We are witnessing the gradual dismantling of strategic ambiguity in favor of the clarity urged by Trump’s belligerent secretary of state, Mike Pompeo.
President Joe Biden in a meeting at the White House in March. (White House, Erin Scott)
By Patrick Lawrence
Special to Consortium News
Watching President Joe Biden’s stunningly clumsy performance in Tokyo last week, during which he committed the U.S. to defending Taiwan militarily, my mind went to the old adage, “All politics is local.” I am sure it is, but we are called upon to extend the thought: “All foreign policy is local” is our late-imperial reality.
The rest of the world is mere proscenium for our purported leaders, to put this point another way. No one with a hand in American foreign policy, so far as I can make out, is the slightest bit interested in the one thing, above all others, that the 21st century requires of competent statecraft. This is the desire and ability to understand the perspectives of others.
Have you ever heard anyone in the Washington policy cliques state, or even wonder, what China’s legitimate interests are in East Asia, first of all on the question of sovereignty over Taiwan? I haven’t either.
You can run a foreign policy in this manner, but any successes it achieves will be sheer happenstance. In the Taiwan case, these people can’t even count on a fluke.
What we saw during Biden’s appearance in Tokyo was the latest installment of a Taiwan policy, and by extension a trans–Pacific policy, fashioned to satisfy various constituencies at home. The voiceless American public does not count among them. Like all policies of this kind, this one is poorly conceived, miscalculated, out of touch — in other words, doomed to failure as our new century unfolds.
“You didn’t want to get involved in the Ukraine conflict militarily for obvious reasons. Are you willing to get involved militarily to defend Taiwan if it comes to that?” This was the question a broadcast correspondent posed as Biden stood with the prime ministers of Japan, India, and Australia at the conclusion of a security summit last Monday.
“Yes,” our addled president replied without elaboration.
“You are?” the correspondent persisted.
“That’s the commitment we made,” Biden said, again with no further comment.
Parse the exchange carefully. The president of the United States told Taiwan, China and the rest of Asia that America would commit troops and matériel — its own, not the weaponry it sells Taiwan in quantity — to a defense of the island in the event of a conflict with the People’s Republic. Given the reference to Ukraine, there is simply no other way to interpret Biden’s remarks.
Provocative Departure
This was a significant, openly provocative departure from the longstanding policy known as “strategic ambiguity,” a flimsy (as it has always seemed) concept whereby Washington does not say what it will do should China attempt to reassert sovereignty over its breakaway province.
Instantly, Biden’s many minders, who serve as nursing-home attendants more than department secretaries and advisers in these cases, began explaining to a very disturbed world that what their president said was not what their president said. “As the president said, our policy has not changed,” the White House explained in a rushed statement to the press.
A day later, even Biden was mouthing the approved language: “The policy has not changed at all,” saith Joe last Tuesday and on several occasions since.
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Come again, please? Yes, I announced a dramatic change in our Taiwan policy, but no, we’re not changing our Taiwan policy?
We cannot mark down what happened in the Japanese capital a week ago to the grim reality that our 46th president suffers a creeping senility. He does, but this will not do as an explanation of what amounts to a bad-cop, good-cop routine wherein the bad cop suddenly becomes one of the good cops after being bad.
The government-supervised New York Times went for the “gaffe-prone pol” theory, and who is not familiar with the … let us say simplicity of our president’s intellect? But neither will Biden’s evident dimness get us to clarity.
I see design in these weird events.
What is it, then, we appear to have witnessed? Given Taiwan is the eastern front in our new, two-front Cold War — the one we’re nicely on the way to losing — we had better understand what we are in for.
(Wikimedia Commons)
Here I will speculate briefly.
The journalist posing the fateful question was Nancy Cordes, a longtime television correspondent who now covers the White House for CBS News. Given CBS’s long, many-decades-long record of collaborating with the national-security state, could her exchange with Biden have been prearranged to allow the response she precipitated?
We will never have an answer to this, but I must say I found the staginess of the occasion odd from the first, and I will take this thought no further.
Third Time
As many news reports noted last week, the Tokyo presser was the third time Biden, as president, has sailed the American ship of state near these rocks. Last summer he equated Taiwan with Japan and South Korea, two nations with which the U.S. has security alliances providing for mutual defense. Taiwan is not a nation, however many times The New York Times errs in calling it one, and has no such treaty with Washington.
A couple of months later a CNN correspondent asked Biden if the U.S. is committed to defending Taiwan against an attack from the mainland. “Yes, we have a commitment to do that,” he replied.
I must remind readers here that, in consequence to Biden’s diminished mental capacities, it has been a matter of record since his summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Geneva last year that the time he spends in front of journalists is strictly controlled, the journalists are carefully chosen and what will be said during their exchanges is vetted beforehand. You know, Soviet-style.
Some context is in order here.
It has been clear since the Biden regime’s earliest months that it has no idea how to address China or what a sound China policy would look like. Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s calamitous encounter with Chinese counterparts in Alaska in March 2021 was the first indication of this, though hardly the last.
By default, I would say, Biden and his national security people inherited the policy shaped by Mike Pompeo because they didn’t know what else to do. Remember the McCarthyesque speech the Trump administration’s secretary of state gave at the Nixon Library two summers ago? Fifty years of engagement with China have failed, so it is time to confront the evil Chinese Communist Party, good must destroy evil, etc.?
That one.
One prominent feature of the Pompeo policy was its vigorous determination to refute the One China policy, which acknowledges Taiwan as part of China, and scrub strategic ambiguity in favor of “strategic clarity,” as in, We’re on for a war, body bags and all, and will wage it to defend Taiwan when the time comes.
The Biden regime has done nothing more than slow down this policy while altering it in style and tone. Having nothing to say for itself, it has no choice but to mollify the warmongering hawks whose position Pompeo articulated. These factions extend from Capitol Hill to the Pentagon to the defense-industry lobbies to the think tanks, some conservative, others “liberal.”
July 16, 2020: U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s statement on maritime claims in the South China Sea. (U.S. State Department, Flickr)
What happened in Tokyo last week is called “salami-slicing,” incremental moves such that a major policy shift is executed little by little by little. It follows naturally that Washington commonly accuses China of salami-slicing, given it is exactly what the U.S. is doing in the Taiwan case. Hence the contradictions noted above: We aren’t changing policy except that we are changing it.
It was obvious within days of the Tokyo press conference that the discourse on Taiwan has taken a decisive turn of the kind Biden appears to have intended to prompt. We are witnessing the gradual dismantling of strategic ambiguity in favor of strategic clarity just as the dangerously belligerent Pompeo urged.
One day after Biden’s remarks The New York Times quoted none other than Harry Harris urging this shift. Harris, some readers may recall, was commander of the Pacific fleet during the Obama years and liked nothing better than grandstanding on the decks of his aircraft carriers while huffing and puffing about America’s naval superiority in the Pacific.
China, the retired admiral asserted, “isn’t holding back its preparations for whatever it decides it wants to do simply because we’re ambiguous about our position.” This appeared in a piece explaining how the Biden regime is all of a sudden “trying to walk a fine line between deterrence and provocation.”
Nice. Nuanced. This is what I call subtle statecraft, diplomacy at its most evolved. Let’s come as close as we can to starting a conflict with China while avoiding the appearance of starting one.
A day later Bret Stephens, the Times columnist who is admittedly not to be taken seriously, urged “a more open military relationship with Taiwan.” Biden needs to forget his FDR fantasies, our Bret thinks, and “find his inner Truman,” referencing the first Cold War’s premier Cold Warrior.
We read regularly now of the policy cliques war-gaming a military conflict with China over the Taiwan question. NBC recently broadcast “War Games: The Battle for Taiwan,” a 27–minute Meet the Press segment. Such a program, lest readers lose track of the time, would have been unthinkable even a few years ago. But a salami slice at a time, Washington and its clerks in the media prepare us for Cold War II’s second front.
NBC, I remind readers, has a history as long as CBS’s of collaborating with the State and Defense departments — very, very directly — in the production of broadcast propaganda.
There is one great, big saving grace in all of this. At the horizon, it is nonsense — America preening before its mirrors of self-regard.
Anyone with a head on his or her shoulders — and I have it from confidential sources there are a few such people in Washington — knows that a hot war with China over Taiwan is utterly out of the question. There is absolutely no way the U.S. could win one against the people’s Liberation Army, the P.L.A. Navy and the P.L.A. Air Force.
The Times had the good sense to run an opinion piece in Sunday’s editions precisely to this effect. “Defending Taiwan Would Be a Mistake,” is the headline and a good summary of Oriana Skylar Mastro’s argument. She writes:
“Simply put, the United States is outgunned. At the very least a confrontation with China would be an enormous drain on the U.S. military without any assured outcome that America could repel all of China’s forces.”
Mastro is a fellow in Chinese security studies at Stanford and a nonresident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. This is what we’re seeing these days on the Taiwan question: What grounded thinking there is to be found is as often as not coming from conservatives as against the liberal “antiwar” warmongers who crowd our national discourse.
The Skylar Mastro column was an implicit defense of strategic ambiguity, which is the question on which the policy debate now turns. I have always considered it a weak policy, a sophisticated name for either indecision and paralysis or for an unstated knowledge that the U.S. cannot win this one and can do no more than put off the inevitable on the Taiwan issue. The island is Chinese real estate and sooner or later this will be the reality.
But ambiguity is better than clarity in the way the hawks use the term.
China reacted predictably to the Biden statements. “On issues that bear on China’s sovereignty, territorial integrity, and other core interests,” Wang Wenbin, a foreign ministry spokesman, said, “no one shall expect China to make any compromise or trade-offs.”
There is no salami-slicing here. Anyone who knows Chinese history understands that questions of territorial integrity and sovereignty are the hottest buttons on Beijing’s console.
But Wang’s statement — the statement of a spokesman, not a senior official — seemed to me notably low-key. And since this official reaction, Beijing appears to have let the incident fade.
It seems to me the Chinese understand: Biden’s Taiwan policy is all posture in the service of several purposes. It mollifies the hawkish factions mentioned above and will keep the weapons manufacturers in contracts more or less indefinitely. As previously argued in this space, Washington doesn’t need a hot war across the Pacific: An open-ended cold one will do.
A third purpose is to me the most interesting. Escalating tensions across the Taiwan Strait, given there is no real intention of engaging the Chinese militarily, is the doing of a nervous, declining power profoundly unsure of itself in a changing world order it can do nothing to stop. In this the preening and pretending is all about reassuring you and me that our leaders are not completely, abjectly blowing the 21st century.
An astute Financial Times writer published a piece over the weekend noting that Biden’s performance — good word for it — in Tokyo coincided with the opening of Top Gun: Maverick, a sequel to the triumphalist Tom Cruise film of 1986. “Curiously, James Crabtree writes, ‘it turns out that Top Gun: Maverick is actually a rather anxious kind of blockbuster, filled with doubts about the durability of U.S. power, and functioning in many ways as an elegy for relative American decline.’”
The head on Crabtree’s piece is “Still Top Gun? What Tom Cruise’s New Movie Tells Us about American Power.” It tells us a lot. It tells us it is starting to come down to theater now, spectacle without substance.
What we are going to see in Taiwan is likely to prove exactly what we already see in Ukraine. We will salami-slice increasing support for the independence-minded government in Taipei, arm the island to its very teeth, provoke China as we have Russia, and hope the mess escalates.
Then we will watch, as true heroes do.
Patrick Lawrence, a correspondent abroad for many years, chiefly for the International Herald Tribune, is a columnist, essayist, author and lecturer. His most recent book is Time No Longer: Americans After the American Century. Follow him on Twitter @thefloutist. His web site is Patrick Lawrence. Support his work via his Patreon site.
The views expressed are solely those of the author and may or may not reflect those of Consortium News.
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What will the leaders in DC do if the leaders in Beijing do NOT invade Taiwqn? Taiwan and the mainland could hardly be more closely intertwined economically. There is no particular reason to invade. Just wait and the problems of the USA (growing poverty and homelessness, growing gun nut random massacres, etc.) will distract whoever sits in the White House from making trouble in E. Asia.
Waiting defeated the Huns, the Mongols, the British, and could well work with the Americans.
The legitimate question of US involvement in Taiwan’s defense notwithstanding, Taiwan is, whether you like it or not, a country, and has been self-governing for close to 75 years now. That makes it a reality, and just because China has bought or bullied most of the rest of the world into saying otherwise does not change the facts on the ground.
The way in which you interpret polls saying that most Taiwanese do not want to declare independence twists the respondents’ intentions. Most Taiwanese would choose to acknowledge independence in a heartbeat if they thought it would end the question and remove the sword hanging over the nation’s head. Knowing that such a declaration will bring down China on their heads, most prefer to continue the ambiguity of their present status, hoping that somehow time will work things out in an manner acceptable to both Taiwan and the Mainland.
If you want to cite polls, you should note that a significant majority of residents consider themselves “Taiwanese” and not “Chinese,” and this number grows every time a poll is taken.
The question of what US policy should be with respect to Taiwan is a legitimate one. Most of the practical aspects of US involvement are analyzed fairly in the above article, but that doesn’t change the reality of Taiwan’s actual status. Good diplomacy is lacking (in the US as usual), and what we should have been seeking for a long time now is some kind of resolution that China, the US, and the Taiwanese themselves could live with permanently. But so much ill will has been stirred up over the years that this now appears out of reach.
This article, like many on this topic, miss the number of elephants in the room, beyond China, the USA, and Taiwan, that have vital interests. Think big picture!
1. Japan-why do people overlook the 3rd biggest economy and one of the top 5 militaries; Kishida is developing relationships with the southern-stans, UAE, Etc.
2. India-already having territorial fights with China, huge economy and top 10 military
3. Taiwan makes 50% of the semiconductors in the world-a major security risk if the free world loses this production
4. Years of Chinese belligerence in the region
5. China is having major economic difficulties
6. Xi might be ousted because of China’s economic woes
7. France-involved in the region, top 10 military
8. South Korea-tech powerhouse
9. Recent rejection of China’s security pact by the Pacific nations
10. The UK is still stinging over what has happened in Hong Kong
11. China taking Taiwan would choke trade routes for significant amounts of the world, including the nation’s mentioned above
“The rest of the world is mere proscenium for our purported leaders, to put this point another way. No one with a hand in American foreign policy, so far as I can make out, is the slightest bit interested in the one thing, above all others, that the 21st century requires of competent statecraft. This is the desire and ability to understand the perspectives of others.”
The above paragraph haunts me as how can one country be so indifferent to the “perspectives” of other countries. I can think of a whole bunch of very nasty terms applicable to such behavior which I won’t list here for the sake of brevity.
Great analysis from Patrick Lawrence as usual!
If the PRC were to surrender to the Republic of China on Taiwan and go out of business, the US elite would still treat China as an enemy. It would still be a big non-Western civilization, too prosperous to suit many Americans, and probably not as submissive as Japan. Threats of war would continue.
“What we are going to see in Taiwan is likely to prove exactly what we already see in Ukraine. We will salami-slice increasing support for the independence-minded government in Taipei, arm the island to its very teeth, provoke China as we have Russia, and hope the mess escalates.
Then we will watch, as true heroes do.”
Exactly. The Bear trap was set in Ukraine and caught its prey. Cold War 2 front A was established. The Dragon trap is set in Taiwan to entrap its intended prey for Cold War 2 front B. I’m hoping China will be able to better resist the lure.
In both cases, the people who will suffer the most will be those of Ukraine and Taiwan … which makes one wonder why any decent leader of either would volunteer for the post of whipping boy for American empire.
Once again, on the world stage, “The BIG Guy,” tying one on, “GOT” tied up in “NOTs & YESes,”
Everything’s rising; but his “Star.” His approval @ 34% & falling, F A S T E R than Nation can say, “Buh-Bye, Joey.” After the 2022 Election.
Perhaps the NATION FINDS SOLACE in The White House official’s clarifying, POTUS’ “statements are NOT to be taken seriously.”
Agreed. The State of the Union is in dire straits. Prepare for the worst.
Mr. Lawrence,
Thank you for your well written summary of the ultra foolish US policy on Taiwan. The Hegemon’s course is always easy to predict, using its own “Rules-Based International Order” as the guideline. It dictates that the US will attack and attempt to destroy any nation which fails to follow US Orders. The present proxy war in Ukraine is the current hottest war going. Now we have the progression of Obama’s “pivot to Asia”, which presents the plan for a hot war with China. I would like to think that there are some adults in Washington who could prevent such foolishness from being implemented but I have no confidence that that is the case.
Biden provoked Russia. Now Biden is provoking China. Will China attack Taiwan sooner due to this?
I don’t think the US administration does want to escalate the growing confrontation with Russia and China. But that is the direction events are moving. As history shows: states eventually get the war they seek desperately to avoid – their own defeat. Of course, nobody wants WW III. patternofhistory.wordpress.
At least Dementia Joe wasn’t asked if he’d defend Quemoy and Ma-tsu as Kennedy and Nixon were. At least those thin slices of baloney should have dried up and blown away by now.
If Lord Biden believes that an American of Irish descent should have more to say than the Chinese about who governs the ethnically Chinese island just a few dozen miles off the Chinese coast, what could be his opinion about China’s President Xi volunteering to pick the ruler of Cuba, Venezuela or Nicaragua? Should be totally permissible, no? After all, the Chinese trade with those countries while the United States does not.
On Taiwan, I would personally say the call should definitely be made by someone Chinese, not a Caucasian American supremacist. Exactly which Chinese is the issue to be decided amongst the Chinese. As to the three mentioned Latin American countries, I realise that each has, in fact, had its governments chosen by Uncle Sam in Washington at one time or another, but one also must admit that those forced choices never lasted. It ain’t easy being a dictator, is it Joe?
Never thought I’d say this but I miss Obama and Trump, who had the ability to read a teleprompter. The scripts were bad but Biden has shown how much worse improvisation can be.
Long ago, I worked for McDonnell Douglas and for the first 6 years or so I negotiated with our subcontractors for the effort, the engineering manhours, and extraneous expenses associated with designing both the equipment and changes thereto as well as any other services McDonnell wanted to buy. I negotiated with the big boys and the little guys. I noticed a couple of things over time. One, the quickest way to get agreements is to solve your interlocutor’s problems and for him to solve yours. And two is that if you don’t seek what the Chinese call a win-win result, you will regret it. Yes, you might “win” this negotiation but the next negotiation you will be facing a protagonist, not an interlocutor. The American government needs to realize that.
Roger, Are you really serious, as I know tomorrow is June 1st and not “April 1st,” if you know what I mean. Patrick Lawrence is one of the most informed, astute, and courageous investigative journalists in the United States, and a man who’s articles I’ve been reading for many a year.
Pardon me for “assuming,” but it sounds by your comments that you believe American imperialism is justifiable because we’re the good guys and any nation choosing their own system of government and way of life is bad, if we say it is, and deserves to be bombed and/or invaded and occupied and made to do what American oligarchs, big business, and the MIC coerce them to do or else.
The US government has wasted trillions of dollars invading, destroying and occupying countries in the 20th century and so far in the first twenty-two years of this century, has committed more money and more death, destruction, misery and suffering to countries who can’t defend themselves against the “world’s only super-bully.”
On bloodshed in the Ukraine? The Ukrainian Nazis, who hate the Russians have been bombing the Donbass Region since the US supported coup in 2014, killing and maiming thousands o Russian speaking Ukrainians since then, but according to I think, your logic, that was okay because Uncle Sam sanctioned it. Pardon me if I’m incorrect in that presumption. Myself and others thought the Kremlin would have acted back then, as they finally did in February, and the Western propaganda machine has turned against them
There is an old saying, “What goes around, comes around.” Or, The Law of Karma. Cause and Effect. Action and Reaction.
May I suggest, if your are at all interested in actual historical facts, do an internet search of historian, the late William Blum, and read what he says about all the crimes against humanity (my term) that the United States is responsible for, since 1945, following the end of World War Two. Not a rosy picture.
Mr. Patrick Lawrence is one of my heroes, and I stand pat on that statement.
Roger above writes “The Taiwanese have a right to independence under international law. ” International law is complex and somewhat self-contradictory. USA led NATO+EU+”Rabbit’s Friends and Relations” holds to two principles: “inviolable territorial integrity”, applied to Ukraine, whatever the wishes of folks in Crimea, Kherson, Donetsk etc. may be, and “will of the people” applied to Kosovo. Western Sahara, Golan, Northern Cyprus are under “everything is fine if our friends our doing it” — occasionally deprecated, but no major issues that would require sanctions or even reproachful remarks.
The last is fully consistent with international law: USA has no duty to criticize in those cases, official recognition may be too far. Vehement support of Kosovians and vehement denial of “the rights of Crimeans” verges on moral bankruptcy, eased by “moral easing” by State Department (like Fed may rescue us from financial bankruptcy).
Taiwan was a province of China, and no body governing China ever bestowed Taiwan with the right to secede. Should it be treated like Kosovo or like Donetsk? What “principle” can determine the correct attitude?
“What we are going to see in Taiwan is likely to prove exactly what we already see in Ukraine. We will salami-slice increasing support for the independence-minded government in Taipei, arm the island to its very teeth, provoke China as we have Russia, and hope the mess escalates.”
PL is definitely correct about this. However, I think Beijing won’t pussyfoot around as much as the Kremlin did with Ukraine. Once a few salami slices add up to something substantial and uncomfortable for China, that’s when Beijing will institute a blitzkrieg like move to reclaim its renegade province.
“I think Beijing won’t pussyfoot around as much as the Kremlin did with Ukraine. ”
A person’s patience is often interpreted as another person’s pussy-footing, possiblly since another person is deemed to be a pussy?
“Independence,territorial integrity and sovereignty” are much talked about concepts, notable referring to Ukraine since the 2014 overthrow of its elected government by the USA under the person of Victoria Nuland. For the USA to pretend these terms mean anything except the USA’s version of self-determination (do as we say) shows the usual hypocrisy by a country which loves wars but seems never to win them. What point does the USA have in needling China?
“What point does the USA have in needling China?”
Attempts at sustainability, as was the case in the 19th and 20th Century presenting variable forms.
A wider perspective could be derived by posing the questions – What are “The United States of America, and how are they facilitated ?” without resort to illusions such as The United States of America always acts with the best of intentions since we the people hold these truths to be self-evident.
Whether Taiwan desires independence or not (polls show that a large majority of Taiwanese residents do not), it is not the proper role of the United States to become militarily involved in determining the final outcome. US hegemony in far flung places such as East Asia is irreversibly coming to an end. Better to accept that fact than to provoke and lose a war that kills many thousands and, in the end, fails to alter the inevitable reality.
Another great column by the eloquent Patrick Lawrence!
I note the following quote from the piece:
“The Times had the good sense to run an opinion piece in Sunday’s editions precisely to this effect. “Defending Taiwan Would Be a Mistake,” is the headline and a good summary of Oriana Skylar Mastro’s argument. She writes: ‘Simply put, the United States is outgunned. At the very least a confrontation with China would be an enormous drain on the U.S. military without any assured outcome that America could repel all of China’s forces.’”
But it does not matter if the US “loses.” The idea is to have a war that will engulf East Asia, wreaking destruction on China, Japan, SK and others. The US will “lead from behind,” as the “arsenal of democracy,” putting no boots on the ground – or very few. The US will emerge relatively unscathed as it did the last time it was “the arsenal of democracy” – in WWII. East Asia will lie in ruins at the mercy of the US.
Same scenario is at work in Ukraine. The amazing thing is that Europe is being suckered into it. Are the East Asians that suicidal? Japan is always up for suicidal adventures – let us hope the rest are not.
Anyway that is the US plan but plans can always go up in smoke, this one in the form of mushroom clouds all over the planet including right here in the good old US of A.
See: hxxps://asiatimes.com/2022/02/wwii-redux-the-endpoint-of-us-policy/
> a right to independence under international law.
Just as Donbas/Crimea have that right. Russia went in to defend that right. What propaganda have you been soaking up? It’s never the US, they are the ‘good’ guys with over 800 military bases worldwide, in the name of ‘defense’. and it seems to be always the other ‘evil’ nations that push an agenda, not the one with all the bases starving for an ever-growing mililtary budget. Go warmonger somewhere else.
Great article, thanks CN.
No mention of Russia?
The US house of cards is collapsing and now they are provoking war with both Russia and China. This is the definition of suicidal stupidity.
Meanwhile there have been over 220 mass shootings in the US so far this year. The military complex profits from internal war, too.
220 mass shootings… I see two aspects to it. One is that USA is a big country, and overall murder rate is not that bad.
The second aspect is that national mentality has some quirks. COVID-19 starts, so what the “people in charge” and “ordinary people” do? People in charge start quantitative easing: we have no idea about medicine, but at least we can save the financial market. Ordinary people rush to buy guns: I cannot formulate plausible thinking, unlike in the first case, but whatever the formulation, it is a bit like reaching for security blanket or the most dear stuffed bear at the time of distress.
Thus both to the “people in charge” and “ordinary people”, if a problem cannot be solved with a gun it means that we need a larger gun and/or more guns.
We’ve seen what China has done in Hong Kong – denied the people their independence! Or are you going to blame that on the U.S. and the West, too? China wants to do the same for the Taiwanese.
You scream “international law” at the U.S. – well, it’s China that’s breaking it in relation to Taiwan.
How do you people sleep at night? You don’t about about people dying or suffering. Or all you care about is your anti-American – and it is ANTI American – bile.
It is because we do care about those who suffer and die that we first look to the log in our own eye as we wreak decade after decade of war, sanctions, election meddling, outright coups and so forth on a broken and fractured world. The Chinese and Russians don’t hold a candle to our global bullying and outright destruction of country after country.
Hong Kong is not “independent” … it was Chinese, became a British colony, and now has reverted back to being Chinese.
Taiwan is similar. Its “independence” is an artifact of the Chinese civil war, post Japanese occupation. Most everyone in the world considers it part of China, though independently governed for now. If they’d like to maintain the current arrangement, the best bet would be to continue the current understanding.
You seem to be sleeping fine Harold, inspite of millions killed by American imperilist wars and regime changes.
I read a column by an American who lives in Hong Kong who said none of his neighbors/friends supported the whatever-it-was in Hong Kong (financed by the U.S.). I haven’t been there since 1968 but when you realize how crowded Hong Kong is (and was in 1968) you realize what people have to do to live together in such proximity. They do not riot, they do not block traffic, they trade in politeness. Plenty of people in Hong Kong supported the Chinese government in ’68 and I’m guessing there’s a sizable percentage who do currently.
It is indeed anti-American to advocate policies that would avoid rapid inflation, a threat of stagflation, and even foster some global cooperation that would tackle global warming?
I sleep very well because I am not eager to kill Chinese people.
Provoke China? The Taiwanese have a right to independence under international law. If China invades, then they’re to blame, NOT the U.S. But such is your bile for America, it’s always America that’s at fault and never any other country. Russia is being forced to do what it’s doing in Ukraine, according to you – and the bloodshed? You don’t care about the bloodshed. All you care about is your propaganda and agenda.
Funny how reality has sunk to be in such low regard that even talking about it is now considered basically treasonous. Well ignoring reality won’t get you very far, Roger, and ignoring reality is exactly why the US is losing its spot as “top dog” right before the whole world’s eyes. Keep ignoring it all you like, that’s up to you. But insisting everyone else ignore reality like you, well, is really kind-of a sad joke.
Is China developing new, better submarines? If so maybe the US is thinking they should do something before their navy/shipping is even more vulnerable at greater ranges. Or even a mainland vulnerable to a nuke or other Chinese sub strike. Just wondering.
Pompeo and Blinken are virtually indistinguishable, though if anything Blinken is more incompetent. Pompeo was somewhat competent, just in bad ways. Blinken seems more of a stupid, bumbling oaf. So less intentionality. He’s also compromised by his background and ties to think tanks and arms dealers. Maybe too dim-witted to merge those awful values into a rational foreign policy. Similar to Biden. Stupid, myopic people taking the world to catastrophe. And few if any in the admin or Congress to put the brakes on.
So, I agree with Lawrence. Except maybe this: “Anyone with a head on his or her shoulders — and I have it from confidential sources there are a few such people in Washington — knows that a hot war with China over Taiwan is utterly out of the question.” Your confidential sources may be suffering from wishful thinking. All the sanity might have been squeezed out by now. The Squad and Sanders conduct and votes this past month, for example.
By default, I would say, Biden and his national security people inherited the policy shaped by Mike Pompeo because they didn’t know what else to do.
No. The Biden regime is deliberately continuing the Trump regime’s idiotic belligerence which was consitent with the longterm strategy of the Obama “Pivot to Asia”. Biden’smost significant statement as candidate was “Nothing fundamental is going to change” ie Biden is the lipstick reapplied to the Washington imperial pig after the refreshing honesty of the Trump regime which dispensed with it.
I read a piece years ago about what the Chinese were doing to defend themselves. I assume China like Russia runs their military-industrial complex rather than the other way around (the MIC running the U.S. government), and they were building missiles to take out U.S. warships and aircraft carriers. Meanwhile, we build junk such as the F-35 which the Pentagon didn’t even want.
Spend any length of time in mainland China and you will see that the government is spending its money on infrastructue: new highways, bullet trains, port facilities, etc.
The Taiwanese do not have a right to de jure independence. I don’t know what history or international law books you’re reading, if at all.
Perhaps you should look at the geography. The US didn’t much care about Cuba’s right to independence to house missiles from whomever or wherever in 1962, but the US was willing to go to war unless those missiles were removed. How many foreign military bases does China have, one. Only one, in 2017 China opened the first and only naval base outside its borders.
How many foreign military bases has the US? Over 800 in over 70 countries. Perhaps Americans should start to question “the right to independence” as you have done for Taiwan.
Who knows…maybe NATO is eyeing Taiwan.
Taiwan is a province in China. It’s people have about as much right to independence under international law as Californians do.
oh well, did you ever try to see the russian point of view? After the the not an inch east promise of NATO, NATO ist trying atm to integrate Ukraine and Georgia. For this to work, the USA financed the Maidan with 5 billion$, courtesy of Mrs. Nuland. Russia is not enthuasistic about having U.S launch bases close to its borders and asked for a neutral Ukraine and Georgia before the invasion of Ukraine and was ignored. Remember Kennedy and the Cuba crisis?
By default, I would say, Biden and his national security people inherited the policy shaped by Mike Pompeo because they didn’t know what else to do.
No. The Biden regime is deliberately continuing the Trump regime’s idiotic belligerence which was consitent with the longterm strategy of the Obama “Pivot to Asia”. Biden’smost significant statement as candidate was “Nothing fundamental is going to change” ie Biden is the lipstick reapplied to the Washington imperial pig after the refreshing honesty of the Trump regime which dispensed with it.
Roger, my goodness, what a sad example of Washington propaganda syndrome. Do you understand that Taiwan is a province of China? Did you take any notice of the “bloodshed” caused by the murder of thousands of Ukrainian citizens by the US/Ukrainian government installed by the US following its overthrow of the legitimate government in 2014? Get a grip. Turn off your tv. Stop reading the New York Times and Washington Post. Learn some facts. Start by reviewing the US “One China policy” which was wisely established when we had the luxury of leadership which had some degree of sanity.