Category Archives: Democracy

Taiwan and the Lesson of Chiang Kai-shek: Hard Cuts Soft

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Journal of Political Risk, Vol. 7, No. 1, January 2019

Ma Ying-jeou is photographed next to a podium. He is smiling, holding his glasses in his hands.

Taiwan president-elect Ma Ying-jeou makes a speech, 2011. Source: Wikimedia Commons.

Arthur Waldron, Ph.D.

University of Pennsylvania

Taiwan is never to be taken for granted. We really have to get one thing straight, which is that without Chiang Kai-shek (CKS), his mainlander army, and even aspects of his dictatorship, the free Taiwan that we love today simply would not exist. Its natural leaders, both from the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) and Kuomintang (KMT), would either be long dead or in prison, while its young people, now among the best educated in the world, would be memorizing idiocies from the imperial thoughts of Xi Jinping.

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THE BATTLE FOR WEST PAPUA

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Journal of Political Risk, Vol. 8, No. 1, January 2019 

Ben Bohane

Photojournalist

Supporters carry West Papuan leader Benny Wenda through Port Vila, Vanuatu. The supporters are holding flags and a man in a red shirt appears is sitting on a plank of wood held up by the crowd.

Supporters carry West Papuan leader Benny Wenda through Port Vila, Vanuatu, during a visit on December 1, 2016. Pacific island countries across the region are growing in solidarity with the West Papuan independence movement, according to the author. Credit: Ben Bohane.



Reports of the Indonesian military using white phosphorous munitions on West Papuan civilians in December are only the latest horror in a decades-old jungle war forgotten by the world. But new geopolitical maneuvering may soon change the balance of power here, prompting regional concern about an intensifying battle for this rich remote province of Indonesia. It is time for the US and Australia to change policy, complementing Pacific island diplomacy, or risk a major strategic setback at the crossroads of Asia and the Pacific.

Once again, Papuan highlanders have fled their villages into the bush where they are starving and being hunted by Indonesian security forces.

Fighting between OPM (Free Papua Movement) guerrillas and the Indonesian military has increased in recent months creating a fresh humanitarian crisis in a region cut off from the world: Indonesia prevents all foreign media and NGOs from operating here. This makes West Papua perhaps the only territory besides North Korea that is so inaccessible to the international community.

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