As the local media continue to ponder over the events in Kabul, many have rightly pointed out the folly of comparing Afghanistan with Taiwan. Culturally, politically, economically and geographically, the two countries are poles apart. Nevertheless, the hasty withdrawal of US forces from Afghanistan, and the country’s return to rule under the oppressive Taliban regime, has ignited a debate within Taiwan over whether the US can be relied upon to come to its defense.
On Tuesday last week, President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) wrote on Facebook: “I want to tell everyone that Taiwan’s only option is to make ourselves stronger, more united and more resolute in our determination to protect ourselves.”
“It is not an option for us to do nothing ... and just rely on other people’s protection,” the president wrote.
It was an uncharacteristically forthright intervention by Tsai, designed to ram home an important home truth to the Taiwanese public: The events in Afghanistan demonstrate that Washington will eventually lose patience with any US protectorate or ally that cannot stand on its own two feet or is not prepared to fight for its own survival.
Moreover, Taiwan cannot assume that this or any future US administration would muster sufficient political support at home to place US troops in harm’s way to defend a far-flung nation about which the average American knows very little.
As Tsai said, Taiwan must improve its defense autonomy. Taiwanese politicians and military planners can no longer assume that the nation only needs to hold out against China for a couple of days and US carrier strike groups would sail over the horizon to the rescue. Not only might this be militarily impossible, given China’s investment in anti-access area denial capabilities — it might also be politically impossible.
If Taiwan were perceived to be skimping on its defense, causing the military balance across the Taiwan Strait to tip categorically in favor of China, a future US administration might determine that Taiwan is a lost cause, and scale down its costly naval and air force presence in the Taiwan Strait and South China Sea, which provides an important deterrence against Chinese aggression.
Were Beijing to call Washington’s bluff and launch an invasion of Taiwan, to a US president staring down the barrel of a gun, a tactical retreat to shore up the defenses of the more populous and larger economies of Japan and South Korea might seem like an appealing option. Taiwan could become this generation’s Czechoslovakia: a sacrificial morsel of red meat tossed to China in a futile attempt to satiate its voracious appetite.
Taiwan’s geostrategic value appears unassailable. Like a cork stopping a bottle, Taiwan’s position in the first island chain effectively contains China’s navy. However, everything in the world has a price. If Beijing makes the price of defending Taiwan too high for Washington to stomach — and if the US has successfully developed its own advanced semiconductor production — then all bets are off.
It cannot be a coincidence that a source within the Ministry of National Defense last week disclosed a plan to inject an additional NT$200 billion (US$7.16 billion) into indigenous missile defense capabilities to accelerate the mass production of precision and long-range missiles, including hypersonics. This is an astute move that would furnish the military with a potent asymmetric deterrent ahead of schedule, and signal to Washington that Taiwan is serious about defending itself.
Taiwan is a mature democracy that has come of age and must now stand on its own two feet. Afghanistan is an object lesson of a US protectorate that failed to get its house in order. Taiwan must not make the same mistake.
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