A Silver Lining, Perhaps

Taiwan is Watching, and Learning

This week, I want to look at yet another poll that points to limits on the US Government’s efforts at narrative control.

What has happened to Ukraine in the past year is truly tragic. Something on the order of 150,000 brave Ukrainian soldiers have died, and roughly twice that number have been seriously wounded.

Half or more of Ukraine’s electrical infrastructure has been destroyed. Ukraine’s economy is in free-fall. The country is massively is debt.

What’s left of Ukraine’s army and weaponry is relentlessly being destroyed at a faster rate than NATO can replace it.

Last April, at the urging of Britain and the United States, Ukraine walked away from a ceasefire deal which would have avoided the death, destruction, and economic devastation which has occurred since. In return, Ukraine needed only to agree to military neutrality and returning to the borders that existed before the war. That deal provided an outcome immensely better than any imaginable outcome available to Ukraine today.

If there is any silver lining in this truly horrible situation, it is that the people of Taiwan have seen all this, and it has changed their view of the United States.

A Taiwanese polling company has found “doubt in US' reliability is bubbling within Taiwan society, with 56.6 percent of Taiwan residents finding the US untrustworthy.”

The people of Taiwan have seen that the US Government has no concern whatsoever for the wellbeing of the people of Ukraine, that the US views Ukraine only as an instrument to weaken and isolate Russia.

What do the Taiwanese think when they hear Lindsay Graham say that the US is willing to fight to the last Ukrainian? I have to expect that the Taiwanese are coming to realize that American ‘support’ for Taiwan is no different, that the US will happily fight to the last Taiwanese, so long as it weakens China.

In the West, our press pretends that the Taiwanese are united in wanting full independence from China. In reality, the population of Taiwan has long been fairly evenly split between those who want full independence from mainland China, and those who want a closer relationship with China.

Though we in the West are fed the narrative of ‘Chinese imperialism,’ those in Taiwan know the real issue is one of China’s self-defense needs. Taiwan is in the unfortunate position of being close enough to the Chinese mainland to be the equivalent of a giant, unsinkable aircraft carrier.

Chinese hypersonic missiles could fairly quickly sink America’s sea-based aircraft carriers, but would be useless in preventing American air attacks from Taiwan. For this reason, China sees a non-hostile Taiwan as fundamental to their security needs every bit as much as Russia sees a non-hostile Ukraine as fundamental to their security.

I have to suspect that the Taiwanese do not want to be set up for destruction the way the US set up Ukraine to be destroyed. I suspect they will realize it is in their interests to cut the best deal they can with China, to give up some of their independence in return for lasting peace.

Perhaps they will also decide Taiwan would be better off tying themselves to the rising star of China, with its links to a strengthening BRICS alliance, rather than casting in their lot with a declining and deeply-indebted America.

If the Taiwanese people decide their interests are best served by some sort of rapprochement with mainland China, the second major flashpoint for the beginning of World War 3 will instantly disappear. That may yet end up being the only good outcome of the war in Ukraine.