My Take | The dangerous myopia of the US playing the Taiwan card
- Washington seems to forget that while it can make trouble across the Taiwan Strait, Beijing can mess up the Korean peninsula just as badly
Nowadays, people are always referencing Taiwan with Ukraine. This Western-centric perspective applies to both its propagandists and critics.
Sadly, it is not only self-serving for the Western allies but ultimately self-defeating. That’s because so far as China is concerned, the real reference is not Ukraine, but Korea.
Unless you appreciate that, you won’t understand why the Chinese, so far from being rattled, still think time is on their side when it comes to unification.
For Western propagandists, China is just Russia times 10, so what is happening in Ukraine today will happen to Taiwan tomorrow. That’s why the West must arm it to the teeth, and be ready to defend it if necessary.
Then, there are the critics, many of them well-meaning Westerners themselves. They too draw an analogy between Russia and China. But for them, it has to do with the West, led by the United States, goading Vladimir Putin into invading Ukraine with Nato’s eastern expansion up to the Russian borders over the past two decades.
In the same way, the West, led by the US, is now goading China to invade Taiwan by encouraging its secessionist forces. What’s worse is that Nato – a North Atlantic military alliance – now wants to expand eastward, all the way into the Pacific!