Shinzo Abe asks US to end strategic ambiguity on Taiwan amid Ukraine crisis
28 Feb 2022 16:55:29
Tokyo, Feb 28: Former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe today asked the US to ditch its strategic ambiguity over Taiwan and make it clear that it would defend Taipei from a Chinese invasion.
The still very influential politician made it clear that a Taiwan contingency is a Japan contingency as the westernmost island of Yonaguni is mere 110 km from Taiwan’s main island. “If China were to secure wide air superiority, it would also cover Japanese airspace,” and added that PLA operations would also affect Japanese territorial waters.
Abe’s statement, made during an interview to Japanese TV, poses not only a question to the Joe Biden administration but also to the government in Tokyo, which is still to junk it's pacifist doctrine and continues to have serious USD investment in mainland China. With Russia invading Ukraine on the pretext of civilizational linkages with Kyviv, China can surely follow suit and repeat Ukraine in Taiwan. After all, this month, President Xi Jinping got a written assurance from Russian President Putin that Taiwan was part of China on the sidelines of the Winter Olympics.
The blunt ask from the US by Abe can be seen in the context of the Ukraine invasion, where Putin has shown the mirror to Europe, which till recently wanted to distance itself from the US, and the US for its inability to protect an ally who had roots in the Biden administration. Just as German and French corporates are compromised with Russia and China, the US honchos including the media are still wary of upsetting Beijing for the fear of supply chains being cut. Being the autocrats that they are, both Putin and Xi clearly mean what they say as they don’t have to cater for domestic audience and political compulsions for furthering the so-called nationalistic agenda. Biden, Europe, and Japan, on the other hand, will have to run their decisions through domestic audiences and legislatures. The same problem is faced by a raucous democracy like India, where the old guard still living in the 1970s is in favor of Putin, and the younger lot in favor of the US and Ukraine.
Fact is that after its disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan on August 15, 2021, the US and Europe have been hit a second time by their inability to deter Putin from invading Ukraine with the sole purpose of expanding the Russian sphere of influence and installing a pro-Russian political regime in Kyiv. One must remember that Ukraine was born out of the defeat that the erstwhile Soviet Union faced at the hands of US-supported Afghan jihadis which led to final troop withdrawal in 1989.