The Ministry of Economic Affairs announced earlier this month that it was tightening export controls after a Washington Post investigation showed that a Taiwanese company had sold US$20 billion of sophisticated equipment to Russia since January last year. As the US and European countries pumped money and resources into Ukraine to aid its resistance against Russia, Taiwanese companies were undercutting this support by helping Russia acquire the tools it needed to keep its war going.
This is a stain on the good reputation that President Tsai Ing-wen’s (蔡英文) administration has built up for Taiwan over the past few years, and is a stinging undermining of her administration’s narrative that Taiwan is part of a coalition of democracies united in resistance against authoritarianism. Coalitions are only as strong as their weakest link, and Taiwan’s negligence has undermined the democracies’ resilience, strengthened Russia and placed Ukraine in greater peril than it might not otherwise have been. The nation must do better.
Russia’s February 2022 invasion is viewed in many democratic capitals as an inflection point for the liberal international order, where what is at stake is about more than the political survival of Ukraine, profoundly important though that is for Ukrainians. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said that Ukraine’s resistance is a battle “between a rules-based order and a world of naked aggression.” US Secretary of State Antony Blinken has linked US support for Ukraine to the survival of the international order led by the US.
The democracies’ stake in Ukraine is not because to see Ukraine swing into Russia’s sphere of influence would make them more economically or militarily weaker — Ukraine’s importance does not hinge on material factors. Rather, Ukraine’s importance is that its political survival represents the survival of one of the core principles of the modern state system — namely, you do not use force to annex another country’s territory. Taiwan has a very big stake in seeing this international norm preserved.
On another level, Ukraine’s survival is a test of the validity and credibility of the security system built by the US and its allies after World War II. Ukrainians are fighting an existential war for freedom and democracy — a struggle which represents the right of a people and nation to affiliate with the EU and the West more broadly. This right is what international relations theorist and Princeton University academic John Ikenberry says is the moral underpinning behind the US’ entire post-war global project. This more than anything, is why Tsai, Minister of Foreign Affairs Joseph Wu (吳釗燮) and former representative to the US Hsiao Bi-khim (蕭美琴) since Russia’s February 2022 invasion have so forcefully argued that Ukraine’s success would be Taiwan’s success.
This inflection point for the international order has been defined in important respects by narrative and diplomacy — where speeches and summit meetings have played a significant role in nations signalling their views on the US-led international order. China has called the US the “main instigator” of the conflict — part of its strategy to marshall an international anti-US coalition. Seeking a leadership role of a re-emerging “non-aligned” movement, Brazilian President Lula da Silva has said: “There is no use now in saying who is right, who is wrong… What we have to do is stop the war.”
Taiwan is not a member of the UN and is shut out of many international fora due to China’s gangster diplomacy, therefore it is especially important that the nation plays its diplomatic hand well — blunders have the potential to have an inordinate impact on the nation in such challenging conditions. The lax export controls must be rectified and the government must ensure that there is no repeat of further damaging episodes to Taiwan’s international reputation.
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