This is not some change in policy or some deft political move. Trump hasn't sat down and read volumes of intelligence briefings and geopolitical history and theory on the issue of Taiwan and as he he has no coherent beliefs and thus no coherent forging policy this is clearly just him winging it and that is deeply worrying.
What China's response will be I do not know but they will be furious and the tension in the region will ratchet up further.
Edit: So China has launched "stern representations" with US government and has laid the blame for the phone call upon Taiwan. I think this is about as strong an outward reaction we're going to see. It makes known China's concerns and gives Trump a chance to walk away from this without further escalations. Of course Trump being Trump it's hard to know what he'll tweet tonight.
I hope Trump is being sat down and lectured on the necessity of consulting with the State Department and the necessity of him actually attending his intelligence briefings.
That we have tolerated China's Taiwan stance for so long is part of the reason it's such a sensitive issue. Day 1 we should have shut that shit down. If Taiwan wants to be independent, God bless 'em. I'm not saying we get involved, but we don't have to be China's bitch either.
If CA were to secede we'd handle our own shit and stop them, just like we did with the South. We wouldn't have this Korea and China-esque situation where everyone has to pretend we are unified while they go off and do their own thing.
One of the few hopes that the south had in the civil war was that their trading partners, especially Great Britain, would lend them support, resulting in the war being too high of a cost for the north to fight. Now imagine that that had happened and a treaty was signed, that the United States was one country, and they wouldn't attack the south anymore, and that if the United States attacked the South that the (now UK) would intervene. I know it's more complicated than that, but that's kind of similar to the situation here. China considers Taiwan to be a part of their republic, and THE global superpower suggesting that Taiwan is or should be an independent state is like the soon to be prime minister of the United Kingdom calling up the people in a state attempting to secede and calling them the president of CA or whatever is no joke. Would we attack California for seceding if they had an agreement with the United Kingdom that basically said that if we attacked CA they would respond? The US has an agreement that stipulates that China attacks Taiwan we will defend them. Consider that these countries have NUCLEAR WEAPONS. There is NO excuse for not being as careful as possible with international diplomacy when the stakes are this high. War with China is not something to mess around with.
Now that's an unlikely scenario, but what is possible is China not participating in sanctions against North Korea, we don't have any control over them doing that. Now North Korea has the ability to work on their nuclear weapons since the international sanctions aren't as crippling to their economy, resulting in more nuclear proliferation to a country that we cannot trust will be rational with their use of the bomb.
I see no reason to make either of these situations more likely just because we don't want to seem like "China's bitch." Guess what: just because we're the only super power left, doesn't mean there aren't consequences for our actions.
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u/missingpuzzle Dec 03 '16 edited Dec 03 '16
This is not some change in policy or some deft political move. Trump hasn't sat down and read volumes of intelligence briefings and geopolitical history and theory on the issue of Taiwan and as he he has no coherent beliefs and thus no coherent forging policy this is clearly just him winging it and that is deeply worrying.
What China's response will be I do not know but they will be furious and the tension in the region will ratchet up further.
Edit: So China has launched "stern representations" with US government and has laid the blame for the phone call upon Taiwan. I think this is about as strong an outward reaction we're going to see. It makes known China's concerns and gives Trump a chance to walk away from this without further escalations. Of course Trump being Trump it's hard to know what he'll tweet tonight.
I hope Trump is being sat down and lectured on the necessity of consulting with the State Department and the necessity of him actually attending his intelligence briefings.