(Washington Post gift article)
Selected quotations:
Many Western democracies lining up to recognize a Palestinian state are in the process of conferring legitimacy on something that, legally speaking, doesn’t yet exist. Meanwhile, an economically crucial and politically functional democratic state that Western leaders have vowed to aid in case of outside aggression — Taiwan — remains unrecognized. This kind of hypocrisy invites trouble.
Note: The context of the writer’s opinion that Palestine is “unqualified” for recognition stems from the fact that their government is only partially-functional, divided, with borders nobody seems to respect, and ultimately just gets bullied around by Israelis and doesn’t seem to be able to exercise sovereignty in any way other than what the Israelis allow them to. The article’s author seems to understand that recognitions of Palestinian sovereignty are more to do with being lip service expressing sympathy for the Palestinian suffering perpetrated by Israel rather than real, tangible attempts to establish relationships with a functioning state that exercises sovereignty.
This year, Taiwan’s gross domestic product is set to surpass $800 billion. Freedom House scores its democracy at 94/100 — more free than Britain and nearly on par with Germany. The Economist Intelligence Unit ranks it 12th in the world for democratic governance, the highest in Asia. Taiwanese passports grant visa-free travel to almost 140 countries.
This stark contrast reflects a failure of political courage. Western democracies’ refusal to recognize Taiwan stems not from doubts over qualifications, but rather from fear of economic retaliation from China. Yet this diplomatic self-censorship undermines the very rules-based international order the West purports to defend. If and when China launches an invasion and calls it an “internal matter,” any legal and political legitimacy the West would hope to muster in opposing such a move would be hobbled.
What about Tibet? Pepermit Farms remembers
“We can’t do anything good unless we do everything good!”
What a miserably lazy line of reasoning.
Reminder the Washington Post is Jeff Bezos’ propaganda house.
Both should be recognised, sure, pretty uncontroversial to me, but I’m not reading a word from this shite rag.
De-legitimizing Palestine to save Taiwan is incoherent. Shows no love for the latter, just contempt for the former. Countries can do two things.
Besides, the deciding factor here is not the territories themselves, but the political muscle of the nations who would annex them.
I think that’s not what the author was trying to say here. He’s saying that recognition should be granted on an objective basis based on whether an organisation claiming to be a state is able to exercise the powers of sovereignty, without respect for the political implications, and that if Palestine meets the requirements, then Taiwan definitely does as well, so it’s unfair to not also recognise Taiwan.
Maybe it works according to fairness in Candyland, but in the real world the possibility of confrontation between nuclear powers is one that every world power wants to avoid (even Russia, I believe). That means avoiding provocations where possible.
Kurdistan is the skeleton under the water
Isn’t the reason that just about nobody officially recognizes Taiwan as an independent county is that Taiwan themselves don’t recognize themselves as independent? Last I heard both mainland China and Taiwan officially consider there to be just one country, with there simply being a dispute over which government is the rightful one.
While that’s how it started, most Taiwanese people don’t think of themselves as Chinese any more.
The people who consider themselves as solely Taiwanese people outnumber those who consider themselves Chinese by 2 to 1. The Taiwanese government can’t do something like change its name to the “Republic of Taiwan” without starting shit with the People’s Republic of China. So they figure sticking with the old name of the “Republic of China” is less llikely to cause problems.
A lot of geopolitics in general revolves around people trying not to start a conflict over something dumb rather than accepting obvious truths.
Oh I totally get it, but that doesn’t change the fact that it is currently the official stance of the Taiwanese government that they are not a distinct nation from the rest of China. Who knows though, that might change in five to ten years.
Yupp, that’s it. Way back when communist revolutions were cool, they drove out the ruling class who took shelter in Taiwan.
‘Took shelter’ being shorthand to military occupation and martial law that lasted until the 80s and 90s.
And let’s not pretend the KMT were in any way morally superior to the CCP. They were just reactionary bandits driven out by brainwashed Maoist personality cult members.
The White Terror period isn’t exactly a morally superior anything.
¿Por qué no los dos?
