What Does Ukraine Really Mean for Taiwan?
1st March 2022
No one should think that Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine means that Xi Jinping will decide to use force against Taiwan anytime soon, if ever. China is not Russia, nor Taiwan Ukraine.
Yet neither should policymakers presume that Beijing will not be influenced by what happens on the other end of Eurasia. Washington must consider whether and how Putin’s aggression has raised the stakes in defending Taiwan from the People’s Republic of China. At the least, US strategists will seriously have to assess whether a global environment in which norms of international behavior are regressing may serve to spur Beijing to military action that once seemed unlikely.
March 4th, 2022 at 20:55
What norms of international behaviour? Look at the occupation of northern Cyprus by Turkey, the occupation of Western Sahara by Morocco, the conflict between Azerbaijan and Armenia, and the wars of the U.S. against Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria etc. Also the coup against the freely-elected government of Ukraine orchestrated by the U.S. in 2014; and finally the dismemberment of Yugoslavia followed by the separation of Kosovo from Serbia. What exactly are these norms?
March 5th, 2022 at 07:25
The ones, to quote Hamlet, more honored in the breach than in the observance. Members of the Global Ruling Class love to speak about ‘norms’ when outsiders are doing things of which they do not approve.