Statehood for Taiwan
In recent years, American military leaders have warned of China’s aggressive buildup along the South China Sea. China is following a playbook written by Germany and Japan. In the years leading up to World War II, Japan’s military buildup was well known, and its purpose was generally understood — military domination of the region. Germany did the same thing, building aircraft, tanks and roads leading from Berlin to the borders of every contiguous country.
China is doing exactly the same thing today, for exactly the same reason. Their proximate target is Taiwan, but all of the other countries in the region will follow, if they succeed in their imminent invasion of Taiwan. After that, they won’t have to invade the United States; they will have absorbed one of our most important spheres of influence. Once they have us as they say, our hearts and minds will follow.
Chinese schoolchildren are taught to repeat the phrase “Taiwan is part of China” whenever the name of Taiwan is spoken. They repeat it like parrots, responding like Pavlov’s dog. Their actions will follow their brainwashed thoughts when called to duty.
The Taiwanese people, descended largely from waves of Chinese immigration going back anywhere from about 5,000 years to several hundred years ago, don’t consider themselves Chinese, and by and large don’t like the Chinese. Many Chinese came over after 1947, when the United States gave Taiwan to Chang Kai-shek (who had come to power with the support of the “Green gang” crime syndicate in Shanghai), and most of them supported Chiang’s dictatorship. The Kuomintang party ruled Taiwan until the Taiwanese people voted them out two decades ago. In recent polls, a majority of Taiwanese are opposed to unification with China. So no, Taiwan isn’t part of China. China thinks that, like the Republican Party, if you keep lying, people will believe the lie. The Chinese masses may be as dumb as our “low-information” voters, but the Taiwanese know better.
Taiwan has a total wealth of more than four trillion dollars — a sixteenth that of China, but not pocket change. By stealing Taiwan, the dictatorship can instantly acquire enough wealth to buy power for decades to come. And the humiliation of their rejection by the Taiwanese people will be erased. Getting even with people who have humiliated them is apparently a recurring theme in Chinese relations; go read up on the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882. If what they’re ultimately looking for is payback, Taiwan could be just a stepping-stone.
Admiral James Stavridis, 16th Supreme Allied Commander of NATO and 12th Dean of the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University (which awarded me their Latin American Teaching Fellowship in 1971), paints a chilling picture of the path to a preemptive nuclear strike – not by China, but by us:
“What we imagine at the moment is that it’ll never happen, that no nation, having looked at the horrific effects of Nagasaki and Hiroshima, would ever reach into that kitbag and pull out a tactical nuclear weapon. I hope that’s correct. …if you don’t take steps early on, that ladder of escalation moves you almost inevitably toward this outcome.”
Taiwan has a special relationship with our country. There are nearly a million Taiwaneseamericans today, and immigration of smart, educated and qualified people from Taiwan will doubtless continue. Andrew Yang, who ran for President in 2020, might be mayor of New York in a few years, a position some consider a path to the White House. After Indians, the Taiwanese are the most successful of our immigrants. We need them. And they need us.
If our government had any courage, we would have a pact with Taiwan similar to NATO, in which any attack on one of the members of the alliance will be considered to be an attack on all of the members. But China might doubt our resolve. So let’s go one step further: Make Taiwan the fifty-first state of the United States of America.
If Xi Jinping intends to follow in Hitler’s footsteps — and it certainly looks that way — we have perhaps a few years to decide what we intend to do about it, and to prepare for it. Let’s not just react this time; if we do, it will be too late.