SCMP: Zelensky’s Oval Office flare-up should be a Taiwan wake-up call 《南華早報》：澤連斯基在白宮的言論應為台灣敲響警鐘

Here’s a crazy idea for Taiwan. How about trying to improve relations with mainland China? It will be much cheaper and safer for everyone in the Asia-Pacific, not just for the Chinese race.

“Porcupine defence”, “silicon shield”, American arms, really? Diplomatic finesse is the best guarantee of peace across the Taiwan Strait.

For a decade now, the island under the independence-seeking Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) has bet the ranch on America’s diplomatic and defence support.

The fireworks in the Oval Office between US President Donald Trump and his Ukrainian counterpart Volodymyr Zelensky on Friday should finally wake up more Taiwanese to their misguided reliance on the Americans. Washington will turn on you or drop you at the drop of a hat.

To justify its US-centric policy, the DPP under Tsai Ing-wen and now Lai Ching-te has to keep tensions high and provoke Beijing at every opportunity. That has been a costly and dangerous game.

Beijing, though, has made it clear that the use of force is the last, not the first resort. It cares more about the well-being and prosperity of people on the island – the vast majority of whom are ethnic Chinese – than any Western government with its own agenda.

This is not a struggle for “democracy” causing endless tensions and destabilising the whole region, but for peace and national dignity.

Taiwan can keep its democracy and way of life by maintaining a stable and non-confrontational relationship with Beijing. But they will all go poof in another Chinese civil war.

Since Joe Biden, the United States has been flirting with dropping “strategic ambiguity” and the one-China policy. Trump, typically, has sent conflicting signals, so it remains to be seen where the US stands on both issues. Chances are that he won’t be reliable or consistent. And that’s exactly the danger.

Since the war in Ukraine started, Taipei has sided with the Western powers and Nato, led by the US. But with the threatened withdrawal of American support, the war is likely lost; Nato’s future is uncertain; and Europe is more divided and weakened than ever.

Tsai and Lai have backed the wrong horse. Fortunately, Taiwan is not Ukraine and Beijing is not Moscow.

But the mainland has been conducting military encirclement exercises around the island and sending warplanes and warships regularly in a show of force, you say.

Well, they are deployed because of Taipei’s provocative stance on independence and its siding with the US and its allies in the region, thus allowing itself to be used as a pawn in the Western containment strategy against the mainland.

Washington has made no bones that Taiwan is central to the so-called first island chain of defence – actually more likely a chain of offence – against the mainland’s southeastern coasts where its wealthiest provinces are located.

But in any armed conflict, whether between the two superpowers, between the mainland and the island, or involving the whole region, there is no scenario under which Taiwan would come out on top.

The question of whether the US will come to Taiwan’s rescue in the event of a cross-strait conflict is actually secondary, despite many pundits’ obsession with it. One way or another, the island will be devastated. In fact, in a prolonged fight because of US involvement, the destruction will be even worse by dragging out the conflict, as witnessed by Ukraine.

The US has not won a single war since the second world war, all the while bringing death and destruction to its local ally every time. Why would any sane Taiwanese think they would come out better than Vietnamese, Iraqis and Afghans when China is so much stronger and more powerful?

The island needs to learn the right lesson from Ukraine. The US offers war, Beijing only wants peace. Taiwanese have much to lose with Washington, but everything to gain with Beijing. Taiwan is now exposed to America’s constant unreliability; it’s time to try and test Beijing’s sincerity.