Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen Receives National Endowment for Democracy (NED) Democracy Service Medal for Transforming Her Country into a Launching Pad for U.S. War on China
In the corrupt era in which we live, horrible people are given honors for carrying out policies that have disastrous ramifications.
Henry Kissinger and Barack Obama, Jr., for example, won the Nobel Peace Prize despite helping to initiate violent coups and wars that left millions dead.
Following in that tradition, the NED awarded its prestigious Democracy Service Medal in July to Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen for her supposed achievements in advancing democracy and human rights.
The award came on the heels of the Biden administration’s announcing a $345 military aid package to Taiwan designed to counter China that will include provision of portable air defense systems, intelligence and surveillance equipment, firearms and missiles.[1]
The NED is a CIA offshoot that was founded in the 1980s to promote political propaganda and subversion in countries that the U.S. government targets for regime change.
The most notable feature of Tsai Ing-wen’s rule has been her provocative policies toward China—Taiwan’s largest trade partner by far—which have poisoned Sino-Taiwanese relations and threaten to ignite a war with China that would be devastating to both countries.
Tsai has acquiesced to the U.S. foreign policy strategy of turning Taiwan into a heavily armed “porcupine” that China is supposed to fear.
This strategy is reminiscent of the use of Ukraine as a pawn to achieve larger strategic objectives designed to sustain worldwide U.S. hegemony.
Under Tsai’s stewardship, Taiwan has come to bristle with advanced U.S. weapons, accompanied by tens of thousands of supporting U.S. military personnel and Special Forces.
After the announcement of a $440 million arms sale agreement by the Biden administration (prior to the $345 million package which was announced on July 28), the Chinese Foreign Ministry said that Taiwan had evolved into a “powder keg” by the infusion of U.S. weaponry, pushing the Taiwanese people into the “abyss of disaster.”
While Western media depict China as threatening Taiwan, Taiwan’s own constitution recognizes Taiwan as a province of China—a position adhered to at the UN.
Tsai Ing-wen engaged in a deliberately provocative maneuver when she visited New York in late March in what the Chinese considered to be a violation of diplomatic protocol, since China opposed any official interaction between the U.S. and Taiwan.
A Chinese government spokesman said that the real purpose of the visit, during which Tsai met with House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, was to seek a breakthrough and advocate for Taiwanese independence.
Tsai further came to the U.S. to “beg for more weapons, more provocations and more supports to antagonize the people of the Chinese mainland,” according to Caleb Maupin, head of the Center for Political Innovation (CPIUSA), which led protests against Tsai’s visit.
Maupin said that Tsai Ing-wen “claims to love the people on the island of Taiwan. But what she’s doing is setting the stage for a military confrontation. It would kill thousands and thousands of people on the island she claims to love.”
Tsai has meanwhile sold her people down the river economically in acquiescing to the U.S. strategy of transforming the country into a U.S. dependency.
The Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) has been decoupling from China and Taiwan is in the process of signing a free trade agreement with the U.S. that benefits U.S. interests and further cuts Taiwan off from China, its largest trading partner.
Wang Jianmin, a professor at Minnan Normal University said that the U.S. was trying to fully control Taiwan’s industries and make Taiwan unconditionally dependent on the U.S. Chang Meng Sung, a member of the opposition Chinese Unification Party, added that the free trade agreement, if implemented, will reduce Taiwan to an “economic colony of the U.S.”
In the first quarter of 2023, Taiwan’s economy contracted by 3% under Tsai’s stewardship because of a sharp drop in exports to the Chinese mainland.
Tsai’s unpopularity within Taiwan was underscored when she was forced to resign as head of the ruling Democratic Progressive Party of Taiwan (DPP) after it suffered its worst-ever performance in November 2022 elections.
A headline in the China Daily after the election read “DPP defeat shows desire for peace.”
Indeed, the victor in the election, the Guomindang Party, advocates for better relations with China and does not favor Taiwanese independence.
A year prior to the election, the Asia Times published an article entitled “The dark side of Tsai Ing-wen’s democracy” by Brittney Chin-Chen Roy, which emphasized how Tsai had failed to advance government transparency and accountability and suppressed dissent.
Tsai screwed over the Taiwanese people when she gave license to foreign-owned wind farms known for bilking customers to dominate the local market for wind-generated electricity.
She also went forward with a plan to build a liquefied natural gas (LNG) terminal near the coastal city of Taoyuan, across the Datan red algal reef, as part of a scheme to buy LNG from the U.S. in exchange for all the weapons supplies.
None of this, of course, was advertised at the NED awards ceremony where NED CEO Damon Wilson praised Tsai for her “steadfast commitment to democracy” and for “fostering democratic unity among like-minded nations.”
The like-minded nations were really ones hostile to China being showered with U.S. weapons as part of an insane foreign policy strategy that leaves the world on the threshold of World War III.
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On July 28, Chris Pappas (D-NH) and Rep. Jim Banks (R-IN) sponsored a bill requiring U.S. military sales to Taiwan to be expedited and prioritized in the face of a delivery delay of about $19 billion worth of arms. In addition, the bill aims to set up regular U.S.-Taiwan exercises, training and professional exchanges, as well as the establishment of a Taiwan Critical Munitions Acquisition Fund. As part of this, the U.S. government would be authorized to spend $2 billion on Taiwan in foreign military financing a year. The bill also states the U.S. would apply Ukraine munitions production capacity authorities to Taiwan. ↑
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Jeremy Kuzmarov holds a Ph.D. in American history from Brandeis University and has taught at numerous colleges across the United States. He is regularly sought out as an expert on U.S. history and politics for radio and TV programs and co-hosts a radio show on New York Public Radio and on Progressive Radio News Network called “Left on Left.” He is Managing Editor of CovertAction Magazine and is the author of five books on U.S. foreign policy, including Obama’s Unending Wars (Clarity Press, 2019), The Russians Are Coming, Again, with John Marciano (Monthly Review Press, 2018), and Warmonger. How Clinton’s Malign Foreign Policy Launched the U.S. Trajectory From Bush II to Biden (Clarity Press, 2023). Besides these books, Kuzmarov has published hundreds of articles and contributed to numerous edited volumes, including one in the prestigious Oxford History of Counterinsurgency . He can be reached at jkuzmarov2@gmail.com and found on substack here.
Taiwan is doing some interesting things related to green energy: