Taiwan’s MAGA Trap
Washington did Taiwan dirty in the past, and we’re on a trajectory for it to do so again.
The US has historically shown little regard for Taiwan’s people.
When Taiwan’s democracy emerged in 1996, it was despite—not because of—the US. Washington actively stood in the way of Taiwan’s self-determination throughout the Cold War because Chiang Kai-Shek’s military dictatorship was a US client state.
At the same time, detente—the warming of Sino-US relations that followed “Nixon goes to China”—also came at Taiwan’s expense. Diplomatic normalization of China was done in a manner that stripped Taiwan of its UN Security Council seat and displaced it as a “normal” actor in international society.
As I lamented in a recent post:
As a matter of policy, we never saw Taiwan’s people; we saw it as a piece on a chessboard…Taiwan is an object on which to project our fantasies, be they military, grand strategic, or morally redemptive. America’s political class extracts pleasure and purpose from Taiwan’s exposure to existential danger.
And I’m not sure much has changed.
Taiwan is currently trapped between two forces traveling in opposing directions that clash in the worst way on Taiwan per se.