When I was a young man, I served as an infantryman in the Korean War. Many of my fellow soldiers died around me, but in the end we prevented the unification of Korea under a totalitarian dictatorship because we fought for democracy.
That war was the result of aggressive behavior on the part of North Korea, which was subsequently joined by the newly established People’s Republic of China under then-Chinese leader Mao Zedong (毛澤東). China entered the war in October 1950, leading to a major conflict with pitched battles that lasted until the armistice in July 1953.
What also significantly contributed to the start of that war was a statement by then-US secretary of state Dean Acheson that Korea lay outside the US’ Asian defense perimeter. This led former North Korean leader Kim Il-sung to believe that the US would not intervene if he invaded South Korea.
Why am I raising this issue now? Because at the present, the US is deciding on whether to sell advanced weapons to Taiwan and on its military posture in East Asia in the face of a rising China. While the US does need to engage China to encourage it to take a responsible stance toward its neighbors, it should also be emphasized that the US needs to draw clear lines in the sand, so that Beijing fully understands Washington’s position.
One of those lines is to make clear that the US is committed to Taiwan’s defense. As elaborated in the Taiwan Relations Act, this requires that the US “provide Taiwan with arms of a defensive character,” adding that it needs “to maintain the capacity of the United States to resist any resort to force or other forms of coercion that would jeopardize the security, or the social or economic system, of the people on Taiwan.”
At present, the US government is going through the final stages of its decisionmaking process on the sale of advanced F-16C/D aircraft as well as an upgrade of the existing F-16A/Bs Taiwan operates. This decision will be based on the growing threat posed by the People’s Liberation Army, which has built up its forces across the Taiwan Strait with advanced aircraft, resulting in a major cross-strait military imbalance. It will also be based on the economic benefits to the US in terms of jobs and manufacturing capabilities; certainly a key argument in times of economic downturn.
However, last but not least, the US needs to make clear it is committed to the continued existence of Taiwan as a free and democratic nation. Mixed signals like those of Acheson in the early 1950s would have disastrous consequences. The sale of the F-16C/Ds would be a first step. Beefing up the US’ forward presence in East Asia is another.
However, an even more important step would be to start treating Taiwan as a normal country in its own right. For too long the US has clung to the “one China” policy, which dates back 40 years. The US needs to bring Taiwan out of its externally imposed political isolation.
The Taiwanese have made a momentous transition from an authoritarian regime under former dictator Chiang Kai-shek (蔣介石), who claimed he would “recover” China, to a vibrant Taiwanese democracy that began to take shape under former president Lee Teng-hui (李登輝).
Don’t the people of Taiwan deserve a US adjustment of its policies to reflect this new situation, bringing Taiwan in from the cold? To do that, the US needs to safeguard their hard-earned democracy and ensure their freedoms and security by giving them the means to defend themselves.
Nat Bellocchi is a former chairman of the American Institute in Taiwan. The views expressed in this article are his own.
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,
RSS