Joseph Solis-Mullen | The Libertarian Institute

The Case for Pessimism in Sino-American Relations

by Joseph Solis-Mullen | Sep 18, 2024 | Featured Articles, Foreign Policy

On September 11, the Chicago Tribune published an op-ed by the director of the Asia Engagement Program at Defense Priorities and director of the China Initiative at Brown University, Dr. Lyle Goldstein, on the need for Washington to work to improve its relations with Beijing. Formerly a research professor at the U.S. Naval War College for two decades, Dr. Goldstein retains nothing but respect from this author—referencing him at several points in The Fake China Threat and Its Very Real Danger regarding the security situation around the Taiwan Strait. However, I could not but remark upon a few...

A Tale of Two Disputes: How China Handles Hanoi and Manila

by Joseph Solis-Mullen | Sep 12, 2024 | Featured Articles, Foreign Policy

A recent article in the South China Morning Post caught my eye—the topic being why Beijing has taken such an apparently different approach to its territorial disputes with Vietnam versus the similar disputes it has with the Philippines. Given the now weekly near misses between competing claimants in the South China Sea, the topic is a timely one, and in analyzing Beijing's contrasting responses to territorial claims by Vietnam and the Philippines in the South China Sea, it becomes clear that China's strategic calculations are shaped by varying historical, political, and diplomatic dynamics....

Democratization as Regime Preservation

by Joseph Solis-Mullen | Sep 5, 2024 | Featured Articles, Foreign Policy

When in the 1970s it became increasingly clear Taipei and its allies in the United States were no longer going to be able to postpone Washington’s recognition of the Chinese Communist Party government in Beijing, the longtime dictator of Taiwan, Chiang Kai-shek, grasped for a solution to the problem of how his regime was to survive de-recognition as the official government of China. The answer? Democratization. This strategy, which his successors embraced and ultimately fulfilled over the course of the 1980s and 1990s, proved far-sighted. Taiwan’s democratization process began in the late...

The Third Taiwan Straits Crisis and Its Enduring Lesson

by Joseph Solis-Mullen | Aug 29, 2024 | Featured Articles, Foreign Policy

In the words of Justin Raimondo, from his 2011 article, “How decision-makers react to events beyond our borders is decisively shaped by domestic political considerations.” This theory of foreign relations, libertarian realism, eschews the typical narrative of mysterious collectivist forces that drive events. It thus places blame firmly where it belongs when things, as they so often do, blow up in everyone’s faces: politicians catering to domestic political constituencies, the focus being on their own careers and not a fictitious “national interest.” Using the Third Taiwan Strait Crisis...

How Taiwan Became an Issue

by Joseph Solis-Mullen | Aug 22, 2024 | Featured Articles, Foreign Policy

Given that official Washington seems increasingly determined to fight Beijing over Taiwan, concerned Americans are right to wonder: how did the question of Taiwan come to be of such purported importance to these global powers? While several closer islands, such as the Penghu (or the Pescadores as they are now known), were incorporated into the Chinese polity during the period of Ming blue water exploration in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, Formosa (or Taiwan as it came to be known) never was. After shuttering its large scale naval activities in the mid-fifteenth century, the Ming...

The Taiwan Problem You (Probably) Don’t Know

by Joseph Solis-Mullen | Aug 15, 2024 | Featured Articles, Foreign Policy

Taiwan is today lauded for its vibrant democracy, open economy, and progressive society. However, behind this shining exterior is a dark and brutal history that is frequently overlooked; or in the case of Washington and its loyal corporate mouthpieces, purposefully ignored. For before its democratization in the 1990s, Taiwan was a harsh authoritarian police state under the rule of Chiang Kai-shek and his son Chiang Ching-kuo. This period, marked by severe repression and systemic terror, is an essential chapter in Taiwan’s history that Americans should know, particularly given the enduring...

Further China Reading

by Joseph Solis-Mullen | Aug 3, 2024 | Blog

From a reader: “Hello Joseph. I just ordered your book, and I noticed it was short. I would like to know if there is an up to date book on American foreign policy towards China that you could recommend that is well-researched and truthful with good policy suggestions. Thanks! I know next to nothing about America-China relations and I am looking forward to reading your book.” My response: “I wish I could […] the fact I can’t is a major reason I am working on a much longer book focused solely on the evolution of American policy toward China. Thanks for reading!” So, yes, once the National Debt...

A Temporary Calm in the South China Sea

by Joseph Solis-Mullen | Jul 22, 2024 | Featured Articles, Foreign Policy

After a particularly fraught period, complete with water cannons, near collisions, and an actual melee where a Filippino sailor apparently lost a thumb, things in the South China Sea look set to settle down following Manila and Beijing’s reaching of a "provisional arrangement" to deescalate tensions over the disputed South China Sea reef known as Second Thomas Shoal. The deal, which was announced over the weekend by a spokesperson for the Philippines’ Department of Foreign Affairs, will see Chinese coastguard vessels allow the resupply of the Philippines’ forces stationed on the disputed...

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