Taiwan Tati Cultural and Educational Foundation

Afghanistan: Opportunity for Taiwan

Taipei Times

Pundits have busied themselves in the past week trying to determine whether a decision by Taipei to renegotiate US beef imports with Washington will have implications on US security commitments to Taiwan. Already, an unexpected delay in US President Barack Obama’s weapons sale notification to Congress — which had been expected soon after Obama returned from climate talks in Copenhagen last month — had prompted speculation that Washington may be tying economic matters to political ones and retaliating for the about-face.

Defense contractors give Obama advice on Taiwan security

Michael Richardson

Rupert Hammond-Chambers, president of the U.S.-Taiwan Business Council, has written a sharply worded report on weapons sales to Taiwan that is critical of President Barack Obama.

The trade group is a high-powered consortium of top defense contractors including Lockheed Martin, Boeing Co, and Raytheon Corporation. U.S. Senators Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) and John D. Rockefeller (D-VA) are honorary co-chairs of the council. Chairman of the Board is Paul Wolfowitz, former head of the World Bank.

U.S. should understand Taiwan's beef stand

Taiwan News Editorial

United States government officials have expressed exasperation over why Taiwan's Legislative Yuan may revise the Food Sanitation Act Tuesday to ban imports of U.S. ground beef, offals or even beef in bone.

Senior officials of President Ma Ying-jeou's right-wing Chinese Nationalist Party (Kuomintang) government have publically speculated that U.S. President Barack Obama's Democratic Party administration will retaliate against Taiwan's alleged "unilateral abrogation" of the protocol signed Oct. 22 by Taiwan Economic and Culture Representative Office and American Institute in Taiwan to reopen imports of these risky US beef through delaying talks on a long-expected U.S.-Taiwan Trade and Investment Framework Agreement (TIFA) or even by further delays in defensive arms sales.

Taiwan must uphold sovereignty

Liberty Times Editorial

President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) has made Taiwan’s allies uneasy with his China-friendly policies. Writing in the latest edition of the magazine Foreign Affairs, US academic Robert Gilley describes how, during the Cold War, Finland employed a policy of detente to curry favor with the Soviet Union, enabling it to retain its autonomy and avoid annexation by the USSR. Gilley notes that, since the Ma administration took office, Taiwan’s situation has come to resemble that of Finland. He goes on to suggest that the US should stop selling arms to Taiwan, and that it should let Taiwan become neutral and no longer count Taiwan among its Asian allies.

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