Six years have passed since the terrorist attacks on the US that shook the world. They didn't change the world, mind you, as mass murder of civilians wasn't born on that day. But six long years and two major wars later, we have had time to ponder what it is that leads individuals to commit mass murder to achieve their political objectives.
Judging from the comments emanating from the "free world," however, it would seem that these six years of introspection have been in vain, for aside from the continued martial discourse we have been fed since Sept. 11, 2001, much of everything else the leaders in the West have said has been little more than uninspired hot air.
True, the "D word" continues to be bandied about, like some circus oddity plucked out of a hat whenever doing so is convenient. But so overused, exploited and overstretched has the concept become that the word has lost much of its meaning.
One occurrence illustrates this perfectly -- an instance of so much hot air that it must have contributed to global warming. (Coincidentally, it comes the same week scientists announced that the Arctic ice is melting at an alarming rate.)
During a speech at the APEC summit in Sydney on Thursday, US President George W. Bush lauded the democratic achievements in the Asia-Pacific region and proposed the creation of an "Asia-Pacific Democracy Partnership," the vagueness of whose objectives could only be surpassed by the triteness of the statement itself.
The last thing the region needs is another institution. What democracy needs isn't a new layer to the onion, but rather leaders who are ready to use the term without the underhanded purposes of master cynics. Tellingly, as he expounded the virtues of this new body, Bush could not even say whether Taiwan -- part of the "bedrock of America's engagement in the region" -- would be part of it.
We wouldn't bet a cup of tea on it. Rather, Beijing would do what Beijing does and through blackmail, threats and manipulation would force the spineless "free world" to exclude -- quite undemocratically -- one of the most vibrant democracies in the region. And no one would object.
It is easy to accuse Bush of democratic turpitude, but other beacons of democracy need not pop open the self-congratulatory champagne yet, for critics alike -- Britain, Germany, France, Australia, Canada and the others -- have all been absentee landlords when it comes to standing up for their principles. Their leaders have all used the D word in a variety of guises, but their inaction has travestied it beyond recognition. So hold the Bush bashing, for the truth is there is no leader of the "free world," and creating a new institution certainly won't fix the problem.
The global intelligence community reacted to Sept. 11 by reorganizing itself and creating new agencies. But doing so didn't "fix" intelligence gaps, and many observers today would argue that six years on, the world is none the safer. Creating new bodies only serves one purpose: It gives the impression that we're doing something. As long as agencies refuse to look at a problem with honesty and fail to talk to each other, all those new buildings in the alphabet soup of counterterrorism will serve no purpose other than to add to the complexity of an already labyrinthine flow chart.
The same applies to democracy. What the Asia-Pacific region needs is inclusiveness where there has been discrimination; honesty in lieu of cynicism. It needs world leaders who understand that myopic support for undemocratic regimes, from the Taliban before Sept. 11 to Beijing today, can only give rise to problems in the not-so-distant future.
Bring Taiwan and other repressed democratic voices into existing forums, and then we'll take your discourse on democracy more seriously, Mr. Bush.
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) caucus whip Fu Kun-chi (傅?萁) has caused havoc with his attempts to overturn the democratic and constitutional order in the legislature. If we look at this devolution from the context of a transition to democracy from authoritarianism in a culturally Chinese sense — that of zhonghua (中華) — then we are playing witness to a servile spirit from a millennia-old form of totalitarianism that is intent on damaging the nation’s hard-won democracy. This servile spirit is ingrained in Chinese culture. About a century ago, Chinese satirist and author Lu Xun (魯迅) saw through the servile nature of
In their New York Times bestseller How Democracies Die, Harvard political scientists Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt said that democracies today “may die at the hands not of generals but of elected leaders. Many government efforts to subvert democracy are ‘legal,’ in the sense that they are approved by the legislature or accepted by the courts. They may even be portrayed as efforts to improve democracy — making the judiciary more efficient, combating corruption, or cleaning up the electoral process.” Moreover, the two authors observe that those who denounce such legal threats to democracy are often “dismissed as exaggerating or
Monday was the 37th anniversary of former president Chiang Ching-kuo’s (蔣經國) death. Chiang — a son of former president Chiang Kai-shek (蔣介石), who had implemented party-state rule and martial law in Taiwan — has a complicated legacy. Whether one looks at his time in power in a positive or negative light depends very much on who they are, and what their relationship with the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) is. Although toward the end of his life Chiang Ching-kuo lifted martial law and steered Taiwan onto the path of democratization, these changes were forced upon him by internal and external pressures,
The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) caucus in the Legislative Yuan has made an internal decision to freeze NT$1.8 billion (US$54.7 million) of the indigenous submarine project’s NT$2 billion budget. This means that up to 90 percent of the budget cannot be utilized. It would only be accessible if the legislature agrees to lift the freeze sometime in the future. However, for Taiwan to construct its own submarines, it must rely on foreign support for several key pieces of equipment and technology. These foreign supporters would also be forced to endure significant pressure, infiltration and influence from Beijing. In other words,
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