tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10698887.post5238694911321956915..comments2023-10-22T18:25:39.688+08:00Comments on The View from Taiwan: Five Lessons for Taiwan from the Ukraine MessMichael Turtonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17974403961870976346noreply@blogger.comBlogger7125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10698887.post-59564920286684545852014-03-17T07:49:39.528+08:002014-03-17T07:49:39.528+08:00You left one lesson out: you can't always coun...You left one lesson out: you can't always count on America for defense so you'd better be sure to have your own deterrent.<br /><br />What's really scary about the Ukraine crisis is that America and Russia signed an treaty saying they would guarantee Ukraine's borders in exchange for Ukraine giving up its nuclear weapons.<br /><br />It is no surprise that Russia under Putin would violate such an agreement. Indeed Russia's interest in Sevastopol is much like Britain's interest Gibraltar or America's interest in the Panama Canal. Just as no competent patriotic leader of Britain would give up control of Gibraltar, and no competent patriotic leader of America would give up control of the Panama Canal, we should expect that no competent patriotic leader of Russia would allow the loss of Sevastopol, so it is no surprise that Putin would take positive actions to guarantee access.<br /><br />However, we signed the agreement to guarantee Ukraine's borders. If we fail to do so we undermine all similar agreements we've made around the world. And in particular, we make it nearly impossible to persuade emerging nuclear powers to exchange security guarantees for nuclear weapons. If Ukraine loses Crimea, can we expect Iran to sign any agreements with us? Could North Korea trust us to keep China and the South Koreans out?<br /><br />But this isn't just America's problem. The whole world has an interest in stopping nuclear proliferation. European countries and every other civilized nation should be willing to pay some price (hopefully just economic) to stop this aggression.<br /><br />Sadly, so far it looks like our current president doesn't understand the severity of the situation. I hope he's doing a lot more behind the scenes because his public stance has been pretty weak.<br /><br />An early strong response might have allowed Putin to back down with a lot less loss of face - before he had committed so many troops and indicated how far he wanted to go. Now it is hard to imagine any good solution to this situation.<br /><br />In any case, the message to Taiwan should be loud and clear. Taiwan doesn't even have a clear guarantee of protection like Ukraine did. Were China to invade at the right time (when the right (or wrong depending on how you look at it) president is leading America, Taiwan will be on its own for a very long time - perhaps for as long as 8 years.<br />Readinnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10698887.post-83655123867507377402014-03-10T15:46:42.713+08:002014-03-10T15:46:42.713+08:00Point One: Propaganda
This has been going on for ...Point One: Propaganda<br /><br />This has been going on for a long time. Both Chinese nationalisms are built upon the foundation of the racial nation. The racial nation is predicated on the acceptance and validation of authentic and essentialized races and that race is enough to bond citizens to a nation state. <br /><br />In reality, the model of the racial nation has been a poor model for the success of a nation as races are political inventions that hinge in the liminality of their invention. They break down over competing interests despite their conception of singularity and homogeneity. <br /><br />China has not been a true racial nation in practice as the early republicans sought to retain the peripheral people and places of the Qing empire and incorporate those lands into the map. To satisfy both desires for a racial nation and a multiethnic border, China invented and promulgated the fantasy that 98% of Chinese were Han. Moreover, as Chinese nationalism was a modernist movement, they conflated modernism with Han and progressed on a civilizing project to transform the peripheral people into the type of Han imagined by the state. The state was the supreme arbiter of Han-ness/ Chineseness. <br /><br />The result is an etherial concept of Chineseness that has no discernible form and can be deployed to fit both essentialist and nominalist constructs. Concepts of Chinseness are often deployed by the Chinese state in ways that are seemingly contradictory, yet seem to satisfy the CCP and their western audience without question. This may be explained by the west filling their ignorance of China and Chineseness with stilted fantasy. China is more than willing to fill in the missing narrative. <br /><br />2. The Partisan Issue:<br /><br />This may very well be. After a decade of being lost in the desert, U.S. foreign policy may reflect a public apprehension for, what may be portrayed as, another military adventure rich in blood and poor in treasure. <br /><br />3. Europe is Useless:<br /><br />In an echo of the first point, the biggest problem with Europeans is that they have failed to move beyond the age of colonialism when dealing with Asia. Too often, European leaders still see asian nationalisms through the clumsy, racially tinted lens of the colonial enterprise where there are multiple distinct regions of Occidentals and a gradient shade of Oriental. China's rhetoric plays well to the European ear for it reinforces established beliefs. <br /><br />For Europeans, the distinctions between each other are explicit and rooted in the rise of the colloquial languages of the small kingdoms against the heavy-handed centralized Latin influence of the Catholic church. The differences are "obvious" and accepted for the European nations (no matter when the last borders were drawn). <br /><br />But if Vietnam, a nation and new national culture that was built out of French colonialism, is imaginable, why isn't Taiwanese? <br /><br />4. Opponent's Ethnics:<br /><br />China tried to play this both ways. On one end they supported the self-determination of the Ukraine and opposed Russian hegemony. On the other end they seek racial-cultural hegemony in its campaign against Taiwan while denying self determination. <br /><br />5. Integration is a Bomb:<br /><br />Once Taiwan's sovereignty is annexed by China through economic or military means, it may regain that sovereignty, but probably only in a realignment following some type of violence in which China falls. This of course would set up a repeat of the scenario we are seeing today.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10698887.post-80893581662297092272014-03-10T08:55:55.945+08:002014-03-10T08:55:55.945+08:00On point 5, you state that Taiwan faces a choice o...<b>On point 5, you state that Taiwan faces a choice of joining the US (world) and TPP, or integrating closer with China. I'm not sure you can frame that as an either / or option (which is how I read your point). Ma is obviously trying to move closer into China's orbit, yet at the same time he's pushing hard to join the TPP.</b><br /><br />I am skeptical of Ma on the TPP, because we saw how he was on the F-16s.Its not an either/or choice, you are right.Michael Turtonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17974403961870976346noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10698887.post-90384458402457620062014-03-09T21:00:04.110+08:002014-03-09T21:00:04.110+08:00Although for what it's worth, my lefty friends...Although for what it's worth, my lefty friends (meaning basically all of my friends) are pro-Ukraine, anti-Russia. Nobody on my feed is forwarding propaganda (I do get pro-China bullshit on my feed and I try to either ignore it or challenge it. It's almost always wrong).Jenna Lynn Codyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04032277820150000198noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10698887.post-67427697110401421822014-03-09T20:58:51.789+08:002014-03-09T20:58:51.789+08:00Once again thank you for being a widely-read voice...Once again thank you for being a widely-read voice on the side of reason against Chinese propaganda when so many people talk about China's claims as though their opinions on Taiwan should matter in terms of what the Taiwanese want.<br /><br />(Of course they do matter - my argument is that they shouldn't and in a just world, they wouldn't).Jenna Lynn Codyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04032277820150000198noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10698887.post-85318632999450253862014-03-09T20:40:43.583+08:002014-03-09T20:40:43.583+08:00On point 5, you state that Taiwan faces a choice o...On point 5, you state that Taiwan faces a choice of joining the US (world) and TPP, or integrating closer with China. I'm not sure you can frame that as an either / or option (which is how I read your point). Ma is obviously trying to move closer into China's orbit, yet at the same time he's pushing hard to join the TPP.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10698887.post-35150385405225720142014-03-09T19:28:36.942+08:002014-03-09T19:28:36.942+08:00Working on something similar at my place myself, a...Working on something similar at my place myself, although applied to East Asia in general. Will hopefully be posting shortly. You and your readers are more than welcome to pick it apart once it is up. <br /><br />Good stuff.~Nathan W. Novak (李漢聲)https://www.blogger.com/profile/09142094539803664003noreply@blogger.com