TAIWAN URGED TO PLAY ACTIVE ROLE IN U.S.-JAPAN SECURITY ARRANGEMENTS
ROC Central News Agency
2005-10-23 16:08:08
Taipei, Oct. 23 (CANA) Taiwan should play a more proactive role in the U.S.-Japan security arrangements in the Asia-Pacific region, a researcher with the private policy research institute Taiwan Thinktank said Sunday.
Lai I-chung, director of Taiwan Thinktank's International Affairs Department, said that Taiwan should not simply envisage that a U.S.-Japan-Taiwan triangular structure can form a security bloc against China. Instead, he opined, Taiwan should actively help implement the U.S.-Japan security arrangements so that an Asia-Pacific strategic order conducive to the development of maritime democracies can be built in the region.
Once a new Asia-Pacific strategic order is built, Taiwan can engage in exchanges with other countries in the region more freely, which will in turn help deepen Taiwan's democratization and accelerate economic and social reforms at the same time, Lai said.
According to Lai, Taiwan Thinktank, which is patterned after the U.S. Rand Corp., has successfully integrated opinions in Taiwan and led the common attention on a "U.S.-China-Taiwan" triangular relations framework in the past to a new "U.S.-Japan-Taiwan" strategic vision.
Currently, Taiwan Thinktank is working on a two-year program aimed at working out a three-side cooperation agenda among Taiwan, Japan and the United States after the establishment of the U.S.-Japan Security Consultative Committee late last year, Lai said.
The program is aimed at establishing areas for cooperation among the three potential strategic partners; finding out ways to build a composite security consultative mechanism; and tapping the possibility of such cooperation, Lai added.
Lai said that Taiwan Thinktank is scheduled to sponsor a symposium, entitled "U.S.-Japan-Taiwan Strategic Dialogue, " at the Westin Taipei Monday and Tuesday, to allow strategists from the three countries to exchange views on U.S.-Japan-Taiwan alliance relations in the wake of the establishment of the U.S.-Japan Security Consultative Committee, particularly on issues pertaining to security, economic and political integration.
Noted figures expected to attend the symposium include Randall Schriver, formerly a U.S. deputy assistant secretary of state for East Asian Affairs; Robin Sakoda, a top aide to former U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage; Rupert J.N. Hammond-Chambers, president of the U.S.-Taiwan Business Council: John Tkacik Jr., a research fellow in China policy with the Heritage Foundation; Hisahiko Okazaki, former Japanese ambassador to Thailand; and Sumihiko Kawamura, a retired general with Japan's Defense Agency.
In the Asia-Pacific security area, Lai said that with China's increasing military expansion toward the western Pacific, the military imbalance in the Taiwan Strait has become even more obvious. He added, however, that the U.S. military presence in the Asia-Pacific region plus the stepped-up U.S.-Japan security alliance have created new opportunities and challenges regarding the prospects of U.S.-Japan-Taiwan security cooperation.
In the Asia-Pacific economic cooperation area, Lai said, the economic alliance landscape in the region has been reshaped sharply since China began actively taking part in regional economic groupings in early 2005. With a new economic order facing Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum member countries, the rebuilding of economic structures in the region would be a challenging issue for the U.S.-Japan-Taiwan cooperation, he added.
In the area of Asia-Pacific politics, he added that in the face of Taiwan's constitutional re-engineering and Japan's new constitutional agenda, as well as the leadership changes in Taiwan and the United States in 2008, the United States, Japan and Taiwan need to build mutual trust via institutional systems the sooner the better.
(By Deborah Kuo)
ENDITEM/Li
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