The Obama administration has been toying with a proposition so dangerous it dare not utter it directly.
The NY Times oped pages headline writers helped generate the proper spin for this pernicious ploy: “To Save Our Economy, Ditch Taiwan.” The story by Paul V. Kane, a Marine Corps veteran of the Iraq war and former international security fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government, spelled out with wide-eyed enthusiasm a fantasy that would have disastrous consequences for America if it were ever enacted.
Mr. Kane urged President Obama to make a Faustian bargain with China’s leaders.
“He should enter into closed-door negotiations with Chinese leaders to write off the $1.14 trillion of American debt currently held by China in exchange for a deal to end American military assistance and arms sales to Taiwan and terminate the current United States-Taiwan defense arrangement by 2015,” Kane wrote.
In support of his “grand bargain,” Kane argued that “Today, the America has little strategic interest in Taiwan,” an argument the “China-is-not-a-threat” lobby has been making unsuccessfully for years.
Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner is in China this week, ostensibly to win China’s support for the latest round of Iran sanctions, an embargo on Iranian oil sales and a ban on Iran’s Central Bank.
Given the lack of public outcry over Mr. Kane’s trial balloon, will Geithner make the debt-for-Taiwan pitch while he is there?
The Chinese appear to be playing along. In a story filed from Beijing on Tuesday about Geithner’s upcoming visit, the Associated Press touted China’s hostility toward more Iran sanctions.
“China has no reason to go along with this,” the AP quoted an Iran analyst at Peking University as saying. “China does not want to be seen as helping the U.S. when China’s own interest is concerned.”
So in other words, if the U.S. wants to get China’s cooperation on the oil cut-off and Central Bank sanctions, we are going to have to offer something really, really important. How about Taiwan? These days an island of free enterprise just across the Strait from China is seen more as an affront than an asset by the Obama White House.
And let’s not forget that in signing the new Iran sanctions into law on December 31, President Obama said he disagreed with the sanctions and had no intention of applying them.
So the table is set for a betrayal of Taiwan.
This President needs no lessons in cynicism from anyone. He recently announced a permanent deployment of U.S. Marines to Australia to defend against a growing China threat, so he can argue that he is no softie when it comes to Chinese expansionism. But defend Taiwan? Why? After all, as Kane says in his NY Times gambit, “our relationship with Taiwan, as revised in 1979, is a vestige of the cold war,” and “fear of a Red China menacing Asia is anachronistic.”
The Republican National Committee is taking the debt-for-Taiwan gambit so seriously that they will vote on a resolution at their annual winter meeting in New Orleans on Friday that would enshrine U.S. military support for Taiwan as a guiding foreign policy doctrine for the party’s presidential candidate this year.
What happens to Taiwan is “potentially the biggest foreign policy challenge that a new president will face, so we want our candidates to know our position and help them formulate their own,” Indiana RNC member James Bopp told the Washington Times.
The draft RNC resolution includes support for continued arms sales to Taiwan, and an acknowledgement of Taiwan’s strategic relationship with the United States. Several of the resolution sponsors are seeking to get the presidential candidates to talk about Taiwan during the campaign. They have included a provision requiring the RNC to send the resolution to all the GOP presidential hopefuls, something the Washington Times says is “a first” for the GOP and has never been done by Democrats.
Some of us have been warning about Communist China’s intentions since the early 1990s and before. A series of investigative magazine articles I wrote for the America Spectator about the sell-off of U.S. military technology to China became part of the “China-gate” scandal of the Clinton years. (Those stories are now available in a low-price Kindle edition).
Why not? He treats Israel in the same way, willing to toss it aside to gain the appeasement of the genocidal muslim/arab aggressors, so he could do the very same to Taiwan to gain father with China. The problem is, be it Communism or Islam, the president simply does not see the threat, or as Churchhill said, as quoted in the article, he thinks this will make the crocodile eat him last.
A previous generation of Dem traitors threw the Chinese Nationalists under a bus, it's just taken them a bit of 60 years to finish the sell out.
Yes, and it appears Mr. Obama is acclerating his program to destroy America in the off-chance he will be thrown out come election time. Some of his work may well be irreversible.
I'm feeling a cold dread, knowing just how much of the world may become irretrievably lost/unstable/destroyed before Obama and his crew can be removed from office.
Democratic party has been infiltrated and the heads are traitors. Wise up people, your party is selling you out while you sleep.
We didn't finish off the North Korea, we give South Vietnam to Hanoi and who' s left? Taiwan.
Wouldn't that be the Domino Theory?
God forbid that Obama would betray our ally, Taiwan, and the the precious Taiwanese people. One country after another would be gobbled up after Taiwan. America must never abandon her beliefs in justice, freedom and human rights.
Please God, protect Taiwan, Israel, ALL of our allies and America!
LOL – someone that has absolutely nothing to do with the administration writes an op-ed, and Timmerman tells us this is Obama's idea/plan (without even remotely circumstantial evidence).
Anyone who ever is confused as to the meaning of "straw man argument" need only reference this article for total clarification.
Anyone confused with the meaning of "reading comprehension issues" needs only to read the article and then read your response. At no point did Timmerman say this was the administration's plan, only that it could be a possibility. Given what Obama and the clown factory have done over the past three years the supposition might have some validity.
Oh. A "possibility" is a standard for editorial work now.
"Perhaps President Obama believes that by handing over our allies to a known regional predator will encourage China’s communist leadership to ignore even bigger allies such as Japan."
Here's another "possibility:"
"Perhaps George W Bush is in an alcoholic stupor and is conspiring with al Qaeda to bring down buildings throughout the US."
In other words, why would someone write an article about possibilities of which have utterly no factual basis?
Rhetorical, of course. You can see why looking at the hysterical responses to this piece of trash.
But, but, I thought al Qaeda had nothing to do with 9/11!
And anyway, where were you when they taught 20th Century Chinese history in college?
The only difference between this situation and the one that Bush I faced in Kuwait is that he decided to push Hussein back into Iraq, to wit; Saddam held that Kuwait was in fact a breakaway province of Iraq, and that is exactly how the PRC views Formosa.
The one reason they have not tried it is force match-ups; Taiwan is harder than Corregidor, the US Navy is, and China has had little more than sampans until quite recently.
Call it hysteria if you like, such rhetoric doesn't alter one bit the Chinese expectation of reunification, just like Hong Kong.
Timmerman's analysis and opinions don't even begin to rise to the level of hysteria displayed by the main stream media in situations like the Giffords shooting.
Given that China has maintained, since the take over by the Communists, that Taiwan is a province of China, similar to how they laid claim to Tibet. And, given the Obama's administration tendency to kowtow to just about any repressive regime out there, a little healthy speculation is a good thing.
Also note you did at least realize that Timerman's article is an "editorial" and not a statement of fact. Do your knickers get into anywhere near as much of a twist with the glop that comes out of many of the NY Times op-ed writers?
Wow he bowed again! Where is his backbone? This administration bowed to everyone he pleased except the American people!
Chinese has thousands years of political struggle experience and they are very smart on those issues. Omama maybe trying to learn a lesson or two from them at an extermely expensive cost?
China is a great illusion, lead by illusionists. Ten percent of the people are viewed as
living a Western lifestyle similar to America while ninety percent live in dire poverty
and are in the way of the new China. War by China is a way of removing excess
population and ending what their leadership considers a threat, real or imagined.
All of the money supposedly owed to China or anyone else is nothing but numbers
in columns that can disappear in a heartbeat. The World wide ponzi scheme that
is underway will one day and possibly soon be over and intentionally so. What
will happen to America and other so called free nations is a mystery, the answer
may be that it will be like a game of musical chairs with the twist that the one left
standing wins………………………………………………………….William
Let's feed Obama to the crocodile in Nov 2012 before he can feed the rest of us to it.
If we dump Taiwan I expect that China would invade. Who will stop them? Obama works only for himself.
Fundimental change = changing sides.
As I recall, Nixon re-opened the door to the China we have today. Quite possibly the only thing he wasn't berated for by his numerous critics. Now we all know why as the sell out intensifys.
Just how wrong was Dick in his reasoning?
Or- was Dick just plain stupid?
Maybe even a ground floor Investment Banker on behalf of the U,S.
China is cleaning the clocks of those who expected to exploit China's vast market.
They are exploiting us instead.
The rightful ruler of China is the Nationalist Chinese. Chiang Kai-shek was successor to Sun Yet Sen. Stalin thought other wise. Obama concurs with Stalin
Main land China is becoming a hell for workers. Read about the coal mines and the gangs.
Will the Chinese really live up to their side of the deal?
Who is this Kane guy?
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