In the middle of last month, US President Barack Obama made a three-stop tour with a primary focus on East Asia: He first attended the APEC summit in Honolulu, then flew to Australia and finally headed to Bali to attend the East Asia Summit.
At the APEC meeting, Obama pushed the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), a multilateral economic and trade agreement intended to boost free trade across the Pacific. In Australia, he strengthened US-Australian defense and security cooperation and announced that about 2,500 US Marines would be stationed in Darwin, while in Bali the main theme was freedom of navigation in the South China Sea.
These moves signal a renewed US emphasis on East Asia. The Obama administration is talking about a strategic “pivoting” away from the Middle East, where the US is winding down its engagement in Iraq and Afghanistan, toward East Asia.
This pivot to Asia recognizes that the region is an important driver in the global economy. By making this move, the US also recognizes that for the US economy to grow and prosper, it is essential to have a stable security environment. By beefing up its economic and security presence in East Asia, the US wants to ensure stability in the region.
This stability is being threatened by an increasingly belligerent China, which is throwing its weight around at the expense of its neighbors, particularly those that border the South China Sea and the island groups between Japan and Taiwan. By making moves on both the economic and the security fronts, the US is creating a multilateral economic and security network that is designed to provide a strong foundation for the TPP.
What implications do these developments have for Taiwan? The increased US presence is good for Taiwan because it ensures safety and security in the region, in particular freedom of navigation in the all-important sea lanes surrounding the island. Being an export economy, Taiwan is highly dependent on free navigation through these waterways.
However, the new US approach also presents a valuable multilateral framework for the region, of which Taiwan needs to be an integral part. Taipei’s policy over the past few years has over-emphasized its bilateral ties with China, at the expense of its relations with other key democratic countries in the region, such as the US, as Japan and South Korea. This imbalance can now be redressed by strengthening economic and security relations with democratic friends and allies.
Thus, Taiwan needs to redouble its efforts to be included in preparations for the TPP and in multilateral discussions on strategic issues, such as freedom of navigation in the South China Sea. Taiwan is an important link in the chain of countries stretching from Japan and South Korea in the north to Indonesia, Australia and New Zealand in the south.
The importance of Taiwan as a key link in this chain also needs to be recognized by the other countries in the region and they need to be more inclusive of the nation as talks on the TPP and regional security get underway. Too often, China’s perceived sensitivities leave Taiwan in limbo.
A May 2005 Businessweek article about Taiwan’s economic prowess titled “Why Taiwan Matters” said: “The global economy couldn’t function without it.”
This remains true today, but even more importantly, it is a vibrant democracy and its continued existence as a free and democratic nation is key to safety and security in the Asia-Pacific region. And that is what Obama’s pivot is all about.
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