Horrible-sounding excerpt:
President Bush’s failure to submit congressional notifications for the multibillion-dollar Taiwanese arms tranche raises the prospect that he is washing his hands of Taiwan’s security concerns. . . . As Taiwan engages Beijing directly with new initiatives across the Taiwan Strait, its leaders now lack the single most important asset they need to negotiate successfully with Beijing: a strong military defense.
This arms freeze violates the Taiwan Relations Act as far as I'm concerned, it's out of step with Reagan's Six Assurances to Taiwan, and it also changes the much-ballyhooed "status quo" that the US supposedly wants to keep. I'm disgusted.
Follow that up with this "OMG!" excerpt from the same article:
Senior Bush Administration officials, current and former, say privately it is a safe bet that Chinese President Hu will pocket President Bush’s Taiwan arms freeze and confront the next U.S. President to maintain the Bush “baseline.” The Chinese will threaten the next Administration with “serious consequences” if the U.S. “backslides” on the issue. If a President Obama or a President McCain fails to withstand China’s pressure on Taiwan, the rest of democratic Asia must prepare itself for a major blow to American leadership in the Pacific and accommodation of China as rule-maker.
What a total, unmitigated, disastrous mess.
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