David Kopel and Michael Krause have an important article here about Taiwan, and pointing specifically to the U.S.’s failure to stand up for Taiwan, its titular ally, regarding membership in the U.N. (More here.) The Secretary General has refused to refer Taiwan’s application for U.N. membership to the full security council, which as Kopel and Krause point out, is a violation of U.N. rules, but the United States has remained silent about the matter. The reason, of course, is that everyone’s afraid to antagonize China, and China has chosen to regard even the most minute steps in the direction of Taiwanese self-definition or self-determination as practically an act of war. Taiwan isn’t even allowed to put the word “Taiwan” on their passports.
Alas, even many libertarians are likewise willing to ignore Taiwan’s right to be free from Chinese domination, and they are willing to take sides with China in regarding Taiwan’s legitimate actions as “antagonistic” or “confrontational.” Not long ago Justin Logan and Ted Galen Carpenter (whose views regarding Taiwan I criticized here), published a policy report arguing that America’s apparent willingness to help defend an innocent people against communist aggression is somehow a bad thing, and that the U.S. should “promptly terminate any implied defense commitment to Taiwan,” which is to say, that America should declare that we will allow the Chinese to forcibly and aggressively seize an innocent people and do nothing about it. Logan and Carpenter write,
Recent incidents include Taipei’s decision to rename various state corporations to substitute “Taiwan” for “China” as well as Chen’s brazen comment that “Taiwan will say yes to independence.” As President Chen stated in the so-called four wants and one without speech, “Taiwan wants independence. Taiwan wants to change its name, Taiwan wants a new constitution, Taiwan wants development....”
Logan and Carpenter refer to these acts as well as Taiwan’s request for U.N. membership as “sure-fire provocation[s]”! That is shameful.
Now, Taiwan has never been a part of communist China. The People’s Republic of China has never exercised any authority over Taiwan. And Taiwan has no aggressive desires of any sort toward China. It did once, but today Taiwan has no interest and no realistic hope of “taking back” the PRC. That’s why they want to change the names of corporations away from “China” and to “Taiwan”: to acknowledge that they do not harbor any desires toward the PRC. Yet Logan and Carpenter—who work for America’s number one pro-liberty institution—are willing to take sides with the world’s largest totalitarian dictatorship in describing the perfectly innocent and legitimate acts of a democratic people as “provocations,” and urging Taiwan not to be “too bold in asserting independence”! This is very sad.
Taiwan should be seated at the U.N. as an independent and free people—which they are—and with full American support. And libertarians should applaud them.
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