(01-24-2017, 01:49 PM)Mikebert Wrote: Jordan, if Trump decides to press the South China Sea issue, as Spicer suggested, how would you respond if you were China? I'd rather play China's hand in this situation and ours. Not sure what I would do though.
If I were Chinese leadership I would start pushing a version of a One China deal in which Taiwan gets an "offer that it could not refuse". I would allow the Republic of China to keep its democratic system at the expense of surrendering its formal independence and going into the military and diplomatic orbit of the People's Republic. Nothing changes on the Mainland, but there will be no possibility of any American military presence in Taiwan.
Checkmate. The USA loses any possibility of starting World War III.
P.S. -- I would also try to pull South Korea and Japan into the diplomatic and military orbit. Farewell, advanced American military bases in Rast Asia.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.