Taiwan

Lord Truscott Excerpts

Thursday 3rd March 2022 Grand Committee

[Lord Truscott (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, this is a very timely debate, for which I thank the noble Baroness, Lady D’Souza, against the background of increased military activity around Taiwan, as noted by a number of noble Lords. I declare an interest, having visited Taiwan three times, as declared in the register at the time. I have been privileged to meet President Tsai Ing-wen and former President Ma twice. I have nothing but respect for both, and for Taiwan’s entrepreneurial and intelligent people. I also commend Taiwan’s excellent response to the Covid pandemic, as mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Bethell, and others.

As we have heard, Taiwanese-British links in, among other things, wind power, education, cultural exchange and even Scotch whisky, as mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Faulkner, are remarkable and growing. Taiwan has a thriving civil society and democracy. Churchill once said that democracy is the worst form of government, except for the others that have been tried. He also said that to jaw-jaw is better than to war-war. We are witnessing a deplorable, awful tragedy unfolding in Europe, in Ukraine, which once more underlines how conflict should never be resolved by force.

We should never forget that in war, the greatest casualties are always innocent civilians. During the Korean War, in the early 1950s, which I studied a long time ago for my doctoral thesis, 2.5 million Korean civilians died—10% of the entire pre-war population. It was during that war that the US Seventh Fleet moved to protect what was then Formosa and was deployed to the Formosa Strait, as it was then called.

Of course, truth is the first casualty in war. War is not only about military assault but increasingly about disinformation and hybrid warfare. Democracy and freedom of speech are under attack across the globe as never before. Let us work together peacefully to preserve it while we still can.