Taiwan is in a bizarre situation, one that should never have happened.  While I believe that preisdent Nixon was right in opening relations with the PRC, president Carter screwed the pooch by withdrawing US recognition of Taiwan for that of the PRC.  The PRC should have been made to live with a two China policy wether they liked it or not.  As far as I am concerned Taiwan, was and is a free, independent and sovergein nation state.  The UN, for what little it is worth does offer a certain level of defacto legitimacy to it members.  The general assembly, and the US and Japan in particular should be ashamed for not doing more to facilitate Taiwan's retun to the UN.

From the China Post on Taiwan's latest UN bid.

     Taiwan's long march to re-join the United Nations has been most arduous, and there is no light at the end of the tunnel. On Wednesday, the United Nations spurned Taiwan's application for membership for the 15th time in as many years. The General Committee of the U.N. General Assembly deliberated behind closed doors on whether to put the application on the agenda of the 62nd General Assembly, which opened Tuesday. The decision against the application was made by "consensus," according to the Associated Press.

Ful Story: Long March to the United Nations

From a rather interesting letter to the Taipei Times.

     What is the "status quo" in East Asia anyway? New democracies in Taiwan and South Korea, a Japan slowly normalizing in terms of foreign relations and defense, a North Korean basketcase fiddling with nuclear bombs and kidnapping foreign nationals, and a China that is growing economically and militarily in a rapid, unpredictable, and opaque fashion.

     The "status quo" is what anybody makes of it at any given time. It is hardly the basis for a foreign policy of a superpower with vital interests in the region.

     US reservations about what is happening here are certainly understandable, as is its need for Chinese help in protecting Japan and South Korea from the regime in Pyongyang, but the US will find that it has been outmaneuvered by the "status quo" if it cannot come up with a more creative foreign policy than one that simply appeases Beijing.

     Taiwanese political and economic development will be stunted and erratic so long as such fundamental questions regarding the sovereignty are kept "undecided" by the powers that have set themselves in judgement over Taiwan.

Read it all in the whole letter here. 

     From my position it seems simple enough that the US has a ready made excuse for serving relations with the PRC.  Namely that the government of the PRC, never having recieved the just consent of the governed is, as a result illegitimate.  Constrated with the freeely elected Goverment across the straits of Taiwan.  If only someone with the power to do so would speek the truth and do the right thing.  For the US to remain a credible supporter and creator of democratic nations it must stop giving recognition and assistance to non democratic regiemes.

Posted by: raging tachikoma at 10:38 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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