Day: February 1, 2022

Many in Taiwan are carefully watching the U.S. response to the Russia-Ukraine crisis, seeing parallels to Taipei’s embattled relationship with China, which tests Taiwan’s air defenses almost daily.

 

Asked how Taiwan would react if the U.S. government does little or nothing to help Ukraine in response to a Russian attack, pro-Taiwan activist Ken Wu said he believes the Taiwanese would “feel definitely disheartened, and also they’ll be disappointed, and they’ll feel that if China invades Taiwan, then that’s exactly how the U.S. will treat Taiwan.”

 

Wu is vice president of the Los Angeles chapter of the Formosan Association for Public Affairs, which lobbies Congress for pro-Taiwan action.

 

Two threats, three superpowers

 

Russia has deployed hundreds of tanks, howitzers and self-propelled artillery along with tens of thousands of troops near its land border with Ukraine, a former Soviet republic. Russia annexed Crimea, once a part of Ukraine, in 2014.

 

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken told NBC’s “Meet the Press” show January 23 that the United States is “preparing massive consequences for Russia if it invades Ukraine again.”

 

The U.S. pullout from Afghanistan in August, ushering in Taliban rule, raised questions in Taiwan and elsewhere around Asia about Washington’s resolve.

 

“If the U.S. were to do anything in Ukraine, it would be I guess viewed as an act of redemption, but still I think after Afghanistan, it’s very difficult for countries around the world to be fully dependent on the U.S.,” said Oh Ei Sun, senior fellow at the Singapore Institute of International Affairs.

 

China claims sovereignty over Taiwan, although the two sides have been separately ruled since Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalists lost the Chinese civil war to Mao Zedong’s Communists and retreated to the island.

 

Beijing has not renounced the use of force if needed to bring Taiwan under its flag. While the U.S. does not have official diplomatic ties with Taiwan, Washington sells arms to Taiwan, maintains aircraft carriers in the region and has in place the 1979 Taiwan Relations Act, which says the United States maintains the capacity “to resist any resort to force or other forms of coercion that would jeopardize the security, or the social or economic system, of the people on Taiwan.”

 

Chinese state-run Xinhua news agency recently described Taiwan’s independence efforts as doomed to fail. The report in January quoted Zhu Fenglian, spokesperson for China’s Taiwan Affairs Office, saying the Taiwanese leadership was “creating an illusion of the reliability of the United States regarding the situation in the Taiwan Strait.” Beijing has discouraged the U.S. from encouraging Taiwan’s independence.

Views from Taipei

 

Leaders in Taiwan are already drawing parallels to Ukraine.

 

“Taiwan has faced the long-term military threat of China and deeply recognizes that rising tensions could trigger war,” the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Taipei said in a January 27 press statement. “Our government urges all sides to respect Ukraine’s sovereign independence and territorial integrity and oppose one-sided changes to the status quo.”

 

Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen told her National Security Council a day later to form a task force that would follow developments in Ukraine.

 

Close to 60% of Taiwan’s rank and file anticipate help from the United States if attacked by China, Taipei-based CommonWealth Magazine found in a January 12 survey.

 

“If the U.S. did not defend Ukraine in an attack from Russia this time, I think Taiwanese including me should reassess the U.S. determination on militarily helping Taiwan when it comes to the invasion of China,” said Wang Wei-chieh, a university student and co-founder of the FBC2E International Affairs Facebook page.

 

In that scenario, Wang said, “Taiwanese should understand that the recent U.S. administration and society are not willing to sacrifice their troops for foreign countries.”

 

U.S. policymakers ultimately see Taiwan as more crucial to American interests than Ukraine or Afghanistan, says one scholar.

 

“If Taiwan falls, then the whole of Asia will fall, Korea and Japan and everywhere,” said Shane Lee, a retired political science professor from Chang Jung Christian University in Taiwan.

 

Washington sees Taiwan as a core Asia Pacific ally that can help contain the expansion of China, according to James Lee, a researcher with the UC San Diego Institute on Global Conflict and Cooperation.

 

“If Taiwan were to be taken over and its democracy extinguished, that would be a disaster for the global spread of democratic values,” he said in an interview.

 

Fabrizio Bozzato, senior research fellow at the Tokyo-based Sasakawa Peace Foundation’s Ocean Policy Research Institute, said Taiwan would have nowhere else to look for superpower support if the United States showed weakness on Ukraine.

 

“In case the U.S. hesitates or declines to take swift action, even military action to counter Russia in Ukraine, there will be a lot of concern in Taipei because it will be an omen of Washington’s indecision, unwillingness, hesitancy to protect Taiwan from an attack or an invasion from China,” Bozzato said.

 

 

Source: Voice of America

It’s approaching six months since the Taliban took over the Afghan capital, Kabul, on August 15. And in the months since the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, neighboring China has taken a keen interest in the fate of the Central Asian country.

The interest, in fact, predated the Taliban takeover. In late July, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi and a nine-member Taliban delegation met in the northern Chinese city of Tianjin. The meeting, some analysts said at the time, underscored Beijing’s warming ties with the Islamist group and the Taliban’s growing clout on the global stage.

In addition, last October, Foreign Minister Wang spoke about China’s expectations for Afghanistan’s future after he had met with the Taliban interim government representatives in Doha, Qatar, where the two parties “decided to establish a working-level mechanism.”

China’s expectations, Wang said, include the following: Build a more inclusive political structure in which all ethnic groups and factions play a part; implement more moderate foreign and domestic policies, including the protection of women’s rights; “make a clear break with all terrorist forces, including the Islamic State and the East Turkestan Islamic Movement”; and pursue a peaceful foreign policy, especially with neighboring countries.

However, since the Taliban regained control of the country — two decades after the U.S. and its allies had toppled it in 2001 — no country, including China, has officially recognized its legitimacy.

Beijing, though, according to experts, has participated in friendly bilateral interaction with Kabul to build a functioning relationship with Taliban authorities.

“What has been surprising has been China’s willingness to be seen so publicly as doing this and being the most forward of Afghanistan’s many neighbors to be doing this,” said Raffaello Pantucci, a senior fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies in Singapore.

The Taliban’s appointment of a new ambassador to Beijing this month reflects pragmatism by the leaders of the Islamist group, who see China as an important partner, Pantucci told VOA.

After the Taliban had appointed its ambassador to Beijing, the former Afghan ambassador to China, Javid Ahmad Qaem, resigned from his job through a handover note posted on Twitter on January 9.

On January 17, Qaem told VOA Afghan Service that Beijing “agreed” with the new appointment.

“Now that they (the Taliban) introduced someone and China has agreed to it, it is clear that it was the Chinese government’s decision,” Qaem told VOA, adding that it could not be possible without China’s approval.

Beijing has also been speaking up for the Taliban on international stages, Pantucci said.

“Additionally, we have seen Beijing quite actively lobby for the Taliban authorities in international formats like the U.N. as well as more widely in advance of desired Taliban goals.”

U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres called Wednesday to unfreeze Afghan assets overseas, a move China’s Ambassador Zhang Jun spoke out in support of in front of the Security Council. Imposing sanctions and freezing assets “are no less lethal than military intervention,” Zhang said, according to The Associated Press.

Some $9.5 billion of Afghanistan’s central bank assets have been sanctioned by the U.S. since the Taliban regained control of Kabul last August, overthrowing the internationally recognized former Afghan government.

“We once again call for the unfreezing of Afghanistan’s overseas assets as soon as possible,” Zhang said during last month’s U.N. Security Council meeting. “These assets should be returned to their real owners and cannot be used as a bargaining chip for threats or coercion.”

According to Michael Kugelman, the deputy director of the Asia Program and senior associate for South Asia at the Wilson Center, this “cordiality” between China and the Taliban should not be viewed as a prelude to recognition.

“China is still a long way off from that, and it’s unlikely to take that step unless several other countries do first, or at the same time,” Kugelman told VOA.

“No matter how repressive the Taliban may be,” Kugelman said, Beijing will be comfortable engaging with the Taliban if China concludes it is safe on the ground.

“This means that its interests in Afghanistan are shaped by security conditions and not by considerations about human rights and inclusivity,” Kugelman told VOA. “This is especially the case for China, an authoritarian state that prizes stability above all else.”

The U.S. and other Western countries, as well as rights groups such as Human Rights Watch, have called on the Taliban to respect the rights of women and minorities in Afghanistan and form an inclusive government.

According to Andrew Small, a senior transatlantic fellow with the Asia Program at the German Marshall Fund of the United States, China had hoped for a government in Afghanistan that, although Taliban-dominated, could “tick enough boxes with the international community” to achieve diplomatic recognition.

“It means that Beijing faces an operating context there that still seems to be politically provisional and remains constrained by economic sanctions,” Small told VOA.

Although China is willing to give small volumes of humanitarian aid in the short term and provide a little bit more economic support, Beijing is still “uncertain how the Taliban’s dealings with militant groups in the region” will develop, Small said.

China still has “questions about what they (the Taliban) are willing to do with Uyghur fighters.”

The U.N. reported last year that a few hundred Uyghur Muslim militants were in Afghanistan. They call themselves the Turkestan Islamic Party, which is also known as the Eastern Turkestan Islamic Movement, or ETIM, a group founded in the late 1990s in Afghanistan by exiled Uyghurs from China’s Xinjiang region, which shares a border with Afghanistan.

China has asked the Taliban to curb the insurgency of the ETIM members in Afghanistan. In an interview with China state media Global Times in September, a Taliban spokesperson Suhail Shaheen said many Uyghur fighters had left his country on its request.

“I know after the Doha (Qatar) agreement, many have left Afghanistan, because we categorically said that there is no place for anyone to use Afghanistan against other countries, including neighboring countries,” Shaheen told the Global Times.

By supporting and playing the long game with the Taliban, China is building a strong diplomatic foundation with the regime, said Hasan Karrar, who specializes in modern Chinese and Central Asian history at the Lahore University of Management Sciences in Pakistan.

“But also [Beijing is] remaining mindful of why the Taliban remain isolated internationally.” Karrar told VOA. “For example, I do not believe China can ignore the fact that girls can’t go to school in the new Afghanistan.”

 

 

Source: Voice of America

The United States called Tuesday for the United Nations Security Council to meet on North Korea’s most recent test, its most significant in years, of an intermediate-range ballistic missile capable of reaching Guam, an American territory.

The U.S. Mission to the United Nations wants the council to hold closed consultations Thursday, council diplomats said, speaking on condition of anonymity ahead of an announcement.

After Sunday’s launch, White House officials said they saw the latest missile test as part of an escalating series of provocations over the past several months that have become increasingly concerning and are aimed at winning relief from sanctions.

The Hwasong-12 missile launched Sunday was the most powerful missile North Korea has tested since 2017. That’s when the country launched Hwasong-12 and longer-range missiles in a torrid run of weapons firings to acquire an ability to launch nuclear strikes on U.S. military bases in Northeast Asia and the Pacific and even the American homeland.

In recent months, North Korea has launched a variety of weapons systems and threatened to lift a four-year moratorium on more serious weapons tests such as nuclear explosions and ICBM launches. Sunday’s launch was the North’s seventh round of missile launches in January alone, and other weapons tested recently include a developmental hypersonic missile and a submarine-launched missile.

The Security Council initially imposed sanctions on North Korea after its first nuclear test explosion in 2006 and made them tougher in response to further nuclear tests and the country’s increasingly sophisticated nuclear and ballistic missile programs.

China and Russia, which border North Korea, circulated a draft resolution in November stressing the North’s economic difficulties. They called for lifting sanctions that include a ban on exports of seafood and textiles, a cap on imports of refined petroleum products, and a prohibition on its citizens working overseas and sending home their earnings.

Russian Ambassador Vassily Nebenzia, whose country took over the Security Council presidency Tuesday for the month of February, told reporters earlier Tuesday that the draft remains before the council, though some members consider that “it is not yet timely.”

The Biden administration again called on North Korea to return to long-stalled talks on its nuclear and missile programs after the latest launch, but it made clear it doesn’t at this time think it would be constructive to hold leader-to-leader meetings such as those former President Donald Trump had with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.

Nebenzia told reporters that Russia has “repeatedly and continuously” called for resumption of negotiations between key parties on the North Korean nuclear issue.

The Security Council’s last meeting on North Korea was a closed-door discussion January 10 on the North’s launch of what Pyongyang characterized as a hypersonic missile five days earlier.

There was no action by the 15-member council, but the United States and five allies urged North Korea to abandon its prohibited nuclear and ballistic missile programs. They also called on the Security Council to oppose Pyongyang’s “ongoing, destabilizing and unlawful actions,” including missile launches.

 

Source: Voice of America

A joint statement by the High Representative on behalf of the European Union, and the Foreign Ministers of Albania, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, Norway, Republic of Korea, Switzerland, the United Kingdom and the United States, on the one year anniversary of the military coup in Myanmar.

Begin text:

On 1 February 2021, the military seized power in Myanmar, denying the democratic aspirations of Myanmar’s people. One year later, the devastating impact on the people of Myanmar is clear. Over 14 million people are in humanitarian need, the economy is in crisis, democratic gains have been reversed, and conflict is spreading across the country. The military regime bears responsibility for this crisis, which has gravely undermined peace and stability in Myanmar and the region. We once again call for the immediate cessation of violence and for constructive dialogue among all parties to resolve the crisis peacefully. We reiterate our call on the military regime to immediately end the State of Emergency, allow unhindered humanitarian access, release all arbitrarily detained persons, including foreigners, and swiftly return the country to the democratic process.

On the anniversary of the coup, we remember those who have lost their lives over the past year, including women, children, humanitarian personnel, human rights defenders, and peaceful protesters. We strongly condemn the military regime’s human rights violations and abuses across the country, including against Rohingya and other ethnic and religious minorities. We express grave concern at the credible reports of torture and sexual and gender-based violence. We express serious concern over the more than 400,000 additional people who have fled their homes since the coup. We also express grave concern at the deepening humanitarian crisis across the country and urge the military regime to provide rapid, full, and unhindered humanitarian access to vulnerable populations, including for the purposes of vaccination against COVID-19. We express grave concern over the large number of persons arbitrarily detained and the sentencing of State Counsellor Aung San Suu Kyi and other political detainees.

We call on all members of the international community to support efforts to promote justice for the people of Myanmar; to hold those responsible for human rights violations and abuses accountable; to cease the sale and transfer of arms, materiel, dual-use equipment, and technical assistance to the military and its representatives; and to continue supporting the people of Myanmar in meeting urgent humanitarian needs.

We emphasize our support for the ASEAN Five-Point Consensus and the efforts of the ASEAN Special Envoy to support a peaceful resolution in the interests of the people of Myanmar. We call on the military regime to engage meaningfully with ASEAN’s efforts to pursue full and urgent implementation of the Five-Point Consensus, which includes ensuring that the ASEAN Special Envoy has access to all parties in Myanmar, including pro-democracy groups. We also welcome the work of the UN Special Envoy of the Secretary-General on Myanmar and urge the military regime to engage constructively with her.

 

 

 

Source: US State Department

Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs chaired a hybrid meeting the Team Thailand Committee where the Meeting discussed on the implementation of the Masterplan on Foreign Affairs or “5S Strategy” and exchanged views on priorities in foreign affairs for 2022 which can contribute to restoring Thailand’s economy and society from the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic.

On 31 January 2022, H.E. Mr. Don Pramudwinai, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Kingdom of Thailand, chaired a hybrid meeting of the Overseas State Administration (Team Thailand) Committee, which was well attended by executives of 32 government agencies involved in foreign affairs.

The Committee was established under the Office of the Prime Minister’s Regulations on the Overseas State Administration B.E. 2552 and is a key mechanism to steer missions related to foreign affairs of all government agencies, in an integrated way, especially those with offices overseas or “Team Thailand abroad”.

The meeting extensively discussed on the implementation of the Masterplan on Foreign Affairs or “5S Strategy” under the National Strategy which aims to achieve five key strategic priorities of diplomacy – Security, Sustainability, Standard, Status, and Synergy. The meeting also discussed the preparation for the first 5-year (2018–2022) evaluation of the Masterplan which will be held at the end of 2022.

In addition, the participants exchanged views on priorities in foreign affairs for 2022 which can contribute to restoring Thailand’s economy and society from the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic as well as to better cope with the increasingly volatile and complex world caused by major power competition, technological disruption, and climate change. The meeting emphasised the importance of cooperation with foreign countries through various dialogue frameworks, both bilateral and multilateral, especially the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) and the Bay of Bengal Initiative for Multi-Sectoral Technical and Economic Cooperation (BIMSTEC) under Thailand’s Chairmanship this year. Ultimately, this should help restore and lay the foundation for Thailand’s future economic and social development as well as promote cooperation to achieve sustainable development in Thailand.

 

 

Source: Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Kingdom of Thailand