Many waves of world revolution find their common beginning in the "shot heard 'round the world" on the April 19, 1775 at Lexington and Concord.
An intellectual contagion would sweep through France (1789), Haiti (1804), and the rest of the American Hemisphere carrying the good news of the rights of man, modernity, and rationalism as opposed to obscurantist aristocratic privilege.
Innovations in governance like equality before the law and free enterprise were let loose in the spirit of competition between forms of governance: Free mercantile republics like America contra centralized dirigisme (direct, central authority).
The results over time speak for themselves.
While the imperial powers would restore the Bourbon French monarchy within decades, the wave of Republican revolutions in the Americas became a permanent victory for liberty globally.
This served to free up a consumer middle class who could choose between the exports of their former imperial capital and their national produce, even those of their other newly freed neighbors.
Gone were the days of royally appointed monopolists feasting on captive markets of consumers held by force.
The main political question in the 19th century was monarchy (status quo) versus Republic (revision).
By the 20th century, not only were the old imperial powers finally defeated by the revolutionary powers — entirely new continents met liberal forms of government.
The African Republics, from Nasser's Egypt (1952) on through Gandhi's India (1947) found in the principle of self-determination a rallying cry they recognized as their own.
The new status quo enshrined in the UN charter that principle and many more saw a world safe for Republics.
The new empires of this era were not based in the Westphalian, 17th century compact between princes — deriving their legitimacy to govern from the Holy See and its own divinely-appointed head, the Pope.
As founding members of this new "concert of nations," the American Republics, by then joined by younger European Republics like Italy (1863) found themselves beyond the "tipping point" — a new reality where the absolutists found themselves in the "revisionist" position arguing against the status quo.
Forced to abandon the divine right of Kings, 20th century absolutist imperialism posited the scientism of the Temple of Reason — a position found extreme in its original incarnation during the French Revolution, it fared no better when faced with the progressive's developmental imperative.
For the third historical "dialectic" in a row, the mercantile Republic rose triumphant.
From the ashes of the late Soviet empire emerged the newest republics of all: the Baltics (1991), tracing their lineage as republics back centuries but most importantly, never formally recognized as part of Soviet Russia by Washington, D.C., or any of the Latin American Republics, hewing to their traditional positions supporting the inviolability of borders and national sovereignty, the Soviet invasions of Central and Eastern Europe were recognized as the brute force they plainly were.
Yet, more than an independence whereby a new country is created by separating from a larger polity, the former Soviet satellite states restored their sovereign status with new borders and a taste for freedom that can only be acquired in the breach.
The 21st century remnant of absolutism remains draped in this cloth of development — "China is Capitalist!" cry those who ignore a decade's worth of harsh new developments, capital flight and civil repression.
From the departure of Hu Jintao, the (forced) harmonization of Special Economic Zones – where the vaunted "Chinese capitalism" actually took place — and the re-absorption of Hong Kong in breach of all international agreements, only one conclusion can be drawn: Perhaps for the first time since the death of Mao Zedong, the brutal Communist wing of the Chinese Communist party has fully returned to power.
Red China's rapid expansion into Tibet and westward toward Soviet Kazakhstan is in the same category as Lenin's own (illegitimate) absorption of the Baltics, Ukraine, and countries like Hungary into the Soviet sphere.
Peking's ethnic Han-based economic model remains reliant on the underpricing of their labor relative to their international competitors — a strategy long-past its limits as the demand-side need for a domestic consumer class began outweighing the need for loosening the supply-side.
This does not even account for the horrible use of slave and Uyghur labor, which the West turns a blind eye to.
Red Chinese Imperialism found a maritime outlet in the nine-dash (now coming ten-dash) line stretching territorial claims all the way down to Malaysian and Bruneian waters.
Should anyone harbor any doubts as to the validity of calling Peking "anti-status-quo"(revisionist) witness their flagrant violation of the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) and the relevant tribunal's ruling in favor of the Philippines' (1946) maritime claims (another Republic that owes its self-determination to America's short 1898 war with what remained of the Spanish empire).
Too many warning signs were ignored on the road to the present, egged on by the (Henry) Kissingerian "wave of the future" fallacy — as with the communist revolutions of the early 20th century, where intellectuals and powerful government officials operated under the assumption that "world revolution" would eventually come to their hometowns, so too in our own time do their intellectual heirs enforce the conformity of Peking's "inevitable" replacement of Washington as the world's primary pole, military, economic, and cultural hegemon.
"Multipolarity" has revealed itself as a thinly-veiled tendentious attempt to Sinicize the Free World — it's been said before but bears repeating: We thought Peking would become more like us, we're now surprised to find ourselves much more like them.
The polar arrangement remains unchanged since 1945, at least in the formal "status-quo" arrangements between states at our contemporary "concert of nations."
Outside formal legal relations between states, the balance of power has shifted away from the classical liberal, ethically progressive dream of bringing electrification, running water, literacy, WIFI, and modern medicine to every human being on the planet, towards the same bugbear we fought and defeated in centuries past: economic planning deciding winners and losers or what is the same, which aristocrat plutocrat favored by the crown will be enriched and which impoverished or jailed.
The garb of progress and scientism provide a poor mask for the materialist dream of controlling ever-more parts of the economy and "converging" toward equality between the poles of this multipolar dream.
Erasing Washington's immense economic advantage has been the central point of too much of the international system in recent decades — not least due to the flagrant politicization of the international civil service under the likes of UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres.
Taiwan, excluded from international organizations since the 1970s (the only time the formal "multipolar order" shifted internally) has already provided one crucial data point in its favor: The winter of 2019, when it attempted to sound the alarm on the coming COVID-19 pandemic — ignored by a Maoist of Ethiopian extraction we shall not name.
That same communist Ethiopian perfectly embodies the problem of politicizing even the most technical of "international civil service" cum medical/health roles when dominated by China's Communists, let the fox in the henhouse at your own peril.
It must be said: There remains no hope that the heirs of Chiang Kai-Shek retake the mainland by force. Insofar as the "One China" policy ever made any sense, it was in holding out the hope the Kuomintang might manage the re-Christianization of the mainland.
Seen from the point of view of the countries who struggled for their independence, the path ahead for Taipei is relatively clear — it must reject the ignoble "One China" policy, or what is synonymous: declare independence.
Globally, many are afraid of the consequences of such an action.
Most of them are mainly worried their own pet causes will be de-prioritized — a tacit admission that the Taiwanese struggle for self-determination is presently a more important cause to the Free World's revolutionary spirit than any other.
It was separatism that took down the Soviet empire, after all, and should Peking respond militarily (instead of "letting our people go") Taiwan will have successfully imposed a trifecta of crises on Peking — economic, diplomatic and military.
Insofar as Peking's own capacities get redirected to the strait of Taiwan, the silver lining for other theatres of conflict globally will be the removal of Peking as a salient actor.
That alone could swing the balance in favor of the Free, in at least three continents, if not four. It bears repeating again and again, Red China is not our friend or competitor, it is our enemy.
Taipei would join the long list of nations whose struggle for self-determination inspired the world in a time where transnational repression by the remaining absolutist states is at a post-war high.
The starting gun within Red China would be sparked for other freedom-loving peoples in places like Hong Kong and the cotton fields of Xinjiang to seize the moment like the Soviet satellite states seized on Poland's Solidarity strikes.
A strophe from the national anthem of the Dominican Republic — another separatist nation which left an empire reads:
"Save the people which intrepid and strong /To war, to die launched itself /When under the threat of death /Cut through their chains of slavery /No people deserves to be free /If they are slavish, indolent and servile /If in their chest the flame does not rise."
Fiery and revolutionary 19th century rhetoric, to be sure. What remains unchanged since then? By their actions today, they will ensure their people are glorious tomorrow.
Reprinted from: https://www.newsmax.com/world/globaltalk/republics-revolution-tapei/2024/10/21/id/1184896/