalist Party (Kuomintang), endorsed as "democratic" the new Honduran government, which was created by general elections held by a repressive "interim" regime formed in the wake of the coup against former president Jose Manuel Zelaya of the Honduran Liberal Party last June 28 after the Liberal Party president proposed constitutional reforms that could open the Honduran political system to wider popular participation.

China is no friend of Washington

Parris Chang 張旭成

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said on Jan. 24 that his country was resolved to produce its own highly enriched uranium — a long-standing bone of contention between Tehran and the West. The West offered Iran a draft nuclear deal last November under a resolution of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) that called for Tehran to trade about 80 percent of its domestically produced low-grade uranium for highly enriched nuclear fuel from France and Russia.

The uranium would then be converted into fuel rods and returned to Iran for use in the medical research. Such an arrangement was designed to reduce Iran’s ability to make a nuclear weapon quickly and buy more time for negotiations. Iran has rejected the offer.

The 'one-term' specter over Ma and Obama

Taiwan News Editorial

In the wake of electoral setbacks suffered by United States President Barack Obama's Democratic Party, the Taiwan news media could not refrain from comparing the situation of the U.S. president with his counterpart, President Ma Ying-jeou of the rightist Chinese National Party (Kuomintang).

After all, Ma's ruling KMT has similarly suffered a series of defeats at the polls, beginning with a stunning victory by the opposition Democratic Progressive Party in a legislative by-election in Yunlin County in September, followed by the loss of benchmark Yilan County and a poorer-than-expected vote tally in the Dec. 5 "three-in-one" local polls and a DPP sweep of three legislative by-elections Jan. 9.

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