How Taiwan and Ukraine Are Not (and Are) Connected

Beware any story about how Taiwan’s fate is linked to Ukraine.

It’s not that there’s no linkage—there is. But there are spurious ways of making the connection that violate reason and serve the wrong kinds of agendas.

Politico has a piece quoting Taiwan’s former President, Tsai Ing-wen, at the Halifax International Security Forum, a conference that skews hard toward Western defense hawks.

Politico quotes Tsai as saying, “A Ukrainian victory will serve as the most effective deterrent to future aggression.”

I have thoughts about that I can get to in a second, but the headline story that uses this quote is literally called “Taiwan’s former president says Ukraine needs US weapons more urgently than Taipei.”

The thing is, that’s not exactly what she said, and listening to her entire speech (her full remarks start at 9:40 on this video), that’s also not the subtext of her message either. And the most disturbing thing of all is the worldview on display in this conference, which really is the source of Taiwan’s geopolitically insecure situation.