2023-04-22 18:10:00
taiwan It has been the center of world news coverage for several weeks, and for several years it has been the scene of hundreds of military exercises by China and of the USA.
The latest chapter in this historic conflict began with the visit of the President of Taiwan to Los Angeles (California) after touring Central America. There she met with the speaker of the United States House of Representatives, Kevin McCarthy, and unleashed the fury of the Chinese government.
The hierarchs of Beijing did not take long to announce the start of military exercises around Taiwan, a maneuver that has already become the way to express their rejection and discontent with relations between the island and the US.
Many ignore the news, but few know the importance of these military movements and the imminent risk they present as the possible detonator of a third world war.
And it is that history is long, confusing and repetitive, but it is made up of key moments that deserve careful analysis and that, above all, reveal the consequences of a quirky love triangle (or love-hate, as some diplomats would describe it) between three countries, in whose hands hangs the feeble thread of the fate of the modern world.
The plot of this story began a century ago, with communism. It was concerted with the Cold War, calmed down after the Vietnam War and revived again with the arrival of Donald Trump.
As if it were deja vu, the situation now seems to be highlighting what many analysts classify as the dawn of another ideological conflict between the West and the East.
If the conflict in Taiwan had to be divided into chapters, this would be what they would count.
Chapter 1: Late 40’s
The Civil War in China years into its inception, there were rampant attacks between the Chinese nationalists (who led the government and earned a reputation as authoritarian, corrupt, and elite-serving among the citizenry) and the Communist army led by Mao Tse Tung, also know as Mao Zedong.
The communists were successful in amassing the support of the populations on the periphery, as well as the students, intellectuals and the working class. After years of conflict, Mao’s party declared victory and in October 1949 founded the People’s Republic of Chinawhich is still valid today.
What happened to the nationalists, despised by the public after the triumph of the communists? They were stripped from mainland China, sent to a small island off the country’s southeastern coast: taiwan.
Chapter 2: The New Meaning of Taiwan
The exiled nationalists settled on the island, from where they implemented their system of governance, always defending that they were the legitimate Chinese government.
They installed a government similar to the one they had in China, with provincial hierarchies, but also imported culture and traditions; They even sent for historical artifacts from the Forbidden City to be exhibited in Taiwan and to verify that the China they left behind also lived and prospered there. His plan was to maintain his presence there and prepare to one day retake power.
In mainland China, Mao and his adherents were following developments in anger. Mao was blunt in categorizing the situation as the result of a “Pending business” of the Civil War, which would not end until Taiwan was reconquered.
At the same time, many countries began to recognize the legitimacy of the Chinese government based in Beijing, except one: United States.
The Americans continued to recognize Taiwan as a legitimate government, a fact that did not come as a surprise considering the context the world was going through at the time.
The Cold War reinforced the anti-communist stance professed by the US, which was mired in its struggle against the ideology and government of the Soviet Union.
This was the situation for many years, until something changed.
Chapter 3: A Gear Shift Out of Despair
The sixties had several protagonists, one of them was the war in vietnam. There, Southeast Asia witnessed the bloody conflict between the US and Vietnamese communist forces, which were backed by the Chinese and Soviet governments.
By 1971, the outlook was turning grim for Americans, so they were forced to take action to reverse their disadvantage in a war that US citizens increasingly blamed on the US government. Richard Nixon.
Nixon considered that the best way to reverse the game in his favor was to improve his relations with China, also motivated by the potential that the country was beginning to show and, therefore, by the interest of having an important ally in the future. Nixon’s plan was to establish a diplomatic relationship with China with the goal that, in return, the Chinese would withdraw their support for the militants in Vietnam.
In February 1972, Nixon shook hands with Zhou Enlai, the Chinese premier, in a meeting that went down in history as the first visit by an American president to the People’s Republic of China and also marked the moment in which they met. brought together the leaders of one in three people in the world.
The talks between the two countries began and thus marked the beginning of a process that took a decade but which finally consolidated diplomatic relations between China and the US.
Chapter 4: The beginning of a love-hate triangle
It was 1979 and the president Jimmy Carter it announced to the world that the US officially recognized Beijing as the legitimate government of China.
“There is only one China and Taiwan is part of it,” Carter said.
In this way, the US cut its relations with Taiwan and prioritized the new environment of peace that it had just sealed with China. The statement was not without controversy, however, as it was dangerously evasive. While Carter acknowledged China’s position, it did not rule out the existence of Taiwan.
Chapter 5: A political jiu-jitzu
In the same year that the relations were established, some US lawmakers distanced themselves from Carter’s announcement.
Motivated by the “fear” that this would involve military reprisals against the citizens of Taiwan, Congress passed the Taiwan Relations Law. In the text, the Americans promised to protect the island (although without explicitly saying that this meant sending their military forces to defend it), they established that the US could provide certain types of weapons to the Taiwanese army and retain its power to protect it and ensure that matters around the island were resolved peacefully.
This fact began to trace a sore (which until now has not stopped deepening) of mistrust between the Chinese government and the US government, as well as between the US and Taiwan.
Chapter 6: Taiwan becomes a democracy
By the 1990s, many of the hierarchs who once came to consolidate the nationalist ideology had already died.
Taiwan was now a country with new generations of citizens who had been born on the island, had never known mainland China, and had no interest in reclaiming it. The vast majority acted motivated by the interest of building an independent country, exercising self-governance with a political system that included political plurality and democratic elections.
In 1996, the first democratic presidential election in Taiwan, which were preceded and followed by ballistic missile attacks on their maritime areas by the Beijing government. The United States was quick to join the exchange, sending fleets of warships into Taiwanese waters to show its support.
Unknowingly, they were plunged into a conflict in a pattern that would not stop repeating itself: the reaction of China through exercises and military presence, and the response of the US armed forces. around the island.
Chapter 7: A New Leader and Effervescent Tension
The sense of impending conflict in that region of the world increased over the years, especially with the coming to power of a more aggressive leader in 2012: Xi Jinping, the current Chinese leader. Jinping did not hesitate to make his opinion public on the “Taiwan issue”, and suggested on more than one occasion that his command would seek to make decisive decisions to end the conflict.
The situation worsened with the arrival of Donald Trump, who rose to power amid speeches about his anti-China stance. The Trump government took a more assertive position against the Asian country and framed relations between the two countries within a competitive environment that did not give rise to collaborations.
Thus, both countries became more aggressive.
Joe Biden he came to power and continued with the assertiveness established by his predecessor. Since the beginning of his term, he has already ruled on at least four occasions about his willingness to stand up for taiwan in case China decides to take military action.
Chapter 8: An Unprecedented Interest-Motivated Fixation
US interests in Taiwan are becoming more visible. First, because the island is a strategic point important to contain China militarily and prevent its advances towards the islands of the Asian South Pacific.
Second, because of Taiwan’s importance in the global economy as the country that has the largest semiconductor industry in the world. Semiconductors, or chips, are widely used to make everything from household appliances to the most advanced military systems the US military currently operates with.
It has become, by all accounts, a superpower battle for economic and military power; in the situation whose outcome will mark the fate of the modern world. US diplomatic agents have even publicly speculated about the possibility of triggering a war between china and usa in the near future.
Chapter 9: Peace on a tightrope
Despite the tensions, all sides have made sure to stay in line: they send ships, but they don’t shoot; they do military exercises, but never take the next step.
Naturally, Taiwan does not want a war. The country of 23 million inhabitants has become a prosperous, democratic and, above all, prudent state in terms of its decisions with the aim of maintaining peace.
They have succeeded so far, but the latest disagreements and all the future discrepancies that come will not fail to remind, with increasing forcefulness, about the threat and the devastating outcome that awaits, imminent, at the most subtle twist in the plot.
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