US president-elect Barack Obama completed his victory on Tuesday night with a speech as stirring as it was carefully worded. It would come as no surprise if his fine words moved as many people of other nations as the people of his own.
Indeed, his words included a pledge that credibility in the eyes of the rest of the world is an important part of the US agenda once again: “… our destiny is shared,” he said, “and a new dawn of American leadership is at hand.”
He spoke in a way that will encourage individuals and nations that are struggling against oppression by adjacent states or even their own.
“To those who would tear the world down: We will defeat you,” he said. “To those who seek peace and security: We support you. And to all those who have wondered if America’s beacon still burns as bright: Tonight we proved once more that the true strength of our nation comes not from the might of our arms or the scale of our wealth, but from the enduring power of our ideals: democracy, liberty, opportunity and unyielding hope.”
These words are a profound and essential statement of what the US represents to people all over the world who hope for self-betterment and self-respect while acknowledging the need to admit to mistakes and heal past wounds.
But the mechanics of Obama’s foreign policy are yet to be enunciated.
Worse, the words and actions to date of Obama’s aides with responsibilities for Taiwan and China sit very awkwardly — if not contradict outright — the inspiration and principles in his speech on Tuesday night.
The extent to which this situation should worry Taiwanese is limited by military and diplomatic reality in the Asia-Pacific region. The received wisdom among hawks and doves alike is that US policy on Taiwan over the last 30 years has been remarkably stable and consistent, though under President George W. Bush there has been a subtle but unnerving change from “acknowledging” to supporting China’s claim to Taiwan.
Concerns that a Democratic Congress would erode Taiwanese interests may also be overstated given the marginal role it plays in executive operations.
To the incoming Obama administration, Taiwan’s fate will likely fall under the radar for some time, and predicted overtures by Washington to Beijing could extend this period of superficial peace for as long as Zhongnanhai can behave itself.
China’s agenda, however, requires this stability to end at the very moment that its strategy of coaxing Taiwan and offering economic inducements fails.
This moment is inevitable; the question is whether Obama will be prepared for it should it happen under his watch.
Supporters of Taiwanese democracy must have listened to Obama’s invocation of Abraham Lincoln with a mixture of admiration and wistfulness. Based on the evidence available, despite the warning signs from China and pro-China forces in Taiwan, and despite all the energy that hope can generate, no one can really say if an Obama administration would act to stop a Taiwanese government of the people, by the people and for the people from perishing.
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