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【Second Opinion】Xi Creates a Taiwan Kingmaker, Donald Trump (Mark Simon)

蘋果日報 2019/03/18 08:00


Few in Taiwan have forgotten the 2011 Obama National Security Council leak to the Financial Times informing all that the Obama administration saw then Democratic Progressive Party(DPP) Presidential candidate Tsai Ing-wen as a cause of instability in Cross Strait relations. The leak was an open attempt to knife Tsai's campaign.
The United States is Taiwan's assurance of freedom. It's 24 million in Taiwan verse 1.4 billion in China. No United States military back-up and Taiwan is a PRC province in a month.
In 2011 Obama wanted a quiet status quo. But in 2019 the US wants an outpost for democracy in the Far East as well as a strategically located ally off the PRC's coast. As such, come the 2020 Presidential election in Taiwan, if the KMT is seen as an uncertain ally, as they are by many in the US at this time, another call, or tweet, from Washington may arrive in Taiwan. Although this time, the KMT and PRC will not like the message.
Why the change? Xi.
From newly armed islands in the South China Sea, a massive military build-up, and a quite nasty Russian like effort of affecting elections in Asia, along with out and out threats against Taiwan, Xi Jinping is seen as a true threat to Taiwan by the US and Japan. More importantly, and what sways elections, a majority of Taiwanese now see Xi and his CCP as a threat to Taiwan. (Notice I keep using that term "Taiwanese").
By every measure the majority of the Taiwanese people want the status quo. The US and Japan want the status quo. All of Asia wants the status quo. Problem is, Xi wants Taiwan, and he expects the KMT to deliver it to him.
Without a doubt there is a sense in both Taiwan and the US that the former stridently anti-communist KMT is willing to do a deal on Taiwan's sovereignty with Xi. Backed by big business and those who think they can buy their way out of any CCP gulags, the KMT leadership believes they can keep a communist regime at bay through just being good lackeys and settling in some type of a Hong Kong like, "One-Country, Two-Systems" relationship with the CCP.
The people of Taiwan are wary of any KMT deal with Xi. Hong Kong is not seen as a success by Taiwanese.
Yet a belief by Taiwanese that such a KMT-CCP deal is possible, a KMT sell-out of the island, is the only thing that can save Tsai. Tsai spectacularly mismanaged the economy. Yet if she convinces the people of Taiwan the KMT cannot be trusted to deal with the CCP she has a good chance of holding on.
Enter Trump. My bet is all someone has to do is point out that with Tsai in office Taiwan buys F-16s and M-1 tanks to the tune of USD $8B. With KMT, no weapons sales. Trump may well make the decision on that alone.
But for the rest of the United States, Democrats and Republicans, the concern of a Taiwan under the influence of the CCP is a horror show. Paul Wolfowitz has coined the line of Taiwan being the Berlin of Asia. He's right.
Taiwan is a vulnerable, nearly indefensible, island in the Pacific. Arrayed against it is a PRC military 20x as powerful. Taiwan's saving grace is that is a democracy, the only thriving democracy in any Chinese society in the world. Taiwan is freedom's outpost in the heart of the Far East. Taiwan also has strategic value to the Western powers. The PRC takes Taiwan and the Central Pacific is lost, Japan is in peril, free navigation in the South China Sea is over. Imagine Berlin falling to the Soviets in 1955.
Come the 2020 election in Taiwan if the KMT does, as I think they will, throw their lot in with Xi and the CCP promises of economic rewards for a KMT victory, the United States will make it clear that in Tsai the US has an ally in both defense and democracy.