Taiwanese voters headed out to the polls yesterday to determine the island’s next President and legislature. This is the first major world election of 2024, marking the world’s first big election of the year. The winner of the elections ‘could’ have major implications for Taiwan’s fate and its strained relationship with China. That should be phrased ‘will’ have implications as the results were tallied.
Dawn back here on America’s East Coast displayed the results on the flat screen. Ruling-party candidate Lai Ching-te emerged victorious on Taiwan’s Saturday and his opponents conceded. The result that will chart the trajectory of the self-ruled democracy’s relations with Beijing over the course of the next four years.
At stake is the peace and stability of the island and the United States, which has walked an uneasy diplomatic path since Dick Nixon and Henry Kissinger struck the ‘one China’ policy to dampen talk of an invasion across the hundred miles that separates Taiwan from the mainland. Beijing claims the island, and talk is rising that the PLA will act to take it back.
That gives us a possible fourth conflict in a troubled world. The conflict in Ukraine is lurching through two years of fighting. The Gaza incursion by Israel’s military forces has been shorter in duration but appears to be a reaction to Iranian muscle-flexing in the region. Tehran’s proxy Shia militants in Lebanon, Syria and Yemen on the strategic waterway. The missile attacks on shipping have prompted military action in the Red Sea. US and UK Naval forces have now acted twice to strike Houthi radar sites in Yemeni territory on the strategic Red Sea passage. That military action has contributed to
So, that is the three disagreements in progress. Will the election in Taiwan spark a fourth? Incoming President Lai’s position on the issue will doubtless impact China’s future actions. China’s government under President-for-life Xi has framed the elections as “a choice between war and peace.” We take his words seriously, but with so much kinetic action in progress we suspect he might be a little late on what he is predicting. There is another stream of bad news about the Chinese economy only occasionally above the fold in the papers.
Our current view- naturally subject to rapid change- is that Lai will try to hang onto at least part of the status quo. That means protecting Taiwan’s de facto independence while renewing diplomatic ties with the mainland. Those were broken in 2016 when outgoing President Tsai Ing-wen, was elected to seek her ‘middle-of-the-road’ approach to relations with Xi. Tsai was limited to two terms and must leave office this coming May, leaving room for three candidates to confront growing tensions across the strait not much wider than the one from Key West to Cuba.
Some analysts claim Beijing is inclined to act this year, with the American Presidential campaign providing a tipping point. Others hold out for a later military confrontation with the US Navy stretched thin from the Red Sea to the Formosa Strait.
Meanwhile, the Secretary of Defense remains hospitalized with prostate trouble, but apparently is directing airstrikes from his hospital bed.
The situation calls for decisive action. We intend to take this weekend to ease into the tumult of a New Year, and hope status quo hangs on long enough for us to get organized for simultaneous conflicts in the Far East and much further west. The best guess we have at the Writer’s Section is to poll people who have already lived President Xi’s tested strategies. We are still looking for a Uyghur leader to explain how a religious minority survives under President Xi!
That may take a while since we understand living as a Uyghur in China puts one at ‘a crossroads of culture and empire.’ We have a feeling we might get T-boned by the culture express at the intersection!
Copyright 2024 Vic Socotra
www.visocotra.com