The Taiwan Strait Is Getting Hot, Hot, Hot…
Via Global Macro Monitor,
ZeroHedge.com
Mon, 10/22/2018
We posted the following in July after President Trump threw Montenegro under the bus.
Taiwan may be about to get hot, hot, hot in the next year after last night’s Commander in Chief’s ambiguous message on defense treaties. – GMM
One of GMM‘s most excellent followers, who we very much like and respect, responded with this:
This whole article is a science-fiction of oh, this could happen, and oh that could happen…. And we could be hit with an asteroid tomorrow. Just sit back and watch the hands that are dealt and how they are played. This article is either Sci-fi or false news. Your choice!
We still like and respect the reader, by the way.
U.S. To Send Warships Through The Strait, Again
Yesterday, Zero Hedge posted a great piece, In Latest Provocation To Beijing, US Plans New Warship Passage Through Taiwan Strait, bringing to our attention the following Reuters article,
The United States is considering a new operation to send warships through the Taiwan Strait, U.S. officials tell Reuters, a mission aimed at ensuring free passage through the strategic waterway but which risks heightening tensions with China.
The United States is considering a new operation to send warships through the Taiwan Strait, U.S. officials tell Reuters, a mission aimed at ensuring free passage through the strategic waterway but which risks heightening tensions with China. – Reuters
John Bolton’s Fingerprints
The show of force by the U.S. in the Taiwan Strait appears to be a hardening line against and challenge to President Xi’s One China Policy and has National Security Adviser, John Bolton’s fingerprints all over it.
Bolton has close professional and personal ties in Taipei . According to an investigative report by the Washington Post ( April 9, 2001 ), Bolton was on the payroll of the Taiwan government before joining the Bush administration. Bolton received $30,000 for “research papers on UN membership issues involving Taiwan ” at the same time he was promoting diplomatic recognition of Taiwan before various congressional committees.
In 1999 Bolton, speaking as an AEI scholar, said that “…diplomatic recognition of Taiwan would be just the kind of demonstration of U.S. leadership that the region needs and that many of its people hope for. The notion that China would actually respond with force is a fantasy.” Bolton joined a prominent group of neoconservatives and traditional conservatives who signed a statement jointly sponsored by the Project for the New American Century and the Heritage Foundation that lambasted the Clinton administration for its failure to offer unequivocal support of Taiwan . – Counterpunch
Sum Of All Fears
The Sum of All Fears, at least ours.
A neocon chickenhawk driving U.S. foreign policy, provoking an emerging China, in an area they consider one of the highest in the country’s national interest.
Moreover, this is happening at a unique and critical period in world history,
The defining question about global order for this generation is whether China and the United States can escape Thucydides’s Trap. The Greek historian’s metaphor reminds us of the attendant dangers when a rising power rivals a ruling power—as Athens challenged Sparta in ancient Greece, or as Germany did Britain a century ago. Most such contests have ended badly, often for both nations, a team of mine at the Harvard Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs has concluded after analyzing the historical record. In 12 of 16 cases over the past 500 years, the result was war. When the parties avoided war, it required huge, painful adjustments in attitudes and actions on the part not just of the challenger but also the challenged. – Graham Allison, The Atlantic, Sept 2015
We also don’t think the timing of the leak to Reuters was a coincidence,
Protesters chant anti-China slogans on Taipei march in first large-scale rally pro-independence rally in decades.
Thousands of people have rallied in Taiwan’s capital to call for a referendum on independence, in the first major protest calling for a popular vote since the self-ruling island became a democracy more than 20 years ago.
The march on Saturday through Taipei took place as China has stepped up its claims to Taiwan, which Beijing considers as part of its own territory.
– Al Jazeera, October 20th
Are you freaking kidding?
The Rest…HERE
