With Minister of Foreign Affairs James Huang (
Yet the trips have proceeded smoothly. Instead, this week it was the Holy See, Taiwan's sole European ally, that continued to provide lessons in anti-diplomacy by sending hostile signals to its own rivals: moderate Catholics, Muslims, Jews and, thanks to Pope Benedict's most recent broadside, Protestants and Orthodox Christians.
For all of its platitudes on peace, the Vatican is in a fighting mood. Such a shame, then, that it could not be more aggressive in combating genuine tyranny. One would have thought that failing states and dictators -- such as Zimbabwe and President Robert Mugabe -- might be more deserving of a papal campaign than the devout on the other side of the fence.
Apparently not.
Zimbabwe, a former economic success story, is close to collapse now that the government has sunk to the point of arresting shopowners who heed inflation. A lot of innocent lives are on the line. But few governments seem to be taking the situation seriously to the extent that they would act.
Among others, South African President Thabo Mbeki deserves contempt for giving years of solace to a sociopath who has torn his country apart. South Africa, for one, may yet rue the consequences of this moral outrage and tactical stupidity.
Indeed, the Zimbabwe debacle teaches us a number of lessons about this part of Africa. Perhaps the most fundamental is that obvious omens for the ruination of a country -- co-opting of the courts by the government, an unhinged military and police force, xenophobic economic policy, rigged elections -- can stare neighboring countries in the face for years with nary a complaint. Evicting whites from farms and other locations seemed at the time to be a political tactic to appeal to the moronic element and even to other governments; in retrospect, it seems to have been the only tactic available to a man who would prefer destroying his country to relinquishing power.
Second, Zimbabwe is another example of just how fanciful the idea of a United States of Africa is -- with or without the likes of Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi at the helm.
Third is the culpability of the UN. This organization continues to shield tyrants such as Mugabe from meaningful pressure because of the pervasive influence of despotic regimes -- in this case, the presence of a primary Mugabe benefactor, China, on the UN Security Council. Only a few years ago we heard top UN officials sighing that more should have been done in Rwanda to save the lives of the victims of genocide. But those people's successors in today's UN bureaucracy are silent on Zimbabwe as it prepares to commit suicide.
Yet there is one courageous Catholic, Archbishop Pius Ncube, who has shown himself to have the stuff of heroes -- unlike his religious masters and most of the rest of the world's governments -- by putting his life on the line in calling for international intervention to remove Mugabe and his thugs from power.
If Taiwan can learn anything from this disgraceful saga and from such people, it is that commitment and honor offer hope and inspiration in the shadow of the worst oppression. Faced with violence and terror, the good, wise man speaks the truth and speaks firmly, while carefully preparing for the consequences.
Concerns that the US might abandon Taiwan are often overstated. While US President Donald Trump’s handling of Ukraine raised unease in Taiwan, it is crucial to recognize that Taiwan is not Ukraine. Under Trump, the US views Ukraine largely as a European problem, whereas the Indo-Pacific region remains its primary geopolitical focus. Taipei holds immense strategic value for Washington and is unlikely to be treated as a bargaining chip in US-China relations. Trump’s vision of “making America great again” would be directly undermined by any move to abandon Taiwan. Despite the rhetoric of “America First,” the Trump administration understands the necessity of
US President Donald Trump’s challenge to domestic American economic-political priorities, and abroad to the global balance of power, are not a threat to the security of Taiwan. Trump’s success can go far to contain the real threat — the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) surge to hegemony — while offering expanded defensive opportunities for Taiwan. In a stunning affirmation of the CCP policy of “forceful reunification,” an obscene euphemism for the invasion of Taiwan and the destruction of its democracy, on March 13, 2024, the People’s Liberation Army’s (PLA) used Chinese social media platforms to show the first-time linkage of three new
If you had a vision of the future where China did not dominate the global car industry, you can kiss those dreams goodbye. That is because US President Donald Trump’s promised 25 percent tariff on auto imports takes an ax to the only bits of the emerging electric vehicle (EV) supply chain that are not already dominated by Beijing. The biggest losers when the levies take effect this week would be Japan and South Korea. They account for one-third of the cars imported into the US, and as much as two-thirds of those imported from outside North America. (Mexico and Canada, while
The military is conducting its annual Han Kuang exercises in phases. The minister of national defense recently said that this year’s scenarios would simulate defending the nation against possible actions the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) might take in an invasion of Taiwan, making the threat of a speculated Chinese invasion in 2027 a heated agenda item again. That year, also referred to as the “Davidson window,” is named after then-US Indo-Pacific Command Admiral Philip Davidson, who in 2021 warned that Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) had instructed the PLA to be ready to invade Taiwan by 2027. Xi in 2017
RSS