South East Asia

Taiwan has been the perennial flashpoint between the United States and the People’s Republic of China (PRC). This has been the case for decades. While each side has consistently pointed to the Three Joint Communiques as the basis of the bilateral US-PRC relationship, the reality has always been that each side had nuanced, if not different, interpretations of these documents, particularly as they pertained to Taiwan.[1] Furthermore, the Shanghai Communique is largely comprised of unilateral statements and declarations that highlight that the two sides held differing opinions on key issues. Additionally, the US also had the Taiwan Relations Act and the Six Assurances as relevant framing documents. Despite the incongruous frames of reference (or at least the incongruous interpretations thereof), both sides have historically admonished the other to not change the status quo over Taiwan. On the heels of what many are now referring to as the Fourth Taiwan Strait Crisis, we have to wonder what status quo even means 50 years after the original Shanghai Communique.[2]

Ayman al-Zawahiri is dead – or so we are told. Al-Qaida’s chief and successor to the slain Osama bin Laden, he was deemed the chief ideologue and mastermind behind the audacious September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States. On July 31, he was supposedly killed in a drone strike in Afghanistan’s capital, Kabul, while standing on his balcony.

The recent assassination of Al-Qaeda’s Ayman Al-Zawahiri is likely to create a number of ramifications. Al-Zawahiri was assassinated by two Hellfire R9-X missiles from an MQ9 Reaper drone, that had flown over or originated in a third country, in the heart of Kabul, which the US evacuated from in August last year. Al-Zawahiri had a US $25 million bounty upon his head and had been the “invisible” leader of Al-Qaeda since 2011.

One year after the Taliban seized power in Afghanistan, fighting has decreased considerably. Yet serious security problems remain, not least the foreign militants still in the country. External actors should press the new authorities to fulfil their commitments and avoid any steps that could reignite large-scale violence.

The [Harvard Belfer Center] report, “The Great Economic Rivalry: China Vs. the US,” predicts that at the current rate China will overtake the US economically within a decade.

When it comes to trade, China has now displaced the US. “When this century began, China was knocking on the door of the WTO and the U.S. was the leading trading partner of most major economies. Today, China has overtaken the U.S. to become the largest trading partner for nearly every major nation… by 2018, 130 countries traded more with China than they did with the U.S…..” — The Belfer Report.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, moreover, provides a timely illustration of what can happen when the West does not take sufficient action to safeguard the security of its allies.

In February, for example, the US approved a $100 million support package to improve the island’s missile defences, which were designed to improve its Patriot missile defence system. But bureaucratic wrangling in Washington means Taipei has still to receive the support it needs.

Being Ready Is the Best Way to Prevent a Fight With China

Why isn’t the United States doing more to prepare for war with China over Taiwan—precisely to deter and thus avoid it? The visit to Taiwan this month by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Beijing’s dramatic response to it have crystallized the gravity of this issue. A war with China over Taiwan has gone from what many regarded as a remote scenario to a fearfully plausible one.