- 05 May 2021 13:41
#15170877
"Media coverage of President Biden’s foreign policy tends to focus on his efforts to withdraw from Afghanistan, get tough on Russia and negotiate with Iran. But none of those may prove as consequential as Mr. Biden’s quiet, incremental, moves to establish official relations with Taiwan. Because only his policy toward Taiwan is meaningfully increasing the risk of world war.
He’s doing so by undoing a diplomatic fiction that for more than 40 years has served the United States, Taiwan and the world exceptionally well. In 1978, when the United States established diplomatic relations with Beijing, it agreed to pretend that there was only “one China.” The arrangement was absurd: Taiwan was, and is, effectively an independent country.
By keeping U.S. relations with Taiwan unofficial, the “one China” fiction helped Beijing imagine that peaceful reunification remained possible. Which gave it an excuse not to invade.
Like the Trump administration before it, the Biden team is now progressively chipping away at this bargain.
In 2005, China passed a law threatening war if Taiwan declares independence, and in recent years it has repeatedly greeted America’s moves away from the “one China” policy with displays of military force. As the Harvard political scientist Graham Allison has observed, “No Chinese national security official I have ever met, and no U.S. official who has examined the situation, doubts that China would choose war over losing territory it considers vital to its national interest.”
This could get ugly. It would also explain why we're suddenly seeing China sourced threads here about Taiwan.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/05/opinion/biden-taiwan-china.html?action=click&module=Opinion&pgtype=Homepage
He’s doing so by undoing a diplomatic fiction that for more than 40 years has served the United States, Taiwan and the world exceptionally well. In 1978, when the United States established diplomatic relations with Beijing, it agreed to pretend that there was only “one China.” The arrangement was absurd: Taiwan was, and is, effectively an independent country.
By keeping U.S. relations with Taiwan unofficial, the “one China” fiction helped Beijing imagine that peaceful reunification remained possible. Which gave it an excuse not to invade.
Like the Trump administration before it, the Biden team is now progressively chipping away at this bargain.
In 2005, China passed a law threatening war if Taiwan declares independence, and in recent years it has repeatedly greeted America’s moves away from the “one China” policy with displays of military force. As the Harvard political scientist Graham Allison has observed, “No Chinese national security official I have ever met, and no U.S. official who has examined the situation, doubts that China would choose war over losing territory it considers vital to its national interest.”
This could get ugly. It would also explain why we're suddenly seeing China sourced threads here about Taiwan.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/05/opinion/biden-taiwan-china.html?action=click&module=Opinion&pgtype=Homepage
Last edited by late on 05 May 2021 13:55, edited 1 time in total.
Facts have a well known liberal bias
- By late