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.
US aerospace company Boeing Co has in recent years been involved in numerous safety incidents, including crashes of its 737 Max airliners, which have caused widespread concern about the company’s safety record. It has recently come to light that titanium jet engine parts used by Boeing and its European competitor Airbus SE were sold with falsified documentation. The source of the titanium used in these parts has been traced back to an unknown Chinese company. It is clear that China is trying to sneak questionable titanium materials into the supply chain and use any ensuing problems as an opportunity to
It’s not every month that the US Department of State sends two deputy assistant secretary-level officials to Taiwan, together. Its rarer still that such senior State Department policy officers, once on the ground in Taipei, make a point of huddling with fellow diplomats from “like-minded” NATO, ANZUS and Japanese governments to coordinate their multilateral Taiwan policies. The State Department issued a press release on June 22 admitting that the two American “representatives” had “hosted consultations in Taipei” with their counterparts from the “Taiwan Ministry of Foreign Affairs.” The consultations were blandly dubbed the “US-Taiwan Working Group on International Organizations.” The State
The Chinese Supreme People’s Court and other government agencies released new legal guidelines criminalizing “Taiwan independence diehard separatists.” While mostly symbolic — the People’s Republic of China (PRC) has never had jurisdiction over Taiwan — Tamkang University Graduate Institute of China Studies associate professor Chang Wu-ueh (張五岳), an expert on cross-strait relations, said: “They aim to explain domestically how they are countering ‘Taiwan independence,’ they aim to declare internationally their claimed jurisdiction over Taiwan and they aim to deter Taiwanese.” Analysts do not know for sure why Beijing is propagating these guidelines now. Under Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平), deciphering the
Delegation-level visits between the two countries have become an integral part of transformed relations between India and the US. Therefore, the visit by a bipartisan group of seven US lawmakers, led by US House of Representatives Committee on Foreign Affairs Chairman Michael McCaul to India from June 16 to Thursday last week would have largely gone unnoticed in India and abroad. However, the US delegation’s four-day visit to India assumed huge importance this time, because of the meeting between the US lawmakers and the Dalai Lama. This in turn brings us to the focal question: How and to what extent