Taiwan is not being 'Finlandized'

The newspaper announced on Saturday its editor-in-chief Hsia Chen and its China Times Weekly president Wang Mei-yu exchanged their posts. Tongues are wagging about the owner of the publication group compelled by Beijing to fire Hsia for calling Chen Yunlin, chairman of the Association for Relations across the Taiwan Strait, as a “C-list” politician. While he was in Taichung to sign three agreements with his counterpart in Taipei P.K. Chiang, Chen was reported to be the guest many an “A-list” Kuomintang and People First Party politician wished to honor at dinner. Downgrading Chen as a “C-lister” is believed to have brought the ire of Beijing.

Much earlier, speculation was rife that President Ma refused to condemn the massacre at Tiananmen Square on its twentieth anniversary and denied entry to Uighur independence fighter Rebiya Kadeer lest he should anger Taiwan's giant communist neighbor. That is Finlandization of Taiwan, an American political scientist believes.

In an article in the latest issue of the prestigious Foreign Affairs bimonthly, Bruce Gilley, assistant professor of political science at Portland State University's Mark O. Hatfield School of Government, expounds how the Finlandization of Taiwan benefits U.S. Security.

Let's first define Finlandization. It is the influence that one powerful country may have on the policies of a smaller neighboring state. It means the process of turning into a country which, although maintaining national sovereignty, in foreign policies resolves not to challenge a more powerful neighbor. It is commonly used in reference to Finland's policies vis-a-vis the Soviet Union during the Cold War, but could refer to similar international relations, including relations between the two sides of the Taiwan Strait.

A Finlandized Taiwan would reposition itself as a neutral power rather than a U.S. strategic ally, Professor Gilley opines. Even from a strictly realist perspective, he argues, there is no need for the United States to keep Taiwan within its strategic orbit and its Finlandization is “a godsend for a U.S. administration that increasingly needs China's cooperation in achieving its highest priority” — the maintenance of the peaceful international order which requires closer cooperation between Washington and Beijing.

Well, there are a lot of similarities in the situations between Finland in the Cold War era and Taiwan at the moment, but that does not mean Taiwan is being Finlandized and its Finlandization offers a chance that comes to Uncle Sam once in a blue moon. For one thing, as far as perceptions of the policy within Finland go, Finlandization has been explained as “the art of bowing to the East without mooning the West.” President Ma isn't doing just that.

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