Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC)
By Prof. Nassir Hussein Kahin, Political Analyst, International Affairs Writer and Managing Editor of bridgingsomaliland.com
Taiwan’s importance today is impossible to overstate. As the home of TSMC, the world’s leading semiconductor foundry, Taiwan produces over 90% of the globe’s most advanced chips. These chips are the invisible infrastructure behind nearly every modern innovation — from smartphones and satellites to artificial intelligence and missile defense systems. Without Taiwan, the technological world would stall.
But Taiwan’s significance is not just economic or technological. It is a beacon of democracy in an increasingly authoritarian neighborhood. Sandwiched between autocratic giants, it has thrived as an open society, making it a powerful symbol in the 21st-century ideological contest between freedom and coercion.
That’s exactly why China is so determined to absorb it — and why the West, particularly the United States, views Taiwan’s defense as central to global stability and democratic deterrence.
Somaliland: A Mirror Image in Africa
Somaliland — also a democracy, also unrecognized, also under constant threat — sees a mirror in Taiwan. When it opened diplomatic ties with Taipei in 2020, the logic wasn’t just about trade or technology. It was a shared stance against enforced isolation, against being bullied into silence, and against the illusion that recognition must be earned only through obedience to global powers.
China swiftly retaliated with offers of infrastructure, investment, and diplomatic favors — some estimates suggest tens of millions of dollars — if Somaliland would cut ties with Taiwan and fall in line. Somalia and Turkey applied their own pressure, increasingly invoking the false claim of “territorial integrity” to assert dominion over Somaliland’s land and sea. Turkey’s recent military treaty with Mogadishu, granting it full control over Somali (and by extension, Somaliland) maritime boundaries, represents a new form of neocolonial ambition — using lawfare and hard power to redraw regional influence.
And still, Somaliland held firm.
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