Former US national security adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski predicts in a new essay that “it is doubtful” Taiwan could indefinitely avoid a more formal connection with China.
The essay, “Balancing the East, Upgrading the West,” to be published in Foreign Affairs magazine next month, says that the future status of Taiwan could become the most contentious issue between the US and China.
It says that assuming the expansion of the bilateral US--Chinese relationship, three sensitive issues will have to be peacefully resolved.
Brzezinski says first — and in the near future — the US should reassess its reconnaissance operations “on the edges of Chinese territorial waters,” as well as the periodic US naval patrols within international waters that are also part of the Chinese economic zone.
“They are as provocative to Beijing as the reverse situation would be to Washington. Moreover, the US military’s air reconnaissance missions pose serious risks of unintentional collisions, since the Chinese air force usually responds to such missions by sending up fighter planes for up-close inspection and sometimes harassment of the US planes,” he wrote.
Next on Brzezinski’s short list, he says that over the course of the next several years the US and China should engage in regular consultations regarding their long-term military planning and seek to “craft measures of reciprocal reassurance.”
Third, “probably within a decade or so,” he wants to see the future of Taiwan settled.
“Washington no longer recognizes Taiwan as a sovereign state and acknowledges Beijing’s view that China and Taiwan are part of a single nation, but at the same time, the United States sells weapons to Taiwan. Thus, any long-term US-Chinese accommodation will have to address the fact that a separate Taiwan, protected indefinitely by US arms sales, will provoke intensifying Chinese -hostility,” Brzezinski writes.
He believes that an eventual resolution along the lines of the formula for Hong Kong of “one country, two systems,” but redefined as “one country, several systems” may provide the basis for what he calls “Taipei’s eventual reassociation with China.”
Such a formula, Brzezinski says, would allow Taiwan and China to maintain distinctive political, social and military arrangements, in particular excluding the deployment of People’s Liberation Army troops on Taiwan.
“Regardless of the exact formula, given China’s growing power and the greatly expanding social links between Taiwan and the mainland, it is doubtful that Taiwan can indefinitely avoid a more formal connection with China,” he wrote.
Brzezinski was US national security adviser under then-US president Jimmy Carter from 1977 to 1981.
The essay is adapted from his book Strategic Vision: America and the Crisis of Global Power, which is scheduled to be published early next year by Basic Books.
Earlier this year, Brzezinski said that if the US became less involved on the international scene, Taiwan would find it increasingly difficult to resist the entreaties and pressure from Beijing, and it would become part of China.
“It is something that will work out on the basis of what happens ultimately in the grand relationship between China and America, which in turn is dependent on the degree to which each of them stays healthy, effective, responsible and rational, and that is something that no one can predict with any degree of certainty,” he said.
A year-long renovation of Taipei’s Bangka Park (艋舺公園) began yesterday, as city workers fenced off the site and cleared out belongings left by homeless residents who had been living there. Despite protests from displaced residents, a city official defended the government’s relocation efforts, saying transitional housing has been offered. The renovation of the park in Taipei’s Wanhua District (萬華), near Longshan Temple (龍山寺), began at 9am yesterday, as about 20 homeless people packed their belongings and left after being asked to move by city personnel. Among them was a 90-year-old woman surnamed Wang (王), who last week said that she had no plans
TO BE APPEALED: The environment ministry said coal reduction goals had to be reached within two months, which was against the principle of legitimate expectation The Taipei High Administrative Court on Thursday ruled in favor of the Taichung Environmental Protection Bureau in its administrative litigation against the Ministry of Environment for the rescission of a NT$18 million fine (US$609,570) imposed by the bureau on the Taichung Power Plant in 2019 for alleged excess coal power generation. The bureau in November 2019 revised what it said was a “slip of the pen” in the text of the operating permit granted to the plant — which is run by Taiwan Power Co (Taipower) — in October 2017. The permit originally read: “reduce coal use by 40 percent from Jan.
China might accelerate its strategic actions toward Taiwan, the South China Sea and across the first island chain, after the US officially entered a military conflict with Iran, as Beijing would perceive Washington as incapable of fighting a two-front war, a military expert said yesterday. The US’ ongoing conflict with Iran is not merely an act of retaliation or a “delaying tactic,” but a strategic military campaign aimed at dismantling Tehran’s nuclear capabilities and reshaping the regional order in the Middle East, said National Defense University distinguished adjunct lecturer Holmes Liao (廖宏祥), former McDonnell Douglas Aerospace representative in Taiwan. If
‘SPEY’ REACTION: Beijing said its Eastern Theater Command ‘organized troops to monitor and guard the entire process’ of a Taiwan Strait transit China sent 74 warplanes toward Taiwan between late Thursday and early yesterday, 61 of which crossed the median line in the Taiwan Strait. It was not clear why so many planes were scrambled, said the Ministry of National Defense, which tabulated the flights. The aircraft were sent in two separate tranches, the ministry said. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs on Thursday “confirmed and welcomed” a transit by the British Royal Navy’s HMS Spey, a River-class offshore patrol vessel, through the Taiwan Strait a day earlier. The ship’s transit “once again [reaffirmed the Strait’s] status as international waters,” the foreign ministry said. “Such transits by
RSS