President-elect William Lai (賴清德) is to accede to the presidency this month at a time when the international order is in its greatest flux in three decades. Lai must navigate the ship of state through the choppy waters of an assertive China that is refusing to play by the rules, challenging the territorial claims of multiple nations and increasing its pressure on Taiwan.
It is widely held in democratic capitals that Taiwan is important to the maintenance and survival of the liberal international order. Taiwan is strategically located, hemming China’s People’s Liberation Army inside the first island chain, preventing it from threatening US military bases that have been the bedrock of prosperity and security in the Asia-Pacific region since the end of World War II.
Taiwan is a democracy with shared values with the West, and a lesson of history is that liberal democracies must bind together to defend their way of life.
Since coming to power in 2021, US President Joe Biden’s administration’s policy on Taiwan has been to build collective support from US allies and partners. This strategy — the US plus its allies, partners and Taiwan — marks a change from previous US administrations which have treated Taiwan’s security as primarily a bilateral issue. The collective strategy reminds China that Taiwan is about more than US-China relations and it concerns a concert of democracies willing to defend the rules-based order.
However, despite Taiwan’s importance, the nation has been conspicuously absent from US-led institutional initiatives. Taiwan has not been included in the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework for Prosperity (IPEF), the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (Quad) or the AUKUS agreement. While the democracies have made great strides in rhetorically supporting Taiwan, more could be done to facilitate Taiwan’s more substantial participation in regional affairs.
In a recent article titled “US-Taiwan Relations and the Future of the Liberal International Order” published in the US Army War College Quarterly: Parameters, Academia Sinica Institute of Political Science research fellow Christina Lai (賴潤瑤) offers a suite of policy prescriptions for how Taiwan can make more substantive contributions to the US-led international order in the Asia-Pacific region. Of course, outright membership might risk conflict with China, but the US could better navigate China’s red line by facilitating a Taiwanese regional presence through participation as a dialogue partner.
For example, Christina Lai said that the US could encourage Taiwan to become a dialogue partner of the Quad. No longer only about security, the Quad has expanded its scope to address emerging technologies and COVID-19 vaccines, and Taiwanese excellence in health and technology could help boost the group’s expertise. To get around any Chinese complaints, she says the US could draft a white paper elaborating on the legal basis for Taiwan’s participation. Taiwan could also make a huge contribution to trade cooperation in the IPEF, whose members value connection, cleanness, technology and resilience.
On the security front, Christina Lai said a “trilateral security network” could be built on existing US-Japan relations and the Quad to help address policy coordination issues. This could start with Taiwan’s involvement as a “dialogue partner” for contingency planning and logistics support. Moreover, the Quad could consider inviting Taiwan to join Quad-plus meetings and initiatives to help improve economic resilience in the Indo-Pacific region.
“The more Taiwan participates in US-led institutions and the more diplomatic presence it enjoys in Asia, the more likely this strategy is to prevent Beijing from starting a military conflict or attempting to occupy Taiwan by force,” Christina Lai said.
When William Lai takes office on May 20, leveraging the nation’s strengths and promoting its meaningful participation in the liberal international order should be a top priority.
Why is Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) not a “happy camper” these days regarding Taiwan? Taiwanese have not become more “CCP friendly” in response to the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) use of spies and graft by the United Front Work Department, intimidation conducted by the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) and the Armed Police/Coast Guard, and endless subversive political warfare measures, including cyber-attacks, economic coercion, and diplomatic isolation. The percentage of Taiwanese that prefer the status quo or prefer moving towards independence continues to rise — 76 percent as of December last year. According to National Chengchi University (NCCU) polling, the Taiwanese
US President Donald Trump is systematically dismantling the network of multilateral institutions, organizations and agreements that have helped prevent a third world war for more than 70 years. Yet many governments are twisting themselves into knots trying to downplay his actions, insisting that things are not as they seem and that even if they are, confronting the menace in the White House simply is not an option. Disagreement must be carefully disguised to avoid provoking his wrath. For the British political establishment, the convenient excuse is the need to preserve the UK’s “special relationship” with the US. Following their White House
It would be absurd to claim to see a silver lining behind every US President Donald Trump cloud. Those clouds are too many, too dark and too dangerous. All the same, viewed from a domestic political perspective, there is a clear emerging UK upside to Trump’s efforts at crashing the post-Cold War order. It might even get a boost from Thursday’s Washington visit by British Prime Minister Keir Starmer. In July last year, when Starmer became prime minister, the Labour Party was rigidly on the defensive about Europe. Brexit was seen as an electorally unstable issue for a party whose priority
After the coup in Burma in 2021, the country’s decades-long armed conflict escalated into a full-scale war. On one side was the Burmese army; large, well-equipped, and funded by China, supported with weapons, including airplanes and helicopters from China and Russia. On the other side were the pro-democracy forces, composed of countless small ethnic resistance armies. The military junta cut off electricity, phone and cell service, and the Internet in most of the country, leaving resistance forces isolated from the outside world and making it difficult for the various armies to coordinate with one another. Despite being severely outnumbered and
RSS