Deal includes spare parts for fighter jets and radar systems as President Lai heads to Pacific, with stops in US.

Taiwanese officials withdraw Lin from the event in the UK to 'avoid further harm' to the Paris 2024 gold medallist.

Early in Yáng Shuāng-zǐ’s Taiwan Travelogue, the narrator, on a late night train, watches her traveling companion become engrossed in a book. When she asks about it, the woman balks at the interruption. “Her soul,” the narrator observes, “seemed to slot back into her body.” A good book can briefly steal your soul, replacing it with its own.

But some books make you fight for that privilege; Taiwan Travelogue is one. Translated from Mandarin by Lin King, the novel about love, colonialism, war, and food—which this week won the National Book Award for translated literature—is intentionally constructed to make its soul difficult to locate. The book is framed as a new Mandarin translation of an autobiographical 1954 Japanese novel by the author Aoyama Chizuko, which was itself based on her earlier collection of travel columns. (Chizuko is a fictional creation; the original Mandarin edition of Taiwan Travelogue sparked controversy by listing her as its author, and Yáng as the translator.) It is supplemented with footnotes by Yáng, as well as notes by Chizuko and various (fictional) scholars.

All these layers of commentary serve to make the story’s emotional center more difficult to access, and more fulfilling once you’ve earned it. The novel follows Chizuko as she spends a year in Japan-colonized Taiwan starting in 1938. While engaged in a lecture tour organized by the colonial government, she writes travel dispatches in an attempt to grasp something of the true nature of her host country. She tries, as well, to learn the true nature of the interpreter who serves as her guide, a young Taiwanese woman who, under the colonial government, has been given the name Ō Chizuru.

From the start, Chizuru enchants Chizuko. (The novel makes a running joke of the similarity of their names.) She is gentle but steely, warmhearted but reserved, full of surprising knowledge and interests, enormously skilled at hiding her feelings. Chizuko’s feelings for Chizuru, which remain purposely ambiguous—she refers to them as friendship, but they sound like romantic love—come to dominate her time in Taiwan. She is a blunt woman, who bluntly wants two things: to discover the source of “the resilience and vitality that coursed through this formidable colony,” and to be closer to Chizuru.

Chizuko’s chosen tool in both investigations is food. In her mid-20s—only a few years older than her guide—and already a renowned novelist, she is obsessed with eating: Her family teases her that she has a monster’s appetite. Upon her arrival in Taiwan, she is determined to eat her way to the heart of the island. She is not interested in wasting her time with the traditional Japanese foods generally eaten by visiting “mainlanders”—a term used throughout the novel to refer to the colonists—but instead in the island’s cuisine, from the richest delicacies to the simplest stews. And over these meals, she tries to figure out her enigmatic translator and form a genuine connection.

[Read: The 12 most unforgettable descriptions of food in literature]

In trying to understand both island and interpreter, Chizuko finds at best partial success. But her gustatory quest for intimacy still yields insight—primarily into the ways that taste, among all the senses, most defines the essence of a person. It does so in part by tying them to the time and place in which they live.

But when your homeland has been under foreign control for centuries, your tastes are inevitably shaped by that reality—by the culinary traditions the colonizers bring with them, and by the attempts to maintain traditional flavors in the face of erasure. Chizuko sees Taiwan—controlled by a series of rulers including the Dutch, China’s Qīng dynasty, and Japan—as a land of wonders in need of preservation before they are overcome by forced assimilation and modernization. Chizuru gently points out that colonialism has already turned much of Taiwan’s native culture into a relic of history. “How far back should one go when lamenting such cruelties?” she asks.

Chizuko is proudly opposed to Japan’s imperialism. She insists on eating absolutely everything that represents the “true” Taiwan, down to a soup made from jute leaves, traditionally fare for the very poor, that Chizuru bluntly says “does not taste good.” But, it turns out, Chizuko is adventurous only so long as she feels secure in her own identity. Late in the novel, she is forced to take a clear look at how much her privilege as a mainlander has made her oblivious to the experiences of others, and how easily the directness she prizes in herself can come across as coercive. With her sense of self painfully disrupted, she turns to the food of home, quickly abandoning her interest in the fresh, surprising delicacies of Taiwan. “I ate only neko-manma rice”—a dish that a footnote by Yáng describes as “simple Japanese household fare”—“egg over rice, or white toast with sugared butter,” she writes.

There is an additional, complicating story behind Chizuko’s travelogue turned novel. Her initial columns about Taiwan were written in 1938 and 1939, in the lead-up to World War II; when she revisits this material in the early 1950s to write Taiwan Travelogue, it is her own country that is occupied—by the victorious Allied forces led by the United States. The end of the war meant the end of Japan’s rule in Taiwan, a rupture that seems to have provoked, for Chizuko, a sense of personal loss: Her connection to an island that she had once seen as a temporary second home was severed. It’s easy to imagine that the harsh experience of life under another country’s occupation prompted her to revisit a moment in which she herself had represented a colonial power without truly understanding her complicity.

Yáng has structured her novel like a matryoshka doll: a straightforward story surrounded by many twisting layers of mystery. The most profound of those mysteries is Chizuru, herself an expert at getting to the core of things. She is perpetually shown in the act of peeling or shelling foods that she then offers Chizuko. Roasted seeds known as kue-tsí, peanuts, fava beans, lychees, sweet potatoes: She is constantly navigating past spiky, tough, finicky exteriors so that Chizuko can enjoy the treats within. As the duo travel and eat their way around Taiwan, with Chizuru always peeling, peeling, peeling, Chizuko tries to do some unearthing of her own, making guesses at who this fascinating, discreet woman really is.

In the end, Chizuko cannot fully get to know her inscrutable companion without first learning the truth about herself, which Chizuru eventually helps her see. That truth: Power—even when wielded unintentionally—obscures, making those who have it less perceptive about the world around them. There is a reason that Chizuko always mangles her attempts to extract a delicacy from its shell—“despite enlisting both my fingers and my teeth, I could barely fish out the seeds” of a lychee, she writes—while Chizuru makes that work look effortless. Only one of them has had to learn the art of subtlety, the tool of the disempowered.

[Read: I went to Taiwan to say goodbye]

Today, Taiwan is autonomously governed, but not recognized by most countries as independent. In the days before the American presidential election, China, which has in recent years ramped up intimidation against the island, meaningfully suggested that Donald Trump would turn his back on Taiwan’s defense if he returned to office. The reminder of Taiwan’s precariousness, perpetually susceptible to the whims of the greater powers invested in it, lends additional gravity to Taiwan Travelogue. Within Yáng’s tough assessment of her well-meaning and fundamentally likable narrator lies a plea for introspection on the part of the powerful, and a reminder of what is at stake when that responsibility is neglected.

In one quiet, telling scene, Chizuru takes Chizuko to harvest jute plants so they can make the awful-tasting soup she promised. It’s a much more complicated endeavor than Chizuko had imagined: “While experienced jute pickers could distinguish the usable, tender leaves at a glance, novices could not necessarily tell the difference even when touching them,” she writes. A soul—of a country or of a person—is a tender thing, hidden by the toughened tissue around it. It is easy to destroy it in the process of discovering it. Easy, and brutal.

Fans scream and confetti cannons explode as Taiwan's baseball team ride in military vehicles through the capital.

Taipei's defence ministry says 12 Chinese military aircraft and seven warships were detected until early Monday.

Trump's presidency could see escalating trade wars. But ties have been rocky under Biden too.

The Biden administration has finalized Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company’s (TSM) Chips Act incentive funding to support its U.S. fabrication sites.

Read more...

Russian drone and missile strikes on Ukrainian targets have increased in frequency in the week since the U.S. election, killing civilians and destroying another dam. Russian troops continued to make incremental gains toward the city of Pokrovsk. The Russian army is preparing a new offensive, this time using North Korean troops. Russian President Vladimir Putin congratulated Donald Trump on his election but implied that he would have discussions only if the U.S. initiates talks, drops its sanctions, and refuses to offer any further support for Ukraine—accepting, in other words, a Russian victory. Meanwhile, Russian state television welcomed news of the election by gleefully showing nude photographs of Melania Trump on the country’s most-watched channel.

How will the new U.S. administration respond? What should the outgoing administration do?

In one sense, nothing will change. For nearly three years, many, many people, from the right to the left, in Europe and in America, have called for negotiations to end the Russian invasion of Ukraine. The Biden administration repeatedly probed the possibility of negotiations. The German government endlessly proposed negotiations. Now a new team will arrive in Washington, and it will be demanding negotiations too.

[Read: Helping Ukraine is Europe’s job now]

The new team will immediately run into the same dilemma that everyone else has encountered: “Land for peace” sounds nice, but the president of Russia isn’t fighting for land. Putin is fighting not to conquer Pokrovsk but to destroy Ukraine as a nation. He wants to show his own people that Ukraine’s democratic aspirations are hopeless. He wants to prove that a whole host of international laws and norms, including the United Nations Charter and the Geneva conventions, no longer matter. His goal is not to have peace but to build concentration camps, torture civilians, kidnap 20,000 Ukrainian children, and get away with it—which, so far, he has.

Putin also wants to show that America, NATO, and the West are weak and indecisive, regardless of who is president, and that his brutal regime represents some kind of new global standard. And now, of course, he also needs to show his country that nearly three years of fighting had some purpose, given that this costly, bloody, extended war, officially described as nothing more than a “special military operation,” was supposed to end in a matter of days. Maybe Putin could be interested in stopping the fight for some period of time. Maybe he could be threatened into halting his advance, or bribed with an offer of sanctions relief. But any cease-fire treaty that does not put some obstacle—security guarantees, NATO troops in Ukraine, major rearmament—in the way of another invasion will fail sooner or later because it will simply give Russia an opportunity to rest, rearm, and resume pursuit of the same goals later on.

Putin will truly stop fighting only if he loses the war, loses power, or loses control of his economy. And there is plenty of evidence that he fears all three, despite his troops’ slow movement forward. He would not have imported thousands of North Korean soldiers if he had an infinite number of Russians to replace the more than 600,000 soldiers whom he has lost to injury or death. He would not have paid American YouTubers to promote anti-Ukrainian propaganda if he wasn’t worried by the American public’s continued support for Ukraine. His economy is in trouble: Russian inflation is rising fast; Russian interest rates are now at 21 percent; Russian industries particularly vulnerable to sanctions, such as liquefied natural gas, are suffering. The Russian navy was humiliated in the Black Sea. The Russian military has still not recaptured territory lost in Russia’s Kursk province, conquered by the Ukrainians last summer.

When the next U.S. president, secretary of defense, and secretary of state take office, they will discover that they face the same choices that the current administration did. They can increase Putin’s agony using economic, political, and military tools and make sure he stops fighting. Or they can let him win, quickly or slowly. But a Russian victory will not make Europe safer or the U.S. stronger. Instead, the costs will grow higher: A massive refugee crisis, an arms race, and possibly a new round of nuclear proliferation could follow as European and Asian democracies assess the new level of danger from the autocratic world. An invasion of Taiwan becomes more likely. An invasion of a NATO state becomes thinkable.

[Karl Marlantes and Elliot Ackerman: The abandonment of Ukraine]

In the final two months of his presidency, Joe Biden, together with Ukraine’s European allies, will have one last chance to push Russia hard, to respond to the extraordinary Russian–North Korean escalation, and to stabilize the Ukrainian front line. This is Biden’s last chance to allow Ukraine to carry out long-range strikes against targets inside Russia. Although the Russians can strike any target, military or civilian, anywhere in Ukraine and at any time, the Ukrainians have been limited to their own drones. They have had some startling successes—their drone operations are now the world’s most sophisticated—including hitting military factories all over Russia, and several targets in Moscow this week. But to stop attacks on their cities and to prevent the Russian military from moving troops and equipment toward their borders, they need to be able to use missiles to hit air bases and logistical hubs inside Russia too.

Even more important is the question of money. Biden must press upon the Europeans, as a matter of urgency, the need to transfer frozen Russian assets to Kyiv—not just the interest but the capital. This money—more than $300 billion—can be used to purchase weapons, rebuild the country, and keep the economy going for many months. Most of this money is in European institutions whose leaders have delayed making final decisions about it for fear that Russia will retaliate against European companies, especially French and German companies that still have assets in Russia. But now time is running short: Perhaps the Trump administration will preserve sanctions on Russia, but perhaps it will not.

Biden’s team says it will expedite the delivery of the remaining weapons and resources that Congress has already designated for Ukraine. The goals should be to stabilize the front lines and prevent a collapse in Ukrainian morale; to provide long-term support, including spare parts so that repairs and maintenance of existing weapons systems can continue; and, most of all, to hit the North Korean troops in Kursk. It’s very important that the North Korean leadership perceives this escapade as a catastrophic failure, and as quickly as possible, so that more troops aren’t sent in the future.

After that? The choices, and the stakes, remain very similar to what they were in February 2022. Either we inflict enough economic pressure and military pain to convince Russia that the war can never be won, or we deal with the far more ominous, and far more expensive, consequences of Ukraine’s loss. Biden has a few more weeks to make a difference. It will then be up to Trump to decide whether he will help Ukraine to succeed and to survive, or whether he will push Ukraine to fail, along with the broader democratic world.

Americans voted for change in this week’s presidential election, and in foreign policy, they’ll certainly get it. Donald Trump has shown disdain for the priorities and precedents that have traditionally guided Washington’s approach to the world. He speaks more fondly of America’s autocratic adversaries than of its democratic allies. He derides “globalism” as a liberal conspiracy against the American people. And he treats international agreements as little more than wastepaper.

At stake is not only the survival of Ukraine and the fate of Gaza, but the entire international system that forms the foundation of American global power. That system is built upon American military might, but more than that, it is rooted in relationships and ideals—nations with shared values coming together under U.S. leadership to deter authoritarian aggression and uphold democracy. The resulting world order may be badly flawed and prone to error, but it has also generally preserved global stability since the end of World War II.

Despite its endurance, this system is fragile. It is sustained by an American promise to hold firm to its commitments and ensure collective defense. Trump threatens that promise. His plan to impose high tariffs on all imports could disrupt the liberal economic order on which many American factories and farmers (and Trump’s billionaire buddies) rely. His apparent willingness to sacrifice Ukraine to Russian President Vladimir Putin in some misguided pursuit of peace will strain the Atlantic alliance and undermine security in Europe. By signaling that he won’t defend Taiwan from a Chinese invasion, he could undercut confidence in the United States throughout Asia and make a regional war more likely.

[From the December 2024 issue: My hope for Palestine]

The American global order could end. This would not be a matter of “American decline.” The U.S. economy will likely remain the world’s largest and most important for the foreseeable future. But if Washington breaks its promises, or even if its allies and enemies believe it has or will—or if it fails to uphold democracy and rule of law at home—the pillars of the American international system will collapse, and the United States will suffer an immeasurable loss of global influence and prestige.

The risk that this will happen has been gathering for some time. George W. Bush’s unilateralist War on Terror strained the international system. So did Trump’s disputes with NATO and other close allies during his first term. But world leaders could write off Washington’s wavering as temporary deviations from what has been a relatively consistent approach to foreign policy over decades. They understand the changeability of American politics. In four years, there will be another election and a new administration may restore Washington’s usual priorities.

With Trump’s reelection, however, the aberration has become the new normal. The American people have told the world that they no longer wish to support an American-led world order. They have chosen U.S. policy makers who promise to focus on the home front instead of on the troubles of ungrateful allies. Maybe they’ve concluded that the United States has expended too many lives and too much money on fruitless foreign adventures, such as those in Vietnam and Afghanistan. And maybe now America will reassess its priorities in light of new threats, most of all China, and the potential burden of meeting them.

The problem is that if the United States won’t lead the world, some other country will, and a number are already applying for the job. One is Putin’s Russia. Another is the China of Xi Jinping.

China began to assert its global leadership more aggressively during Trump’s first term and has worked ever harder to undermine the American system since—strengthening China’s ties with Russia and other authoritarian states, building a coalition to counterbalance the West, and promoting illiberal principles for a reformed world order. Trump seems to believe that he can keep China in check with his personal charm alone. When asked in a recent interview whether he would intervene militarily if Xi blockaded Taiwan, he responded, “I wouldn’t have to, because he respects me.”

That’s narcissism, not deterrence. More likely, Putin and Xi will take advantage of Trump’s disinterest. Once appeased in Ukraine, Putin may very well rebuild his army with the help of China, North Korea, and Iran, and then move on to his next victim—say, Georgia or Poland. Xi could be emboldened to invade Taiwan, or at least spark a crisis over the island to extract concessions from a U.S. president who has already suggested that he won’t fight.

[Read: The case for treating Trump like a normal president]

The result will be not merely a multipolar world. That’s inevitable, whatever Washington does. It will be a global order in which autocrats prey on smaller states that can no longer count on the support of the world’s superpower, regional rivalries erupt into conflict, economic nationalism subverts global trade, and new nuclear threats emerge. This world will not be safe for American democracy or prosperity.

The fate of the world order and U.S. global power may seem of little consequence to Americans struggling to pay their bills. But a world hostile to U.S. interests will constrain American companies, roil international energy markets, and endanger jobs and economic growth. Americans could confront bigger wars that require greater sacrifices (as in 1941).

Perhaps Trump will surprise everyone by pondering his legacy and choosing not to pursue the course he has signaled. But that seems unlikely. His messaging on his foreign-policy priorities has been too consistent for too long. Over the next four years, Americans will have to decide whether they still want the United States to be a great power, and if so, what kind of great power they wish it to be. Americans wanted change. The world may pay the price.

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSM) is following U.S. efforts to curb China’s artificial intelligence ambitions, reportedly telling chip design firms in the country it will stop producing their most advanced AI chips.

Read more...