《TAIPEI TIMES》 Miles Yu shares lesson of Ukraine

By Su Yung-yao and Jonathan Chin / Staff reporter, with staff writer

The lesson for Taiwan from the situation in Ukraine is that hostile authoritarian neighbors are not deterred when alliances between their targets and other democracies are ambiguous, Hudson Institute senior fellow Miles Yu （余茂春） said yesterday.

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Yu — who was former US secretary of state Mike Pompeo’s top China adviser — made the comments in a telephone interview with the Liberty Times （the sister newspaper of the Taipei Times） the day before the two of them were to land in Taiwan.

Pompeo is to meet President Tsai Ing-wen （蔡英文） today and speak at a Prospect Foundation event tomorrow.

Kyiv over the past few decades has walked a fine line trying to favor other European nations and Russia, but showed no conviction in its allegiances, Yu told the Liberty Times.

It even courted China’s protection when taking the middle road became unviable, he said.

In 2013, then-Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych signed a friendship pact with Beijing to gain access to China’s nuclear umbrella, which irked Moscow and possibly triggered the Russian invasion of Crimea, Yu said.

However, China sent no help to Ukraine, despite benefiting from Kyiv’s export of military goods at a discount, including an aircraft carrier, amphibious attack ships and heavy bombers, he said.

“There is no middle way in confronting an authoritarian regime,” he said.

When asked about reports that Tsai’s policies have antagonized Beijing, Yu criticized the pan-blue camp.

“The Tsai administration is not anti-China; it merely does not curry favor with China,” he said.

“Such a display of weakness would have emboldened the Chinese Communist Party to make Taiwan’s life more miserable,” he said.

Decades of work by Taiwanese have led to the nation becoming the most progressive democracy in Asia and a key player in world trade, achievements worthy of pride, he said.

To believe the political and cultural miracle of Taiwan has earned the country a place in the global community is not antagonistic, he said, adding: “Only the Communist Party believes that not currying its favor is being antagonistic.”

The advantage of democracy is that leaders cannot negotiate with foreign powers in secret or trade away the country’s future in defiance of the people’s wishes, he said.

Separately, Yu on Monday told Radio Free Asia that opposition politicians are mistaken in believing that the US would send arms to Taiwan, but refuse to fight for it, as former president Ma Ying-jeou （馬英九） has said.

“This argument reflects a lack of principle and conviction,” Yu said.

South Korea and Kuwait had similar concerns that the US would out of selfishness refrain from sending military forces to fight off invaders, but such anxieties were proven wrong time and again, he said.

Senior officials in Japan and Australia have expressed willingness to militarily defend Taiwan, which shows that the nation’s neighbors share its fears about Chinese aggression, he said.

The risk of harm to “Taiwan is one part of the threat China poses, which has concerned numerous other parties,” he said.

新聞來源：TAIPEI TIMES