Canada’s Achilles’ heel

Private Simon Longtin, Master Warrant Officer Mario Mercier and Master Corporal Christian Duchesne, the last three Canadian soldiers to die in Afghanistan, had one thing in common: they all came from the French-speaking province of Quebec, a province that historically has always been more reluctant to participate in wars abroad than the rest of Canada.

A Canadian Press-Decima Research survey conducted in July showed that 67 percent of Canadians viewed Canadian casualties in Afghanistan as unacceptable. In Quebec, that number was 76 percent — and that was before the three soldiers killed on Aug. 19 and Aug. 22. Judging from the coverage those deaths received in Quebec newspapers (I happened to be in that province when the deaths occurred) and the soul searching that ensued, it can be expected that opposition to Canada’s participation in Afghanistan will increase in Quebec. And casualties from that province could grow as well, as its Francophone Royal 22nd regiment — known as the Vandoos (a corruption of “vingt-deux,” or 22 in English) — took over the lead of the battle group in Kandahar earlier this month. Within weeks, three of its soldiers had already fallen.

From the looks of it, the killing of those three soldiers — one by improvised explosive device and two by landmines — was random and was not the result of specific targeting by the Taliban or other Afghan rebels. But if I were a Taliban intelligence officer bent on pressuring the Canadian government to pull out its troops before the mission ends in 2009, I would ensure that future attacks focused on soldiers from that regiment. The more soldiers from the 22nd Regiment are injured or killed, the greater the outrage in the province of Quebec will be and, consequently, the greater the pressure on the Conservative government — whose survival relies to a large extent on Quebec votes — will become to pull the troops out or shift their role from a combat mission back to support, as was initially the plan, for provincial reconstruction.

With Canadian soldiers dying at more than three times the rate of soldiers from other countries in Afghanistan — including troops from the US and the UK — the Taliban could now break Canada’s back by turning to a war of polls. All they need to do is kill or injure as many Quebec soldiers as they can and then log on the Internet, or contact friends back in Canada, to get the latest polls. Should the Taliban adopt this strategy, it won’t be too long before the growing opposition in Quebec becomes politically untenable for Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s Conservatives.

A flash

The sudden flash of light occurred in mid-flight on the China Airlines flight from Vancouver to Taipei, just as the main character in the Spiderman 3 movie first confronted his evil alter ego. All as one, the occupants of the cabin looked in stupefaction toward the source of light, waves of palpable fear rolling through the plane. Partaking of that recoil, I, too, could only think back on the scenes of the China Airlines aircraft going up in flames in Okinawa a little more than a week ago. It took me — and I would say most passengers — a good minute to calm down after realizing that the source of light was not something that had gone terribly wrong with the plane, but rather a kid who, caught in the action of the movie, could not refrain from taking a picture of the large screen in front of us.

Air accidents — even those than do not result in loss of life — continue to awaken nightmares in people’s imagination, especially so when, as with other catastrophes, the images are repeated over and over again in the media. This barrage of images in the past week turned an innocuous event — a child seeking a shot of his favorite cartoon — into a source of dread.

Not that I want to play film critic or anything, but that moment when the flash went off was, for me, the only source of excitement throughout the whole movie.

On the road

This entry is being composed from back home, in Canada, on my first visit there since I relocated to Taiwan two years ago. Having traveled from Vancouver, and thence to Toronto, Montreal and now Quebec City, what strikes me most is, of course, the vastness, the space. And to be honest, the air quality in Quebec City is worlds apart from that in Taipei.

Another thing that hit me was how security at Canadian airports has tightened, especially in Vancouver. To give but one example, as passengers from my China Airlines flight awaited our luggage, customs officers would walk round us like vultures and question anyone who looked different (which means anyone with tattoos, long hair or a beard). If this is the treatment reseved Taiwanese and East Indians when they come to Canada, I cannot imagine what it must be like when the plane is from the Middle East.

Another shocker, which found its way into the editoral that I published today, was the ignorance of the customs officer who processed my entry into Canada. According to this misinformed individual, Canada is, hum, liberal enough to have solved the Taiwan issue by making it coterminous with China. And no amount of explanation would persuade him to change his views. So, upon being asked how long I had been in China, I replied: three days, in Hong Kong, in May last year. Obviously, this sense of humor did not go down too well with the official, but to my surprise I was nevertheless spared the expected search through my luggage. (Metal detectors and checks on electronic devices, even on domestic flights, were also much more thorough than what one is subjected to in Asia.)

All that being said, this response by the first-line officer - and therefore first person of contact for visitors to Canada - got me thinking about how Taiwan needs to change its approach to how it advertises itself to the rest of the world. In my editorial, I suggest that the prevailing top-down approach, with Taipei seeking recognition at the UN and other world bodies, is turning logic on its head, and that it stands a better chance of gaining the emotional response it needs by connecting from the bottom up, with individuals, who can then pressure their governments to give Taiwan the space it deserves on the international stage. I also call on expatriates living in Taiwan to lend a hand - or their voices, that is - in that endeavor, by becoming emissaries for Taiwan whenever they visit home.

Beijing caught in a lie

A little while ago I wrote about Beijing’s increasingly aggressive intelligence-collection program in preparation for the 2008 Olympic Games, activities which could compel foreign governments to assist the authoritarian regime by sharing intelligence with it.

The picture became even uglier this week when police in Beijing clamped down on a group of foreign journalists and Reporters Sans Frontieres advocates who were calling Beijing’s bluff and accusing it of not respecting the commitment it had made to ensuring press freedom in China. Given the long list of precedents set by Chinese authorities on human rights across the spectrum, one wonders how anyone could have taken that pledge seriously. In fact, the indelible blotch behind all this is the fact that the Olympic Committee and the international community gave Beijing the games despite knowing fully well that they were being lied to, fully cognizant of the fact that China would continue to repress its people and bar reporters — domestic and foreign alike — from painting a complete picture of what’s going on in China.

Sadly, China has so far been able to get away with the lies and has been rewarded diplomatically and economically as if it were a responsible, law-abiding stakeholder.

But there might be hope. Foreign reporters in China may turn out to be worthier adversaries to the authoritarian regime than the diplomatic pushovers Beijing is used to dealing with — or, for that matter, the Chinese activists and reporters whom it can crush with impunity. Judging by some of the reactions, a number of foreign journalists did seem to believe things would improve in China and that they would have the liberty to do their job. Gullible as this might have been, their disillusionment and the attendant anger could put Beijing in an uncomfortable position, as they are unlikely to accept being censored. Moreover, Beijing would be hard pressed to imprison them, for unlike Celil Husayin, a Uighur rights activist with dual Canadian citizenship who was jailed in April (see “Why Celil doesn’t stand a chance,” April 27, 2007), the great majority of reporters are not Chinese. In other words, if those were to be thrown in jail, foreign governments responsible to those foreign nationals would, in contrast to how the Canadian government responded to Mr. Celil’s case, be hard pressed not to come to their assistance.

All in all, Beijing is caught between a rock and a hard place: either it clamps down on foreign reporters and thereby risks sparking an international incident, or it throws them all out, which would be detrimental to the image it is trying to conjure as the games approach. Its last option is to give foreign reporters the rights it promised to give them, with the result that the dire human rights and environmental situation — the rottenness underneath the veneer — will be exposed.

Beijing sought glory by hosting the games, but just as the mythical Icarus, it may see that the glare is just too hot for its own good.

Olympic games for the hollow men

As it prepares for the 2008 Summer Olympic Games, the Chinese government has launched an unprecedented intelligence-collection operation targeting individuals and organizations it perceives as a threat. In an article published today in the Taipei Times, I weigh Beijing's security-related efforts against the precedent set by other Olympics, with special focus on the Salt Lake City games, which, following on the heels of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in the US, were unequalled in their militarization; and the 2004 Athens Summer Olympics, in which I played a small role as one among many analysis who, every morning, read intelligence reports about and wrote threat assessments on the games.

My brief study reveals something very alarming about Beijing's preparations for the games, as it threatens to force a great number of international intelligence services to participate into China's repression of dissent. Furthermore, in the coming months and as the games approach, Beijing's foreign intelligence agencies are certain to accelerate their collection of intelligence abroad, with targets as varied as Taiwanese, environmentalists and human rights activitsts, to name but a few of Beijing's areas of interest.

Readers can access the full article, titled "Olympic games for the hollow men," by clicking here.

Fixed in time

Whether history is taught well or not, its use never fails to determine the kind of world we live in. In places like Serbia, to name but one, the stubbornness of some to not let go of ancient history — or rather, an ancient interpretation of history — has long given rise to conflict, which even to this day, after long years of intervention by NATO, the UN, the EU and others in the alphabet soup of interveners, remains as unresolved as it was on the day before NATO dropped its first bombs on Slobodan Milosevic and his cronies. Without a complete abandonment of a certain view on history, namely that on Kosovo and Milosevic’s justification for doing what he did to reclaim it, it will be impossible for that country to move on.

Similar phenomena exist the world over, with people being taught things about events and people that, upon scrutiny or with the outsider’s advantage of distance, would seem ludicrous. Through reverence for Mao Zedong (毛澤東) to that for Saddam Hussein, Osama bin Laden, Robert Mugabe, Yasser Arafat, Napoleon Bonaparte, Joseph Stalin or Adolph Hitler — all, by various versions of history alive today heroes to some — people remained fixed in the past, unable to see events and motivations with enough emotional distance to make judgments of their own. Of course, a pre-digested version of history, which is what is given adherents of the “fixed” historical model, also requires less effort than reaching one’s own conclusions through the study of it.

This is the power of myths and why they manage to survive down the ages, as the ideas and concepts that lie at their core remain untouchable, cannot be questioned. And they are easy. Dangerously easy, bereft of the complexities, of the grey areas, that true history is made of.

When, for example, Palestinian children who can barely walk are taught to hate Israelis and, wearing those cute little military uniforms or explosive belts or mock AK-47s, to revere mass murderers before the camera, or, on the other side of the fence (palpable and metaphorical), when same-age Israelis are taught hatred for Palestinians and instilled admiration for “heroes” with hands as bloodied as those of their Palestinian counterparts/nemeses, it becomes nigh impossible to break the vicious circle of violence because those views, once perpetuated, do not allow for the progression of history, for a fresh take on events ancient and recent. When such history is taught children, it robs them of the possibility of a better world, as if parents were unable to accept that their offspring should be spared the calamities they had to go through.

Sadly, Taiwan is no exception from this rule, and many are those today (including children the same age as the young Israelis and Palestinians mentioned above) who are taught that dictator Chiang Kai-shek (蔣介石), whose responsibility in the 228 Incident, where tens of thousands of Taiwanese were killed (see “Remembering the 228 Incident,” February 28, 2007) is becoming clearer (to some) by the day and whose role in the subsequent regime of White Terror and thirty-eight years of Martial Law, during which people were imprisoned, disappeared or killed by the thousands, is undeniable, was a savior of the people. Whose savior he was, exactly, is unclear, as he mismanaged China, lost the Civil War to the communists and for all intents and purposes invaded Taiwan, where he imposed a foreign regime on a people, whom he ruled with an iron fist while dreaming of retaking China. This is not to say that the generalissimo did not make a contribution to history, for he certainly did — and under the direst of circumstances, facing both Japanese invasion and communist guerrillas. Heaven knows what would have happened to Taiwan if it had been Mao, and not Chiang, who fled there in 1949. But mythmaking and undue reverence for a very flawed and ultimately morally compromised man does everybody a disservice and in the end robs him of his humanity, of the tremendous moral struggle he faced — and eventually succumbed to, turning him into a tyrant.

It was with those questions in mind that I wrote an article, titled “Revisionism is Taiwan’s big enemy,” published today in the Taipei Times. Readers can access it by clicking here.

A dirge for our time

Not since my review of David Kaplan's excellent Fires of the Dragon more than a year ago have I chosen to write about a book for The Far-Eastern Sweet Potato, but having just finished reading Salman Rushdie's most recent novel, Shalimar the Clown, I felt compelled to write one.

As with his previous novels, Rushdie's convoluted and idiosyncratic storytelling in Shalimar may be challenging, if not daunting, for readers accustomed to a more standard style. My first attempt at reading it took place days after its North American publication, sometime in the fall of 2005. Back then, weeks after my resignation from the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS), where I had worked in counterterrorism, Rushdie's angered take on our times proved too much emotionally and I found myself unable to go beyond the very vivid scene of a decapitation.

It was only two years later, with emotional distance and a book about my experiences at CSIS between me and that institution, that I could pick it up again — and what an experience it has been.

Shalimar the Clown is nothing less than a fable for our troubled times, where politics and religion interact, with devastating effect, with the sometimes destructive power of love. It presents Rushdie at his angriest and most unsparing, who offers us scene after scene of the ravages of war, from World War II Strasbourg to the paradise-turned-hell of Kashmir as it gets caught between the Indian-Pakistani war, followed by its own divisive conflict and descent into madness.

Out of this emerge characters — Noman Sher Noman, also known as Shalimar the Clown, and Max Ophuls — who are done and undone, made and unmade, by the defining storms of time eternal: war and love. Rushdie, with the surgeon's expert hand, brings his characters, with all their suffering, anguish and fears, to all-too-real life and allows us to draw our own conclusions about what it is that animates them, that forces them to act in the cruelest of manners. When the opportunity is ripe, those who are shaped by history will, in turn, shape history — or so we think. Ultimately, however, Rushdie presents us with a landscape of inevitable devastation, with parallels between Kashmir and the Philippines, Afghanistan and Los Angeles, making for a very pessimistic plunge into human nature, one in which the very hope of redemption through love is crushed at the very last moment, where the terrorists of the future are formed not by politics — or politics alone — but also by matters seemingly much more simple, such as a wife, seeking unknown, illusioned liberty, running off with the charismatic former Resistance Francaise hero (at times frighteningly reminiscent of real-life John Kenneth Galbraith, whom in the story he actually replaces, before real-life Chester Bowles does so) turned US ambassador to India turned US counterterrorism czar.

The beauty — and, simultaneously, terrible ugliness — of Rushdie's dirge is that it shows the numerous paths leading to madness, from the occupation of one's land by a foreign army to the torturing of loved ones to the lure of intransigent religion to cold, hard politics to matters of the heart. Nothing, mind you, is necessarily teleological and many are those who, even in the face of atrocities, will adopt more peaceful ways to cope, only to die of old age while youth are blowing themselves up for a cause. Some, like Shalimar, become "terrorists" by proxy, drawn not to the cause itself, which takes him down a path familiar to anyone who has read about terrorism in Southeast Asia, but rather to the need to inflict violence, a corridor that leads him to his ultimate act of terror in the US, before the very eyes of a daughter.

Although the novel takes place before the September 11, 2001, attacks in the US (the backdrop to the end of the novel is the 1993 bolbing of the World Trade Center), the undertones of the road there, the seeds of future history being sown, are ever-present, and it is unlikely that this novel, in this form, could have been written absent 9/11 and everything else that ensued. As the novel progresses, as chaos envelops Kashmir, we can see emerge, in the shadows of coalescing networks, the future headline-makers. One can also feel the anger, the fear generated by the religious edict — or fatwa — made against Rushdie himself by Ayatollah Khomeini following the publication of The Satanic Verses, yet another iteration of violence against the individual. Anger at the US, at its creation of an inevitable future of violence that should have been anything but inevitable, is also palpable, as epitomized by Max Ophuls himself, who is animated by goodness and evil, with the all-too-human capacity for stupidity and mistakes.

Shalimar the Clown is about violence, is violent itself, and despite its gazing deep into the pit of man's inhumanity to man for the multifarious reasons that we have created for ourselves, it leaves it to the reader to answer the question that Max, pondering the cycle of violence that we have created following the death, in an IRA bombing, of a friend, asks us all. "Perhaps violence showed us what we meant, or, at least, perhaps, it was simply what we did." We can attempt to intellectualize, to comperend the reasons why a person chooses to go down the path to violence, and sometimes the plainness of truth, as he writes, suffers by comparison with paranoid scenarios, but in the end it doesn't mean that we can, or will, forgive.

The shame of democracies

(Readers should note that a slightly different version of this posting appeared in the July 11, 2007, editition of the Taipei Times under the title "Conduct unbecoming the self-proclaimed exporter of democracy," which can be accessed by clicking here.)

If anyone who despises the George W. Bush clique ever needed additional ammunition, it was provided over the past two days with two more examples supporting the argument that in the United States today there are two classes of people: the unaccountable Bushites and the rest.

While countless individuals have been wasting away in jail on suspicions of "terrorist" activity that, if carefully looked at, would not hold water — people whose religion and skin color happen, not by coincidence, to differ from those of white Anglo-Saxons — others, like former World Bank chief and co-architect of the 2003 invasion of Iraq Paul Wolfowitz, whose abuse of authority at the World Bank led to his forced resignation, and I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, US Vice President Dick Cheney’s former chief of staff, seem to be regulated by a different set of laws.

Wolfowitz, who before his appointment at the World Bank was the second-ranking official at the Pentagon, will now be visiting scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, a Washington-based conservative think-tank whose views on the Middle East and the use of force very much reflect those of the Bush administration. Frequent readers of The Far-Eastern Sweet Potato should by now be familiar with my low opinion of that institution. Odd though his World Bank appointment may have seemed, Wolfowitz will now once again find himself among like-minded people, where he will be able to do the greatest damage.

As for Libby, the Cheney aide who was implicated in the “Plamegate” scandal, in which in retaliation for Joseph Wilson’s accusations that Washington was misleading the world during the lead-up to the invasion of Iraq, the identity of CIA officer Valerie Plame (Wilson’s wife) was leaked to the press by the White House, for all intents and purposes ending her career as a covert operative — he, too, has been touched by the hand of injustice. Libby, on the brink of serving a 30-month prison sentence and having lost his appeal to delay the sentence, saw President Bush commute his prison sentence, on the premise that it was “too harsh.” But this wasn’t a pardon, Bush said, as Libby remains “on parole” and will still have to pay a US$250,000 fine for lying and obstruction of justice.

“Libby’s conviction,” Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said, “was the one faint glimmer of accountability for White House efforts to manipulate intelligence and silence critics of the Iraq war.”

“Now, even that small bit of justice has been undone.”

With Libby’s contacts in Washington and his “damaged” reputation notwithstanding, it shouldn’t be too long before he, like Wolfowitz, lands a job — likely as a visiting scholar — somewhere. In fact, I would be surprised if he didn’t. After all, the like-minded stick together, right? Regarding his fine, given that, as Media Transparency (www.mediatransparency.org) shows, the salary range for scholars at AEI, for example, ranges from about US$60,000 a year for virtually unknown researchers to US$200,000 a year for better known ones (the median appears to be US$150,000), that US$250,000 fine suddenly doesn’t seem too formidable.

Would the poor recently landed Ahmed, or the hard-working Carlos, ever be extended that hand of justice? Of course not. What is 2.5 years in jail for a faceless immigrant — even when the charges against him are laughable? But for a ranking official in the US administration? Oh my, 30 months is unconscionably long. After serving their sentence, the Ahmeds and Carloses will be deported and likely fail more imprisonment, if not torture. For the "whites," however, what awaits them are lucrative jobs in comfortable think-tanks in Washington. How just.

Colonialism of the most despicable kind — that based on racism — dear readers, is alive and well.

These, sadly, are not isolated case and US history is replete with similar examples of high-level pardons, commutations and exonerations. Nor is the US alone in this. But this, a legal system that rides roughshod on the general population — and does especially so when it comes to certain groups of people — but spares, if not compensates, crooks, certainly isn’t something supposed healthy democracy should be proud of.

Taiwan and the art of the irrational

Proponents of Taiwanese sovereignty have placed such high hopes on the law that they have begun to sound like the old woman who complains to the police that the burglars should not have broken into her house because break-and-entry and robbery are against the law. Not a single week passes by that the newspaper doesn’t receive at least one op-ed about some document, signed fifty years ago, showing that China has no legal right over Taiwan. The Cairo Declaration (“Communique”) of 1943, signed by Chiang Kai-shek (蔣介石), Winston Churchill and Franklin Roosevelt (seen left, at the Cairo Conference), for example, or the Peace Treaty signed by Japan, are often the object of scrutiny by academics, as a close reading clearly shows that, despite Beijing’s claims, they never intended for Taiwan to be handed back to the People’s Republic of China.

Right though the authors may be, the problem is that theirs is a futile battle, and slash wildly as they might, their sword keeps slicing air, as the enemy chose long ago not to fight that battle.

Even though Beijing has, at times, also resorted to the “legal” aspects of its claim over Taiwan by, for example, including the opinion of so-called “experts” in state-controlled publications, it ultimately pays little attention to the law and no amount of legally based argumentation on Taipei’s part will persuade it to abandon what it sees as its own.

In an article published today in the Taipei Times, I argue that if Taiwan is to prevail in its quest to obtain recognition from the community of nations, it must focus more on the irrational. In other words, to sell itself, what it and any entity striving to achieve a similar goal must bring to light is not so much dusty legal documents that no one can dispute as arguments that appeal to the imagination.

Readers can access the article, titled Taiwan and the art of the imagination, by clicking here.

The spymaster in boots

Four years ago, give or take a week or two, I, along with another 19 individuals, was on the brink of “graduating” from what is called IOET — the Intelligence Officer Entry Training — at the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS). Back then, our trainers spared no effort drilling into our young minds that what we did in the course of our work, the places we visited — hell, the very nature of our work — should be kept secret from others at all cost. Some took this directive to such a level as to hide everything from their families.

As I have written a book, provisionally titled Smokescreen, about CSIS and its deficiencies (the manuscript is currently in the hands of my literary agent), I shall refrain from going into details in this entry, lest I give away too much of what readers will find in my book if it ever hits the shelves. Suffice it to say, however, that I experienced no small amount of surprise when, in the May 25, 2007, issue of the Toronto Star, I came across an article about Jack Hooper, the former Director of Operations (DO) and for a short period Acting Director at CSIS (www.thestar.com/News/Canada/article/217952). Part of the surprise lay in the fact that a high-ranking official would have an article published about him in a national newspaper (remember: we had been told to hide the true nature of our work from others, including officials in other branches of the Canadian government, which we did, to the best of our abilities, through the use of obliqueness and outright lies). Se there he was, the former man at the top, revealing his identity to any Canadian — to the entire world, in fact, thanks to the Internet.

The second shocker in the article was its candidness in describing some of the places Mr. Hooper had visited in the course of his work, places like Uzbekistan, Yemen, Kandahar and Lima. The heart of the matter is that readers are fully aware Mr. Hooper visited these locales in the course of his professional activities and not, as it were, as a private citizen — in other words, he wasn’t on a personal vacation there. Again, during our training, it had been repeated ad nauseam that under no circumstances were we to divulgate trips to or contacts with operational areas, as we were to maintain the myth (a pretense that had so many holes in it that it was more a sieve than a shield) that CSIS only operated domestically. So here he is, the spymaster boasting about his exploits in some of the world’s hot spots. This makes me wonder if this article was ever cleared by CSIS — as all CSIS employees, current or retired — are supposed to do, or if perhaps some of its members are just above the law. Maybe the explanation is simpler. Maybe, as is often the case, CSIS is being inconsistent, if not altogether incompetent.

For many months after I resigned from CSIS in the fall of 2005, I would avoid revealing where I had worked and be cautious in how I characterized my former employer when applying for a job. Part of me still wanted to play spy or simply wanted to respect the agreement that I had made with CSIS not to reveal where I had worked, what I had done. Some still do, choosing to hide behind a screen when testifying at the Air India inquiry, as did my former Director-General. But for the DO to open up the way he did, in an article where he is seen standing, hands in pockets, on a quay in British Columbia — that does it for me. No more hiding. If a 22-year career intelligence officer can unfold the way he did, there is no reason why someone who only practiced the same job for 29 months could not. (I had always wondered, anyway, why former CIA officials, from Robert Baer all the way to former DCI George Tenet, could publish their memoirs with such freedom while their Canadian counterparts were prevented from doing so. Case in point, on two occasions during my stint at CSIS, officials there warned me against ever writing about my experiences at CSIS).

Aside from epitomizing the greater liberties former CSIS officials now seem to enjoy in terms of talking about their former employer, what does the article in the Toronto Star have to offer? Sadly, precious little, aside from exposing a man who unfortunately stands as the perfect mascot for the macho attitude that guides CSIS and how it carries itself in the intelligence community. Here, for example, Hooper talks about CSIS and its dealings with governments that are known to disregard human rights:

“Here’s the deal. Everybody would like to believe that we have an array of choices that are good choices and bad choices. But we’re going to a dance where every girl is ugly, okay … They’re all ugly. And all we can do is get the least ugly girl to dance with. But you know, when you bring her home your dad is going to tell you, ‘That is one ugly woman.’ And you're going to say, ‘Yeah dad, but she was the best looking of that lot.’ Does that make you smart? Not in the eyes of your father.”

The above quote was in reference to the Syrian government and how CSIS became involved in the Maher Arar case, the Syrian-born Canadian who, thanks to information given the US by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP), was deported to Syria, where he is believed to have been tortured. Besides being a repugnantly misogynistic and elitist analogy, Hooper’s “ugly girl” is indicative of the mindset that prevails at CSIS, one in which the consequences of one’s actions are discarded. The proverbial man in the bar always has a choice, and if all the girls are too “ugly,” he can just leave. He doesn’t have to dance — especially when he knows that choosing to dance will harm innocent people.

Speaking about Justice O’Connor, who presided the Arar Commission, Hooper then demonstrates another undercurrent at CSIS, that of the agency that knows better than everybody else:

“Nobody knows what the right thing is to do [,] so it’s left to us to make the decision about who the least ugly girl is.”

Therein lies the danger for all Canadians, when CSIS is left to decide what is best for Canada, without the accountability and checks that can ensure the survival of a democracy. Unfortunately, these two lines perfectly describe the aversion and contempt that CSIS has shown the court system as well as the Security Intelligence Review Committee and the Inspector General, the two supposed independent yet outright fangless accountability bodies charged with monitoring how CSIS conducts its operations.

But accountability isn't the object of the Star interview. It is about the man. And above all, the one impression it leaves the reader with is that of an unpolished bully, which comments such as “I would never let my guys drink Merlot [wine]. It’s not allowed. It’s a sissy wine … It’s light and girls drink it. And it sounds funny when you say it. Mer-lot. Men should never say that,” cannot but — to pun — leave a bad taste in the reader’s mouth. Why would any self-respecting career official say such things in a “first-time” interview with a national publication? How unrefined a mind must one have to use such derogatory terms to make a point (about what, one wonders)? Beyond that, if CSIS can allow such a person to climb to the top, what does this entail for the minority groups that will be targeted by the organization in Canada? If Hooper can show such outright disrespect for women and homosexuals, how does he treat Muslims, Sikhs, Aborigines, Africans, to name a few? (See “They’re Like Us, But They’re Not,” June 2, 2006, on this blog for more on Hooper and racism).

In my 29 months at CSIS I did not have much interactions with Hooper — “the CSIS chief who has a lot to learn about the Middle East but talks far too much,” as veteran reporter Robert Fisk wrote on June 10, 2006. When I did, however, I was sitting at a long oblong table on the fifth floor of the CSIS National Headquarters building in Ottawa. Next to me was my supervisor, or "head," and at table with us were lawyers and a handful of other officials. At the opposite end, oozing cowboy-like confidence, was Jack Hooper. Every time we went in that room, it was to renew a warrant or request to add targets to our investigation. We would make a short presentation, followed by a mockery of a question-and-answer session. Usually, Hooper would have the final, or next-to-final, word — a blessing of sorts — and we would leave, added powers granted.

The uncomfortable question is, given the man that has been exposed in the article — and by rebound the organization that permitted him to reach the pinnacle of power — how confident can we be that the individuals we asked to be allowed to target in that stuffy room should be targeted?

Perhaps, like ugly girls and Merlot wine, targets can just as easily be spit out.

Of surrender, identity and one big happy family

As is always the case, it is only when one sits down and listens to people's testimonies and experiences that he or she can come closest to truly understanding a people and its history. No amount of history books — which usually focus on politics and economics while giving social aspects short shrift — can compare with a Taiwanese man, say, telling of his experiences of discrimination while working in China. Only novels, I have found, can approximate this intimacy with history. One that does that very well for the Taiwanese experience is Wu Zhuoliu's Orphan of Asia.

It was with this in mind and after having had such an encounter with living personal history that I set out to write an article on the espionage and discrimination that Taiwanese living in China are subjected to, a problem that in fact goes back well before 1949, when the Nationalist forces "lost" China to the communists and fled to Taiwan, giving rise to the cross-Strait conflict we see today.

As a colonial people with a geography and a history all their own, Taiwanese have never really belonged — despite what the Chinese say — to anyone who has put a claim on them. In reality, Taiwanese are neither Japanese nor Chinese; they are Taiwanese. True, the generation of Chinese that came to Taiwan with the retreating Nationalists still has an attachment, or an emotional link, to the Mainland, but the children born to that generation were born in Taiwan, as were all the generations born since the first Chinese came to Taiwan hundreds of years ago. Orphan of Asia, itself written by a Taiwanese living under Japanese colonialism (the book was originally written in Japanese), does an apt job portraying this sense of not belonging anywhere, a condition that is exacerbated by how Chinese and Japanese react to the Taiwan reality and how this forces Taiwanese, then as today, to hide their true identity.

If they were one big happy family, or "cousins," as Beijing refers to Taiwanese, then why must Taiwanese be treated with contempt whenever they are in China, entrepreneurs facing extortion, racism, threats and spying, not only in time of conflict, as today, but as Wu's novel shows us, well before that as well?

Readers can access the full article, titled "The myth of the big happy family," by clicking here.

Stuck in a moment

While attending the G8 summit in Germany last week, Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper may finally have revealed just how behind the times he is. Not that many of his conservative stances on numerous issues — from same sex marriage to the Israeli bombing of Lebanon last summer — had not already revealed the telltale signs of an antiquated mind, but this time around, by publicly snubbing an international celebrity-cum poverty activist who in recent years has done a lot of good for the world’s destitute, Harper may have reached a new low.

Or rather, he may have shown the extent to which his world view is tainted by big money. After all, the G8 summit is about the world’s wealthiest countries, which can afford to dine and wine while bickering about where to park their next anti-ballistic missile systems and so on. So no time to meet U2’s lead singer Bono (hence is stiff mug not appearing next to the popular musician above). Even US President George W. Bush could find the time, as did German Chancellor Angela Merkel — in the process giving publicity and lending legitimacy to a man who genuinely endeavors to find solutions to one of the planet’s worst scourges, that of poverty.

Adding insult to injury, Harper said that unlike his predecessor, he had no time to meet mere “celebrities,” that it wasn't his "style." Paul Martin, whom Harper never misses an occasion to snipe at, had met Bono, along with other celebrity activists, on a number of occasions. The implicit message in Harper’s comment was that Martin was either wasting his precious time or simply seeking to brush elbows with pop stars.

Busy prime ministerial schedule or not, a true leader should make the time to hold talks with activists who have successfully used their star status to publicize a cause. In more ways that one, it is such individuals nowadays — the Bonos, Gates and so on — who are making a true difference, not government representatives who, not unlike Harper, are too busy talking defense and business, in the process kowtowing to the US and, increasingly, to Beijing (how quickly Harper forgot about jailed human rights activist Husayin Celil).

A true leader is one who realizes that the world we live in is now much more than the sum of its countries and governments, a world where ideas and the capacity to make a difference come from technologically super-empowered individuals, to quote New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman, along with media-savvy non-state actors such as NGOs and the Bonos of this world.

A visionary leader who takes his responsibilities to the world seriously would recognize that someone like Bono, even if said leader cannot look beyond the “pop star” status, has the capacity to affect much more lives in places like Africa than any government department in Canada ever could. Bono and his like have a mobilizing power and have gained a level of respect that allows them into households with much more ease than politicians and government officials, who are often the object of suspicion, if not cynicism. Imagine for a second all the good that could be accomplished if Bono were to move the Wall Street high-flyers to give but 1 percent of the year-end bonus they collectively received last year — yes, just the bonus — which reached a whooping US$23.9 billion (Canada's total budget for foreign aid this year is C$3.45 billion, or about seven times less than that year-end bonus). Think governments, people like Stephen Harper, can accomplish such a feat? Think again. If anyone will, it will be someone like Bono.

But no. Not Harper. To realize this would be asking too much of him. Stick to old, safe protocol and the status quo (in other words, to his so-called "style"), whereby heads of state give the impression they are doing something while in reality all it is they do is perpetuate a system that leaves nearly half of the world’s population behind while rich countries continue to enrich themselves (activists have been accusing Canada of trying to block a deal that would ensure Western countries will live up to their promises to boost aid to Africa).

So in the name of many Canadians who actually care, my sincere apologies, Mr. Bono, for the man we put in office and the disrespectful manner in which he snubbed you. Harper wasn’t too busy to meet you; he simply didn’t have the vision, stuck in a moment as he is (to paraphrase one of your songs) to do so.

A corrective of sorts

For all its support for liberty and democracy, the Taipei Times has, over the years, run a great number of op-eds written by specialists from American conservatives and right-wingers whose connections to the defense establishment cannot but taint their views and diminish their credibility. In opinion piece after opinion piece, writers like John J. Tkacik of the Heritage Foundation, or Kurt M. Campbell, CEO of the Center for a New American Century, to name but two, have relentlessly argued a highly paranoid perspective on China’s military, unflaggingly called for a robust militarization of Taiwan and Japan (always contingent on and preparing for the worst-case scenarios) and unwaveringly provided arguments for US primacy through military means. From China’s less-than-transparent modernization of its military to its potential acquisition of aircraft carriers to a military budget equivalent of US$45 billion that, if we are to believe them, is in reality thrice that, these writers and others have adopted a realist, zero-sum take on regional matters, one that shows absolutely no promise of resolving tensions across the Taiwan Strait and that can only but increase the risk of something going wrong, some mistake being committed, which could very well engender catastrophic results. By banking on military deterrence alone, these writers and the decision-makers they influence are only making the problem worse by adding complexity and firepower. Of course, I strongly suspect that these pundits’ connections to right-of-the-spectrum think tanks and the defense industry play a large part in their understanding (or misunderstanding, I should say) of the situation in North East Asia, in that they are part of a system whereby its adherents enrich themselves by (a) painting a grim picture and (b) selling weapons to give the illusion that it will solve problems. Once one digs a little into the matter, it soon becomes clear that these supposed friends of Taiwan are anything but.

The fact that today’s edition of the Taipei Times contains an op-ed that I wrote on the subject gives me some relief, as it shows that by allowing me to articulate a position that goes counter to the general, pro-armament view found in its opinion pages, its owners are not merely puppets of the US military-industrial complex. Visitors to The Far-Eastern Sweet Potato will realize that this piece, A regional arms race is no answer, is a shorter and revised version of the May 10, 2007, posting titled “How the US is sparking an arms race in North East Asia.”

The man in the hall

In many ways, history is like a chemical experiment — chemicals are mixed in and the reactions are influenced by variables such as room temperature and barometric pressure. Sometimes the compound blows up in your face, while on other occasions it reacts in most unpredictable fashion. The main difference between the experiment of history and that which is conducted in a laboratory is that in the former, an experiment gone wrong cannot simply be thrown out.

As a linear experiment, history is all we have; we change it, add chemicals, the environment exerting pressures on it changes, but if something goes wrong, it takes time, effort and some amount of risk to bring it back to a stable form. No matter what is done to it, no matter what state it is in at a specific point in time, it will always be the product of everything that went into it down the chain of reactions.

This analogy would perhaps elucidate the Taiwanese lawmakers and politicians who, for a number of weeks now, have substituted their responsibilities toward the nation for bickering over the renaming of the Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall in Taipei. The polarization and fighting that has resulted from the proposed name change — to Taiwan Democracy Hall — has reached a level of absurdity possibly unparalleled in the long history of party warfare, to such an extent that the Taipei City Government has begun splitting hairs on the law, making the CKS Hall a temporary historical site and suing a ministry for putting up banners on the walls surrounding the monument during the renaming ceremony a few weeks ago. In an ill-concealed stab at President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁), the city government has also proposed renaming part of a boulevard Anti-Corruption Democracy Square, a likely, though unacknowledged, reference to an ongoing investigation into the president's use of special state funds.

The much ado stems from the ongoing debate over the role Chiang Kai-shek (蔣介石) played in the history of Taiwan. Some, mostly on the Kuomintang (KMT) side, see him as the man who saved Taiwan from communism and brought it modernity, while others, mostly Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) supporters, see him as a dictator who tyrannized Taiwanese during the White Terror, imprisoning thousands and killing tens of thousands. The KMT would also have us believe that the DPP’s move to rename CKS Hall is yet another instrument in its quest for Taiwanese independence.

The result from all this has been that many important development projects in Taiwan — including this year’s budget — have been brought to a standstill.

What both parties, and Taiwanese, must realize is that like him or not, Chiang is among the chemical ingredients that make Taiwan what it is today, for better or worse. He is part of its genetic code. Reviling the man to no end and removing every reference to his reign will not change the fact that he is very much part of the fabric of the country. There is no knowing what would have happened had someone else, after losing to the civil war in China in 1949, fled to Taiwan — or, for that matter, what the outcome would have been absent a massive relocation there. The possibilities are limitless, and there is little point in pondering the what ifs. A far worse fate could conceivably have been reserved Taiwan, as today it could be another North Korea or, for that matter, China, with fewer rights and greater inequality.

Taiwanese must move on (and I suspect many, if not most, are begging to do so, were it not for the politicians who have hijacked this issue to gain points) and acknowledge the role the Generalissimo played in the history of their nation, regardless of the outcome and irrespective of whether this outcome is what he had in mind or not. He is part of the chemical mix, and there is no going back.

However, by expending undue time, energy and money debating whether he was a dictator or not, the devil incarnate or the savior of Taiwan, Taiwanese have allowed the slumbering man in the hall to reign over Taiwan once more, this time from beyond the grave.

If, as many suspect, Chiang was an opponent of democracy, upon close scrutiny of the massive statue that sits eternally inside the hall, the onlooker might perhaps see a trace of a smile.

It’s time for asymmetric warfare

In an article appearing in the May 21, 2007, issue of the Taipei Times, I take the discussion on Taiwan’s failed bid to become a full member of the World Health Organization (WHO) further and propose alternatives through which Taiwan could still tap into the global health resources and share its expertise with the rest of the world without having to rely on Geneva. Using a warfare analogy of a weak opponent facing a strong one, I argue that what Taipei must do is adopt guerrilla tactics, by attacking the stronger opponent — the UN-China nexus — where it is weaker by taking advantage of the possibilities offered by the 21st century in terms of connectivity and technology. In other words, what I propose for Taiwan is that it bypass the WHO altogether.

As I have proposed in my previous writings on the topic, by remaining fixed on sovereign states, the WHO is neglecting its duty to adapt to the changing realities of the world, a shortcoming that could prove disastrous at some point in the future. As a non-recognized state, Taiwan, with the help of non-state actors — NGOs, laboratories, donors, etc — could play a leading role in pushing the international community to join the 21st century on health and epidemiological matters by using non-state-fixed networks of communication.

Readers can access the full article by clicking here.

Behind the red veil in Beijing

As many readers will probably know by now, Taiwan’s application for membership at the World Health Organization (WHO) was dropped for the 11th strait time on Monday, mostly as a result of Beijing’s insistence that Taiwan is one of its provinces and that WHO membership can only be conferred on states recognized by the UN General Assembly.

In an article published today in the Taipei Times I argue that states must look beyond politics on international health issues and recognize that the fate of the planet’s 6.5 billion people should not rest in the hands of decision-makers in Beijing, who cannot even make the health of their own citizens a priority — except, as in 2003, when the SARS outbreak had reached such proportions as to threaten social stability and the economy. In other words, when it is too late. After dawdling for months, the central government shifted gear and mobilized its resources to contain the epidemic — and in all fairness it did so rather successfully, albeit using mass quarantine tactics that far exceeded (as only totalitarian state can) guidelines on the matter and may even have included dissidents. And while there were reasons for optimism during the months following the SARS outbreak that the lessons learned would have long-term repercussions on how China deals with its epidemics — including its very serious AIDS problem — recent analysis has shown that soon thereafter Beijing returned to normal business, as if SARS had not occurred.

This, above anything else, once again serves to prove that under normal circumstances, Beijing cannot be counted on to act as a responsible global citizen. And the fact of the matter is, epidemics and pandemics first emerge under normal circumstances. Absent a rigorous monitoring and reporting health system, and openness in the media — in other words, under the system China soon fell back into after SARS — the next epidemic will not immediately be detected, and by the time global resources are mobilized, it may be to late to prevent a pandemic.

If they stay the course, politicians in the rest of the world, I conclude, could wake up one day and realize that all their efforts to curry favor with Beijing and win the next big business deal were in vain, as they will have a major pandemic on their hands.

Enough said. Readers can access the full article by clicking here.

Thinking for an old world

In its rejection e-mail, a certain Canadian newspaper (hint: it is a pro-business, right-of-center publication) to which I had submitted a piece on Taiwan’s renewed bid to join the World Health Organization (WHO) was very revealing of how it sees things.

Taiwan’s application, the newspaper informed me, is a “stale issue,” nothing more than an indirect attempt by the “island” to obtain “some form of independence.” Debatable, but not impossible.

The really telling part in the editor’s answer, however, was that surely, in time of crisis, Taiwan could rely on the US and its Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) for assistance, ergo, no need for WHO membership.

Aside from the fact that this response indirectly makes a case for China not being able to represent Taiwan on health issues (which it claims it should), it is indicative of a flawed understanding of international health in the 21st century. Before instantaneous international travel, the International Health Regulations (IHR), the WHO’s guiding principles, focused on eradicating known diseases and were, for the most part, sufficient. But as the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) outbreak of 2003 clearly showed, times have changed and fixing a problem once it has emerged is often far too late. The revised IHR — revised in the wake of the SARS outbreak — now emphasize monitoring and prevention so that outbreaks like SARS or H5N1 (avian flu) can be identified and kept endemic before they turn into a pandemic. By the time the CDC arrived in Taiwan to “give assistance,” it would probably be too late and the disease would likely have spread to other countries.

There is nothing stale about Taiwan’s application to become a full participant in the WHO. It seeks to participate because it realizes the world cannot afford to have blind spots. While I have yet to fully study the issue, it is very likely that Taiwan’s efforts at combating its SARS outbreak in 2003 (in which 73 people died) were mitigated by the fact that it could not immediately tap into WHO resources. (Taiwanese officials posit that Beijing used politics to delay the dispatch of WHO medical specialists to Taiwan during the outbreak.)

The only stale thing is the archaic belief that reacting to a problem after it has emerged is sufficient. Stale, and dangerous.

For the 11th consecutive year, Taiwan's bid to join the WHO was rejected at the World Health Assembly in Geneva today. The reason given for this decision, as always, was that the WHO, in agreement with China's position, will only grant membership to sovereign states.

A need to prioritize

Facing relentless pressure from Beijing, many Taiwanese pundits have made the claim that Taiwan is making a mistake by teaching Chinese Mandarin, as the language could serve as some kind of Trojan Horse for Beijing. Instead, they claim, Taiwanese should teach themselves and expatriates indigenous languages like Hoklo as a first line of defense.

In an article titled "Language is never a first line of defense" published on May 12 in the Taipei Times, I draw a parallel between this strategy and the belief in Quebec that only independence can protect the French language. Furthermore, I argue that in both cases the proponents of a language-driven strategy are looking at the wrong aspects of the problem and wasting energy that had better been used elsewhere. Ultimately, their error stems from the belief that language and culture are coterminous.

Readers can access the full article by clicking here.

How the US is sparking an arms race in North East Asia

In a time when countries all over the globe feel the need to genuflect at the Washington altar before committing to any policy — and those who don’t are quickly labeled rogues — it would perhaps be in our interest to analyze the content of the White House dictates.

Leaving aside the Orwellian farce that US policy on Iraq has become, Washington’s rhetoric as pertains to North East Asia, and Taiwan in particular, reveals a leviathan that clearly has no idea how to articulate, let alone formulate, its long-term policies. More often than Taiwanese care to be reminded, US policymakers have held on to the principle of a “peaceful” solution to the dragging Taiwan Strait tensions. Whether the terminology comes from the White House itself, the Pentagon, Foggy Bottom or the countless talking heads at the various think tanks peppering Washington, “status quo,” “one China,” “strategic ambiguity” and whatever euphemism is de rigueur at the time, all the rhetoric posits that somehow, at some indistinct point in time, China and Taiwan shall miraculously drop the gloves and make up. Speaking earlier this week at a forum on US-Japan security at the conservative Heritage Foundation, former commander of US forces in the Pacific Dennis Blair added his voice to the above-mentioned chorus by saying that “the way to solve [regional festering problems] by peaceful means is to ensure that the use of military force by either the PRC [People’s Republic of China] or North Korea will be unsuccessful ... and therefore peaceful means will be the way to solve [them].”

This is all nice and well, but the problem is that parallel to all this abundance of “peaceful” talk is the forceful push by Washington for Taiwan to boost its defenses through the procurement of US-made weapons — most but certainly not all defensive in nature — and increasing anger over Taipei’s inability to unlock the funds necessary to do so. Simultaneously, and again a position echoed by Blair, Washington has been calling upon Japan to play a more proactive security role in the region, to such an extent that the White House is no longer averse to allowing Tokyo to alter the very peaceful Constitution that the US imposed upon Japan in the wake of its defeat in World War II.

The reason behind Washington’s change of heart on Japan, however, isn’t altruistic. In fact, in a different world, Washington would rather keep Tokyo under its heel, as it seeks to prevent countries that could at some point in the future challenge it militarily from doing so (a policy initially formulated by the embattled Paul Wolfowitz as the Cold War was winding down and appropriated for official policy a few years ago). But given the current template, with US forces stretched close to the limit and troop withdrawal from Iraq or otherwise, signs that they will remain engaged in the Middle East for years to come, Washington needs “dependable” allies — or proxies — to do its bidding in other regions of the world. For North East Asia, Japan is quickly becoming the US’ indispensable forward guard. Hysterical perceptions from certain quarters of the Washington establishment vis-à-vis the China “threat” aside, and in spite of the “peaceful” resolution rhetoric, what Washington is accomplishing in North East Asia is a militarization of the region, an outcome it conveniently blames on a Chinese military build-up.

No one, however, ever asks whether Beijing’s modernization of its military might not be in response to the sense of encirclement that the bolstered US-Japan alliance has engendered.

From Washington’s perspective, the push for militarization stems from two drivers: lucrative contracts for its flowering military-industrial complex and, the one it more readily admits to and uses in its rhetoric, military deterrence. Regardless of the efficiency of the types of weapons Washington has been pressing on Taiwan — raising the question often results in accusations of Taiwan “freeloading” on defense — the pressure is on Washington, through various defense lobbies, to complete the transaction.

Past experience, with Saudi Arabia providing a lurid example, shows that billions of dollars of US weapons cannot guarantee the security of a state. When, in 1990, Iraqi forces threatened to press forward into the Kingdom after invading Kuwait, Riyadh found itself incapable of mounting a proper defense and nearly begged Washington to come to its rescue (after first turning down Osama Bin Laden’s offer to do so). Given the force disparities between China and Taiwan, it is unlikely that a few additional air defense systems, along with some submarines, would represent so formidable a deterrent as to make Beijing think twice before launching an attack. US defense analysts debating this issue with regard to Taiwan (or any of the small states in the Middle East to which the US has opened its arms catalogues in the past years, culminating in an unprecedented shopping spree in Abu Dhabi in February), sadly, have distinguished themselves by their silence.

Japan, on the other hand, does hold the potential to mount a formidable military. Thanks to the size of its economy and a stunningly healthy military with an estimated US$45 billion budget and one of the world’s most advanced navies, a Japan freed of its pacific Constitution and unleashed as a regional peacekeeper would be a tremendous force and, in Washington’s view, a powerful deterrent to Chinese (and North Korean) aggression.

The flaw in Washington’s strategy of militarizing the region, however, is that it is predicated on a flawed understanding of deterrence, with its proponents having developed the concept during an altogether different era — the Cold War. Back then, deterrence worked mostly because failure to prevent war ran the risk of resulting in nuclear annihilation for both sides of the divide, the West and the Soviet Union. The reason why you are able to read this blog today has much to do with the fact that rational decision-makers chose to abide by the logic of deterrence from the perspective of the nuclear threat.

Absent the threat of annihilation, however, deterrence loses much of its effect and is even more fickle when one of the belligerents is the size of China, with numerous key cities and multifarious strategic nodes. In fact, in conventional warfare, an arms race — such as the one that has been sparked by the US, Taiwan and China — creates its own upwards dynamics, but it does not make the threat of war any less. In fact, it only exacerbates the likelihood of error resulting in military exchanges. The more players are part of the conflict equation, the greater the quantity and complexity of the weapons involved, the likelier that, at some point, human or systems error will lead to an accident with terrible consequences — and this is before we even add political tensions resulting from such conflict accelerators as nationalism and disputed territory to the mix.

Two belligerents armed with nothing but slingshots cannot do much damage, accidental or otherwise. Four belligerents equipped with advanced systems involving thousands of missiles, with intricate, shifting alliance structures, however, and any mishap can be catastrophic.

If Washington means what it says about facilitating a peaceful resolution to the Taiwan Strait conflict, it had fain reconsider the dangerous arms race it is on the verge of sparking in North East Asia. Faith in conventional deterrence amid a modern arms race simply comports too many risks.

Update

A week has now passed since my article “Why Celil doesn’t stand a chance” was published in the Taipei Times (see “The forgotten Canadian,” April 28 below). Canadian Foreign Minister Peter MacKay has done his visit to Beijing, where, as he had said prior to leaving Ottawa, he “raised” the issue with the Chinese authorities and in return received a healthy dose of propaganda to the effect that Celil had been treated humanely while in jail. As I predicted in my article, little more has happened since, and MacKay, who continued on to South Korea to talk trade and pressed Seoul to life its ban on Canadian beef, seemed content with the “assurances” he had received concerning the jailed Canadian. Equally sad, a mere day after MacKay’s talks in Beijing and already the news wires had abandoned Celil, as did the Canadian media. The Canadian embassy in Beijing’s Web site, for its part, did not carry a single item on the issue, aside from the mention, prior to the visit, that the foreign minister intended to raise the issue.

Meanwhile — and perhaps more encouragingly — my story has appeared on a number of Web sites (one dedicated to freeing Celil, another calling for a boycott of the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing and the Uyghur American Association), and the Voice of America interview that I did on April 27 has been carried by at least two dozen Chinese-language Web sites in Taiwan, the US and Canada.

Hopefully things will change. But I strongly doubt it.