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Trump Administration and Taiwan

December 14, 2016 2:27 am / Leave a comment

The recent revelation that President-elect Donald Trump had accepted a congratulatory phone call from Taiwan’s President sent many segments of the U.S. and international foreign policy bien pensant community into a flutter. This call had been arranged by Trump’s team and the Taiwanese Government for some time before it occurred. Nevertheless, the Beijing bootlickers worked themselves into a frenzy because this call allegedly violated diplomatic protocol and the “sacrosanct” One-China Policy.

A little historical background is in order. After the triumph of the Communists in mainland China in 1949, the anti-communists survivors of the Chinese Civil War retreated to Taiwan. Over the next several decades they have evolved from an authoritarian government into a vibrant democracy with a first-rate economy which is strong in many areas including high technology. In fact, when I bought my first personal computer in 1993 it was a Taiwanese made Acer.

China has refused to accept that it is the mandate of heaven that Taiwan survive and flourish. Beijing continues regarding Taiwan as a “renegade province” and has periodically attempted to coerce it militarily. This happened when artillery assaults against the offshore islands of Quemoy and Matsu in the 1950s which required some level of U.S. military intervention. In 1996 Taiwan’s President was invited to speak at his alma mater Cornell University. Beijing worked itself up into such a frenzy over this that it conducted missile strikes in the Taiwan Strait and required the insertion of two U.S. Navy carrier task forces into these waters to keep the Chinese from actually launching an invasion of Taiwan. This is actually one of the few good things Bill Clinton ever did.

In 1979, the U.S. decided to establish formal diplomatic relations with China and “break” such relations with Taiwan. However, we still maintain an “interests section” instead of an embassy in Taiwan and periodically sell weapons to Taiwan to enable it to maintain a somewhat credible defense posture under provisions of the 1979 Taiwan Relations Act. The U.S., and most of the international community, have subsequently kowtowed to Beijing by insisting on the fiction that there is only one China and that Beijing is the capital of China. This is nonsense as there are significant concentrations of Chinese in many countries around the world. Taiwan, whose capitol is Taipei, is another China and a nation which should be emulated in many ways.

It is to be hoped that this call between Trump and the Taiwanese President will result in increased bilateral cooperation between the U.S. and Taiwan and that other countries will be inspired to tell Beijing that it cannot be a mature and responsible international stakeholder if it continues to think it can bully Taiwan into submission. Once Trump becomes President, he should begin the process of restoring normal diplomatic relations with Taiwan, inviting their President for a state visit with all due honors, and Congress should let the Taiwanese President address a joint session of Congress. We should also be willing to sell Taiwan whatever weaponry it needs to defend its sovereignty and increase U.S. military and intelligence cooperation with Taipei.

China must understand that it is a great nation without Taiwan and that it should quit using its considerable economic and growing military power to coerce Taiwan into reunification. The recent conversation between Trump and Taiwan’s President should start a process when such communication between the leaders of these countries becomes routine and does not make front page news or serve as the lead story on newscasts or web postings. Taiwan should become a coequal partner in the international community and Americans and nationals from other freedom loving nations should go out of their way to purchase Taiwanese products and services and visit Taiwan on their vacations. Businesses from these countries should also invest in Taiwan and increase that country’s integration into the global community to an even greater level. We can only hope the Trump Administration will have the courage to continue and sustain what it has started and represent a quantum transformation in U.S. diplomatic and strategic policy in East Asia and the Western Pacific.

Possible 2014 Domestic and International Political Developments

January 2, 2014 3:52 pm / Leave a comment

Happy New Year to everyone. 2014 should be another eventful year in domestic U.S. and international politics. A key feature of U.S. politics this year, besides the November 2014 congressional elections, will be the ongoing saga of Obamacare. The Obama Administration recently claimed this lame excuse of a program had recently reached 1 million registrants. However, the program has experienced repeated technical and administrative problems and appears the preponderance of the registrants are older and sicker instead of the young and healthy the administration had been counting on. The healthcare.gov website is expected to experience continuing problems with ensuring that customers have the ability to pay their premiums which is problematic given the security problems the website is likely to experience given the fact that its security infrastructure was not set up prior to the site’s October launch. There will continue to be court related cases concerning the law’s mandatory abortion coverage provisions. Later this spring the Supreme Court is expected to hear a case brought by arts and crafts retailer Hobby Lobby protesting the mandatory abortion drug coverage provisions of this statute. Hobby Lobby, as an explicitly Christian company, opposes this provision and won an appeals court victory. Other organizations with religious objections to the abortionist nature of Obamacare will be watching closely and some have reason to be hopeful thanks to a recent court ruling exempting Franciscan Health from the mandatory abortion provisions of this odious statute. There will also be continuing revelations on the Obama Administration’s abuse of the IRS in targeting political opponents. There will be continued activity in the cultural wars front. Indiana’s General Assembly is expected to approve legislation allowing its electorate to vote on a constitutional amendment in November restricting marriage to between a man and woman. I look forward to actively campaigning on behalf of this proposal. Conservatives must also be strong in fighting the attempts of homosexual militants to coerce businesses and individuals opposed to that lifestyle to capitulate to their extortionate demands. We should also legally and financially target organizations supporting these causes such as the ACLU, GLAAD, Freedom from Religion Foundation, Military Religious Freedom Foundation, and Southern Poverty Law Center. New taxes for funding Obamacare will be an acute drain on small business’ ability to hire and strangle potential economic growth and job creation. Internationally, the Obama Administration will continue demonstrating weakness and strategic myopia. Secretary of State John Kerry is on his way to Israel in yet another attempt to pursue the illusory chimera of Israeli-Palestinean peace. Iran will come closer to detonating a nuclear weapon and we may see the remarkable site of Israeli-Gulf Arab cooperation to militarily prevent this. China may continue funding efforts to build a new canal in Nicaragua that could have a significant impact on international maritime trade and increase Beijing’s geopolitical leverage in Central America. China will also become increasingly assertive in its actions in the South China Sea against the U.S. and countries allied with us in that region as China clearly understands that we are a declining geopolitical force under Obama. Beijing will continue pressing expansionists maritime and airspace claims in this region as the following Naval War College study demonstrates.

This year will also see the drawdown of U.S. and ISAF forces in Afghanistan without clear evidence that the Afghans are capable of defeating the Taliban or that continued U.S. US and ISAF military presence is possible in that country due to the failure to reach a Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) with Kabul. Afghan President Hamid Karzai, an increasingly bizarre figure, has refused to approve a SOFA agreement and Afghanistan is likely to degenerate again into warring Islamist fiefdoms which may threaten regional stability. A key lesson we should have learned from history is that to transform a country into something with a chance of normalcy and stability is you have to decisively destroy the political, religious, and cultural perversions which cause it to become a threat to its neighbors. North Korea will continue threatening regional peace and its strives to develop its nuclear arsenal and dictator Kim Jong Un continues ruthlessly consolidating his power base. Their will be continued strife in Syria between Bashir Assad and his thuggish regime and Al Qaida forces which have increased their power during the past year. The U.S. ability to shape these events to advance out interests will be weakened by Obama Administration incompetence, congressional divisions, and potentially imprudent defense spending reductions. U.S. foreign policy will also be haunted by the ongoing specter of the September 11, 2012 terrorist assault on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya and the Obama Administration’s continued efforts to cover up its criminal incompetence in this affair. There will be continued domestic and international conflict over Edward Snowden’s treasonous leaking of National Security Agency operating methods though we must remember the NSA’s critical role in monitoring and preventing potential attacks on the U.S. and its interests through hostile forces use of contemporary telecommunications technology. Congress should craft legislation requiring NSA metadata collection to be more precisely focused instead of taking the fishnet approach it currently follows. Those expecting an outbreak of widespread domestic political cooperation and international peace and comity this year will be highly disappointed. A Hobbesian state of nature will characterize U.S. domestic and international politics in 2014.

Recent Good News from Australia

October 9, 2013 10:13 pm / Leave a comment

During a time period where we daily witness the Obama Administration’s domestic and international incompetence, I have the pleasure to bring good news to your attention. A new government came to power in Australia last month which will bring hope to this country after six years of misgovernance. In 2007, Australians let themselves be seduced by the siren song of leftist seduction and incompetence, when they toppled the 11 year government of John Howard and his conservative coalition which had brought increased international prestige and domestic prosperity to that country as well as eliminating their national debt.

Australians fell for the superficial Labor Party leader Kevin Rudd in the 2007 election. Despite campaigning as a fiscal conservative, Rudd proved to be another leftist whose government would soon return Australia to debt. Rudd proved an incompetent leader quarreling with many members of his Labour Party caucus including his deputy Julia Gillard. In June 2010, just before having to go to the voters as part of Australia’s three-year election cycle, the Labour Party toppled Rudd from power replacing him from Gillard. She proceeded to win a minority party government in that year’s election needing the help of the Green Party and other easily bought independents to cling to power. The next three years were not pretty. The Labour Government imposed a carbon tax which significantly increased consumer electric rates, imposed a mining tax which injured Australian mineral resources companies who play a key role in that country’s prosperity, managed to temporarily cut off beef to Indonesia which damaged Australia’s critical relationship with that neighboring and important country and Canberra’s important agricultural export industry. Another programmatic fiasco was a green energy initiative to place “environmentally friendly” insulation into homes which produced fires in some of these residences resulting in death. Australian immigration policy also suffered as the country experienced an increase in illegal immigration by smugglers using fragile boats to bring illegal aliens to Australia. This problem had been dealt with firmly by the Howard Government, but the weak-willed Rudd and Gillard administrations dithered and made their country a soft target for illegal immigration.

These problems were further exacerbated by the reality show soap opera relationship between Rudd and Gillard. After being toppled in 2010, Rudd made two unsuccessful attempts to topple Gillard as Labour Party leader while also serving as Foreign Minister. Rudd, despite proclaiming himself a Christian, decided to lift his finger into the wind, and support same-sex marriage in this year’s election campaign. Although an atheist living with her boyfriend, Gillard actually opposed same sex marriage. Gillard also played the feminist card when she would accuse her critics of misogyny. When her poll ratings sank below Antarctic winter temperatures earlier this year, Rudd and other Labour Party apparatchiksiseized power from her and Gillard decided to retire.

Australian voters had enough of this incompetence and amateurism, so on September 7, they tossed Rudd and Labour out of power and returned to adult leadership and conservative competence under the leadership of Prime Minister Tony Abbott. Abbott is a staunch conservative who served as Health Minister during the Howard Government. He is a Rhodes Scholar, fitness fanatic, devout Catholic, and has done extensive volunteer work in various worthy causes while representing the suburban Sydney district of Warringah. His wife is Margie, and they have three daughters”: Louise, Bridget, and Francis who are articulate and quite attractive. His book Battle Lines (published by Melbourne University Press) gives a good overview of his philosophical moorings. American readers should remember that in Australian politics Abbott’s Liberal Party uses the term liberal in the classical sense of adhering to maximum economic freedom.

Abbott and his government are beginning the process of reopening Australian economic performance by restraining unnecessary spending and eliminating the carbon tax. Many of his cabinet members served in the Howard Government and his Foreign Minister Julie Bishop will present a positive image as it manages critical relationships with Indonesia, China, Japan, and the United States. In fact, Abbott’s first foreign trip was to Indonesia.

Bishop is the only woman in the inner cabinet and this has attracted criticism from diversity cult adherents down under. Although there are other women in positions of authority in Abbott’s outer cabinet, he knows that leadership must be merit based instead of adhering to delusions of gender equity. One example of a meritorious women advising Abbott is his Chief of Staff Peta Credlin who, like the Chief of Staff to the U.S. President, serves as the gatekeeper for those seeking access to the Prime Minister. This is a position of real power earned by merit and trust instead of gender tokenism.

Abbott’s critics forget that it takes time to learn the skills necessary to be a Cabinet minister in a parliamentary government and that cabinet reshuffles in such governments occur on a regular basis. Consequentially, there will eventually be more female members in Abbott’s senior cabinet. There would have been another woman in the senior cabinet in shadow Science and Industry Minister Sophie Mirabella had not lost her House of Representatives reelection campaign for the rural Victorian seat of Indi.

Abbott believes in the anglosphere and will be a staunch ally of the U.S. in it’s tilt to the Asia-Pacific region. Hopefully, his government’s skills will rub off on the increasingly incompetent and irrelevant Barack Obama who to miss the important Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation Forum conference due to his gross incompetence in allowing the government shutdown to occur. Obama’s failure to be at this conference leaves China to dominate the show and causes anxiety among our Asia-Pacific allies who are concerned about China’s rise to prominence. American conservatives should look forward to the Abbott Government’s eventual accomplishments and take heart that Australian voters rejected Labour’s leftist nostrums and the Obama Administration’s attempts to help Labour in their most recent campaign.