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Politics : Politics for Pros- moderated -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: LindyBill who wrote (23469)	1/10/2004 2:52:45 AM
From: Dayuhan	Read Replies (5) \| Respond to of 793677

When the Bush administration entered office, it mistakenly believed that it had to restrain Beijing while providing a virtual blank check to Taiwan; the president proclaimed the United States would do "whatever it takes" to defend Taiwan. He now realizes his mistake. That needed to be said. The American right spent a lot of time during the Clinton years trying to build China up into a threat, and trying to create the impression that Taiwan was threatened. This was a bunch of hot air, generated only because Clinton was spending a lot of effort trying to engage with China, and the opposition wanted to make this look like a bad thing. I have no doubt that this tradition, and the early comments under the Bush administration, convinced some Taiwanese that it is time to make the big move. Unfortunately, the timing is as bad as it could possibly be: with the Korea situation being what it is, the last thing anyone needs is for Taiwan to emerge as a divisive issue. Clinton did leave us with a couple of good things: NAFTA for one, much improved relations with China for another. If people hadn't made such a deal out of the efforts to cooperate with China - something that was done entirely for political reasons - we would have better leverage than we do, and fewer problems from across the strait. Odd, after all the talk about getting tough with China, Bush may find himself having to get tough with Taiwan....