So here is another political – sorry I gotta say a couple words about the recent kerfuffle concerning Trump, Taiwan, and The People’s Republic Of China.
Trump accepted a congratulatory telephone call from the recently elected pro-independence president of Taiwan Tsai Ign-wen. This is provoking a diplomatic mess with the PRC. China considers Taiwan a wayward and disobedient province, Taiwan considers themselves the Real China and the communist government on the mainland as illegal and illegitimate. The official US position since 1979 has been to publicly agree with the PRC, give Taiwan the diplomatic cold shoulder, but simultaneously provided the island with arms and an implicit assurance that we are really their allies and will come to their aid if they need it. Everyone involved knew about the fictions and how everyone really felt. When he accepted that phone call Trump upset more than 30 years of diplomatic deals.
Two narratives have emerged ‘explaining’ the incident and both are quite troubling.
Explanation 1 is fairly straight forward; the Taiwanese president called Trump, trump accepted out of ignorance, and now we have a potential crisis. This is troubling because it has the subtext that Trump is too ignorant to be aware that as Presidents your words really matter and as his ego will not allow him to refuse any form of congratulations he accepted the call. It also implies that if you accept that President Tsai Ing-wen is not as foolish as Trump, then she used his ignorance to further her own political goals. It is not good that other world leaders may already be considering how to play our president for the fool that he is.
Explanation 2 is a bit more Machiavellian. The Washington Post is reporting that elements within Trump’s team that are pro-Taiwan and hardliners against the PRC have been working for sometime to make that particular phone call happen, but that this was not something Trump was aware of and in fact that they played him for their own ends. This has the subtext that the people in Trump’s administration will be plotting and playing the President for their own ends. That implies not only chaos but political war within the administration of the United States and president too ignorant to be aware of the war and its ramifications.
Of course these two scenarios are not mutually exclusive and both may be true to various extents. Narrative 1, narrative 2, or both, it doesn’t matter, it all portends badly for the United States, her people, her economy, and the world for the next four years.
Your viewpoint would carry more weight if thiis were being managed in a manner that indicated it had been well thoughtout and was part of a plan for a new US position. Much of your argument is quite strong, however this is not being carried out like that and provoking conflict with a great power should not be done hapazradly.
It is also interesting to note the contradiction in the incoming adminstrations. Is it tough on China, or does is continue to praise China for the strength it showed on june 4th 1989?
The U.S. deal with Communist China was stupid from the start, and history has proven the arguments in favor of that deal were wrong. The Free World did not need Communist China to defeat the Soviet Union, and China has not moderated into a peaceful and free society.
Instead the U.S. has deindustrialized while China has grown into the worlds 2nd largest economy, an economy which the Communist Party of China can now draw upon for increased military power. Some deal.
Most starkly since June 4th 1989, the failure to recognize that ugly reality has been a bi-partisan failure. A bi-partisan failure even more foolish since the establishment of a fairly elected and freedom-respecting government in Taiwan during the 1990’s.
U.S. policy dealing with China and Taiwan has been long overdue for a shakeup. So I’m pretty unmoved by the News Media panic and rumor mongering over Trump taking a phone call before inauguration day.