Taiwan Tati Cultural and Educational Foundation

Give Taiwan what it thinks it needs – just in case

Walter Lohman

Will the US come to the defense of Taiwan if and when China makes its move? Like most friends of Taiwan, I’ve been saying “yes” for a couple decades. But the truth is that none of us, in or out of government, really know. This is precisely why we all need to show humility in our advice on how Taiwan should prepare itself for such an eventuality.

After all, it’s their country, and they have no choice but to live with the consequences.

A couple weeks ago the New York Times published an article that put this reality in stark relief. As detailed there, the Biden administration is seriously committed to constraining the choices Taiwan can make in its choice of weapons purchases. This is not completely new. The US and Taiwan have consulted on Taiwan’s capabilities for decades. It does not always get what it wants.

Indo-Pacific: Taiwan not included in trade pact

Taipei Times

US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan speaks at a daily press briefing in the Brady Briefing Room of the White House in Washington on Wednesday.
Photo: AFP

US President Joe Biden is expected to unveil a list of nations today who would be joining a long anticipated Indo-Pacific region trade pact, but Taiwan will not be among them.

US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said that Taiwan is not among the governments included in the launch of the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework, a trade pact that is meant to allow the US to work more closely with key Asian economies on issues including supply chains, digital trade, clean energy and anticorruption efforts.

China proves Fukuyama wrong

Parris Chang 張旭成

As the Soviet Union was collapsing in the late 1980s and Russia seemed to be starting the process of democratization, 36-year-old US academic Francis Fukuyama had the audacity to assert that the world was at the “end of history.”

Fukuyama claimed that democratic systems would become the norm, and peace would prevail the world over.

He published a grandiose essay, “The End of History?” in the summer 1989 edition of the journal National Interest. Overnight, Fukuyama became a famous theorist in the US, western Europe, Japan and even Taiwan.

Taiwan-Japan military ties possible

Taiwan Tati Cultural & Educational Foundation

With a Taiwan contingency increasingly more plausible, Taiwanese lobbies in Japan are calling for the government to pass a version of the Taiwan Relations Act (TRA), emulating the US precedent. Such a measure would surely enable Tokyo to make formal and regular contact with Taipei for dialogue, consultation, policy coordination and planning in military security. This would fill the missing link of the trilateral US-Japan-Taiwan security ties, rendering a US military defense of Taiwan more feasible through the support of the US-Japan alliance.

Yet, particular caution should be exercised, as Beijing would probably view the move as a serious challenge to its ambition to annex Taiwan. Tokyo’s security-seeking move might then provoke Beijing only to destabilize cross-strait relations and possibly give it a pretext for aggression, as China is more confident than ever in its military power and coercive diplomacy.

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