These are interesting times for Taiwan and its 23 million islanders, as world events continue unfolding in ways that both worry and please them according to history and politics.
So-far this year, the administration running the island’s internal affairs has had to adjust to a first year under a second Trump administration, where presidential thinking is seen as more in-tune with Beijing on the thorny question of independence claims by the island’s ruling Democratic People’s Party (DPP), now in its third consecutive four-year term in office.
President Trump’s recent second visit to Beijing left Taipei less-assured than ever of its traditional overall dependence on the Washington to automatically provide military assistance to ‘protect’ it from being ‘taken over by the mainland’ that it’s recognized as been part of by the vast-majority of the world’s independent nations.
A June 12, 2026 Taipei Times report said the Taiwan administration had raised a red flag suggesting that Eswatini might break ties with the island and embrace the People’s Republic of China (PRC).
The Taipei administration was reported as worried that Eswatini was examining the possibility of switching ties from Taipei to Beijing, especially after losing-out on the PRC’s recent decision to lift trade restrictions on African nations it has diplomatic ties with.
Eswatini being the last nation on the continent where Taiwan’s flag flies, any switch to Beijing will be in its obvious national economic interests – and will only follow a continuing trend of the island losing its remaining allies at a faster pace than imagined a decade ago.
However, if and when it happens, Eswatini will not have betrayed Taiwan.
Instead, it will have taken the only step its government could have, in keeping with its mandate, as a sovereign nation, to always act in the nation’s best interests.
It will also have followed the rest of the world in recognizing the ‘One China’ principle that erases the ‘Two China’ dream being pursued by Taiwan forces bent on promoting military conflict with the PRC, which is ready to go to war to prevent any political separation of the island from the mainland.
President Trump has made it abundantly clear that ‘independence’ for Taiwan is completely off the table under his watch — and the DPP will have to back-pedal on its relentless pursuit of what the majority of the island’s legislators, at present, consider a fantasy.
But, if and when Eswatini goes, that will have serious implications for the future of Taiwan’s flailing and failing diplomatic pro-independence offensive, which continues being seriously tested.
For instance, President Trump shows no signs of embracing the current Taipei leader Lai Ching-te like how his predecessor President Joe Biden and then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi did with Madam Tsai Ing-wen during her two terms in office.
Nonetheless, whatever happens between the African nation and Taiwan, Caribbean and Latin American nations will, sooner than later, also have to assess the true value of maintaining political and diplomatic ties with non-independent Taiwan, at the expense of immeasurably-better ties with China.
This applies as-much to CARICOM’s ‘Three Saints’ (St Kitts & Nevis, Saint Lucia and St. Vincent & The Grenadines) as to Belize and Haiti, which annually have to embarrassingly make unconvincing cases for Taiwan to be allowed to attend UN-sponsored international conferences, without being a member-state.
The situation red-flagged by Taiwan last week also confirms there’s more in the Eswatini pot than the spoon – or, as said in Caribbean parlance, more in the mortar than the pestle.
Meanwhile, supporting Taiwan at the global level is becoming increasingly-costly for its remaining independent allies, especially when the US-Europe alliance is crashing around Ukraine and the NATO military alliance led by the US – and now Iran, with Tehran absolutely refusing to dance to the sounds of Washington’s fiddle.
President Trump’s eyes are fixed on November’s mid-term elections and he’s less-interested in Taiwan than his declining popularity.
The DPP has extremely-short parliamentary space to manoeuvre, with the formidable Kuomintang (KMT) party calling the parliamentary shots through an opposition alliance.
KMT has significantly shaped the island’s political landscape by championing cross-strait dialogue over rapid military build-ups — and is again rising in popularity at home — and in Beijing.
The cards have fundamentally changed on the poker tables of international diplomacy today, where, for example, The Donald has realized he doesn’t hold the trumps over Iran.
So, his focus remains on the local polls that show his pre-election popularity sliding faster than prices rising at gas pumps and on grocery bills.
Beijing continues biding its time as the global changes unfold from the accelerating contradictions that continue driving the fundamental changes in historical alliances that have become untenable for nations traditionally left subservient to others.
Meanwhile, in another interesting development, Taiwan has announced that Somaliland has opened its new Representative Office in Taipei’s Tianmu diplomatic district, taking ties to another level since the two territories established Reciprocal Representative Offices in 2020.
Significantly, with current efforts to create new Red Sea and Mediterranean bypass routes to avoid the Strait of Hormuz that could involve Somaliland’s coastline, both sides noticeably highlighted ‘future cooperation on maritime security’ among areas agreed, including ‘humanitarian assistance, agriculture and infrastructure…’
Like Taiwan, Somaliland is not recognized by the UN and is also being courted by Israel, which recently became the first UN member-state to recognize the breakaway territory also not recognized by the African Union (AU).
So, could it be that, while having lost its last support from an independent African nation, Taiwan is consolidating its six-year-old ties with a fellow breakaway non-independent African territory — also claiming to be a nation, but not qualifying for membership of the global body uniting all nations and people on Planet Earth?
Time will surely tell…
But, in the meantime, Time and History also continue to unfold today much-unlike Taipei would wish the world’s winds blew, in these changed and ever-changing times globally.