My Take | US and Taiwan secessionists are leading island down deadly path
- In a conflict involving two nuclear powers, Taiwan will never have ‘a war of independence’, just one of extinction that the US will gladly risk
In the minds of Democratic Progressive Party bosses, Taiwan must be in nirvana already. At his swearing-in ceremony as the new DPP chairman last month, Vice-President William Lai Ching-te claimed that the island was already a “sovereign and independent” nation so there was no need to declare its independence. If that is so, how come only 13 countries plus the Vatican state recognise it?
A bona fide secessionist, he has previously called himself “a political worker for Taiwanese independence”. What Lai said is nothing new, of course; President Tsai Ing-wen has said the same thing repeatedly. A nonsensical if provocative claim does not become true just because some people keep repeating it. It does, however, confuse the issue. That is precisely the purpose.
The ambiguities of Taiwan’s status stem not only from the lack of recognition from practically the entire world. While all the main political parties, including the Kuomintang, seem to have relinquished the island’s sovereign and territorial claims over mainland China, its own constitution says otherwise.
The DPP wants to exploit those ambiguities to push towards secession by stealth, while the United States wants to use them to destabilise the Taiwan Strait as part of its China containment and encirclement strategy. Their purposes converge.
Washington is gearing up for war, hence the constant stream of statements from top Pentagon generals predicting imminent conflict, and endless provocative gestures and rhetoric to work as a bait for Beijing to respond forcefully.
The US is already prosecuting a proxy war in Ukraine against Russia; it’s perfectly willing to conduct another one in Taiwan. But it needs to provoke an incident so it can plausibly blame the Chinese for starting a war. Another Gulf of Tonkin incident, anyone?