Taiwan as Trump's Penpoint？ Time to Wake Up
United Daily News Editorial, June 19, 2020
In his newly published memoir, The Room Where It Happened, former U.S. National Security Advisor John Bolton mentioned a very interesting analogy of the importance to the United States regarding Taiwan and China. President Donald Trump compared Taiwan to the point of his pen and China to his desk in the Oval Office. Everyone knows that there is a great gap of comprehensive national strength between Taiwan and mainland China. Yet such an analogy makes the Democratic Progressive Party (DDP) administration, who views President Trump as a die-hard supporter of Taiwan, feel extremely sour and bad.
For decades, Taiwan’s foreign policy towards the United Sates has been continuously focused on “government” instead of partisan disputes related to the DPP and the Republican parties. That is to ensure that either Party in power, the American commitments to Taiwan remain unchanged. However, since President Trump took office, the DPP administration, partly because it has lost its head by a dialogue over a phone call between President Tsai Ing-wen and then President-elect Trump, partly because its eyes have been blinded by President Trump’s series of harsh words criticizing China, it mistakenly believed that President Trump and the DPP have the same anti-China genes.
Therefore, Taiwan followed President Trump’s anti-China political line, became a daring henchman in Trump’s anti-China Alliance. Now, ironically, from the memoir of John Bolton, a friend of Taiwan, we suddenly realized that President Trump in order to secure his re-election, has praised President Xi Jin-ping as “the greatest leader in Chinese history”. While Taiwan is still hoping Xi’s regime to collapse.
President Trump is every inch a businessman. Under his leadership the United States is no more the world police safeguarding democracy, but a temperamental haggler fighting over every penny. In an attempt to cover his impotence of controlling the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, President Trump not only played anti-China card but also intended to form a global democratic pandemic alliance. Yet the European Union and Japan who have leaned Trump’s tricks did not follow his baton to dance.
Only the DPP-ruled Taiwan has followed Trump’s charge to the frontlines worldwide, as to playing pandemic-diplomacy, in a hope to enter World Health Organization (WHO). To Taiwan’s dismay, the Trump administration even declined to draft a motion to the WHO to discuss the possibility of Taiwan’s participation. Taiwan has followed United States’ every step, but sadly, it has just been ignored by Trump administration. The DPP administration brags every day that “now is the best moment of U.S.-Taiwan relations in history”. It is just untrue, and it is just like a sentimental courtship met cold shoulder.
In fact, the memoir The Room Where It Happened is a wake-up call for the DPP administration. It is time to wake up. In the past, people see Taiwan as a valuable chess, now we are merely a tiny penpoint. The administration should get rid of its one-sided reliance on the United States. We should try hard to avoid been kidnapped by the Trump administration, as to put all eggs in the Republican’s basket. It’s time to restore to the right track of balanced U.S.-Taiwan foreign policy. That is to keep Taiwan neutral to both the Republican and Democratic parties.
President Trump’s approval rating is now far behind Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden. Would Taiwan like to be the penpoint holding in Trump’s hand?