Here’s a list of why Kristol & Co might be right. I must begin with the simple fact that I personally do NOT NOT NOT want to take on the Chinese over Taiwan. Call it what you will, I don’t. have seen enough of the kind of latent nationalism we saw in the Kosovo embassy bombing to know that such a confrontation could be ugly beyond imagining. And given that the generally craven population of planet Earth will be happy to either hang us out to dry, or actively side with the Chinese… The US may be calculating that we simply do not have the OVERALL (beyond military) clout to defend Taiwan if push comes to shove, and there are huge factors beyond military, and beyond the Taiwan Straights, that will matter here.

OK, the list.

1) We have another war front right now, maybe more that one. Bush and Co. can read history books too.

2) If China DID attack Taiwan, it could increase our clout in the Pacific. Not decrease. Every nation in the area would see China as aggressive and dangerous. It is not the case that they would say, “Oh, the Yanks bailed on Taiwan, they’ll bail on us”. We do NOT have troops in Taiwan. We DO in Japan, and we WILL in the Philippines and even Viet Nam if the Chinese attack. US troops means war, no US troops means “welllll, mayyyyybe….”. The difference in obvious and self-evident. Our stance in the Pacific would very much look like it did 1950 – 1980. If not, wellll, then those other nations are on their own. Good Luck.

3) At this point, I’d kinda like to see an aggressive looming China. The “unipolar” world is unstable and untenable, and does NOT serve us well. We CANNOT solve every problem on earth, but we CAN be held responsible” for every problem on earth. We are today. The generally craven population of earth apparently requires tyranny to club them over the head repeatedly until the end of time in order to “get” that tyranny is worth standing up to. “They have learned nothing, they remember nothing.” If they still won’t do it, we can’t help them, and should not try.

4) Further to that, I am starting to think that a bi-polar world, even if one pole is anti-democratic, is preferable to the general anarchy (mixed with WMD) that we see today. If the human race believed in freedom, I would not think this. My opinion of human nature has undergone some radical re-alignments over the past two years, I am sorry to say. If we need an “enemy” in order to have allies, and apparently we do, then so be it.

That all being said, I’ve been kicking around a possibility of late. A long shot, but I wonder. The best analogy I can come up with, and I hate it because I really like Bush, is the Hitler-Stalin pact between US and China. A sudden, very bold, enormously consequential deal between two parties that seem really fundamentally at odds, but suddenly find themselves with a lot of common interests. A HUGE part of such a deal might be that we will, in essence, give up Taiwan IF and only IF, the Chinese essentially destroy the North Korean government one way or another. For the reasons above, I am perfectly content with an aggressive China (an growing empire with much to lose) in charge of North Korea rather than a stone psychotic Kim Jong Il, who would launch a nuke at the drop of a hat. Also, China would pro-actively help in the War on Terror. The benefits to them would essentially be economic and acknowledgement of Chinese regional claims.

The War on Terror is life or death for us. We cannot afford the hassle of either China or North Korea at this time, and the rest of the world will NOT help us with either. They don’t care. They won’t care. This is bone-deep cynicism, I know, but much of the world needs to wake up to the fact that we CANNOT defend freedom on this planet alone. They either pitch in, or it will start to recede dramatically, and Taiwan might be one of the first forts to fall. Unfortunate, I hate it, but it is not Americans in general that are out to undermine freedom by any means possible, while taking it’s advantages utterly for granted. Something has got to give here, one way or another. And it will. The only question is, will the new chips fall to our advantage… or not?

Selfish? You bet. It’s survival time.

No America that would screw over Taiwan in the way you urge is worth preserving.

Nor can we turn China into a serious power in the way you wish to.

Even if we didn't intervene they'd likely lose a war with Taiwan, while destabilizing the rest of the regime.

If you're really serious about a bipolar world and don't care what the other pole is like, why not help Osama establish a pan-Islamic regime?

Etc., etc., etc.

Your argument though is a perfect example of our preference for security over freedom.

The Chinese are just mad because they don't have a President in their back pocket. These guys (Moriarty and Paal) are just afraid in the same way the State Dept. is always afraid of dictators and totalitarian countires.

As Glenn Reynolds wrote the other day, the Chinese better watch themselves or Bush the unilateralist might just give Taiwan a nuclear umbrella. How would that go over with Gerhard and Jacques?

OJ -

I knew that't get you going.... ;-)

If Taiwan can defend themselves without us as you say, what's the problem? I'm not proposing that we help China, just that we don't intervene militarily, which would meean war with China.... and Arab Fascism..... and North Korea.... and everyone else who wants in on the fun.....all at the same time.... while our "allies" sit on the sidelines smugly watching while we "get what we deserve". We can't handle that all. We just can't. My opinion, but I beleive it.

I'm not proposing "turning China into anything". I'm just proposing that we give them the leeway to turn into what they will turn into. If that becomes aggressive, we can and will defend Japan, the Philipines, and whoever else is willing to sacrifice to stand up to them and needs help. We have NEVER signed any such agreeement with Taiwan, and never will, for obvious reasons, wether you agree with those reasons or not.

The reason I "won't help Osama" is that I do not see that political movement as remotely rational. The Chinese I see as rational enough to want to protect what they have, and what they might have in the future. Arab fascists, to use their own words, "worship death while we worship Pepsi". China has nukes. If Osama gets them, civilzation as we know it could come to an end. I'm choosing the enemy that at least understands the game.

RE: security over freedom. Beautiful words, and I don't casually discard them, but there is a real world here. I see interesting parallels to the "socialism in one country" vs. "world revolution" argument. If freedom is the revolution we speak of, well, you're arguing that we should push as far as we can wilthout limit. I think I might have agreed two years ago. That was before I understood the sheer vastness on numbers of fat, happy, Westerners who hold freedom in contempt, and will fight us on every front as we try to advance it.

I am now more inclined to be mindful of the fact that if America "falls" (to WMD, say), that's all she wrote for freedom and democracy on this planet. Well, it was a nice 225 year run, but now it's over. And millions of Euros would dance in the streets, until they began to starve to death or worse, but by then it will be too late.

In a nutshell, I doubt we can hold Taiwan, AND everything else, right now. I speak, as I said, of factors far beyond Naval and Air power, etc.
Taiwan is Corregidor, or France 1940. We'd like to hold it, but we can't, so we pull back to Hawaii and England, build up our forces, re-asses our alliances as necesary, and be prepared to fight on a battlefield of our choosing, not our enemies. That is what my thinking is about.

The British used to say that diplomats were honorable men sent overseas to lie for their country. As far as I can see, for us diplomats are Americans sent overseas to lobby for tyrants.

Andrew:

Well it worked so well in the Cold War--we let all of Eastern Europe and much of Asia fall to communism, were forced to maintain military spending at levels that retarded our growth for fifty years, and ended up tearing our own society apart. All because folks drastically overestimated the power of the Soviets.

May as well do the same with China.

China still has 15 m starving NorKs on their border. Can they handle both?

Just needs a little push....

OJ -

Wheras if we had defeatd communism then, freedom would have spread to Estern Europe and much of Asia, with us as it's leading force...

So that by 1960 or 1970, millions in those nations and their governments could have the freedom to utterly forget and ignore what we had saved them from, decide that our power proved that all we stood for was unjust, and could thus ally themselves with the inevitable revolutionary movements against us and their own "Americanized" governments, secure in the knowledge that totalitarianism is a meaningless concept.... unless it applies to white men wearing brown shirts, flying banners that are NOT red. Any exception to those three rules means it is not totalitarian, and thus is just, is fun, is tres chic, and on the side of right as long as it opposes those damn imperialist Yanks, who only stopped the communists for their own selfish reasons. Alternate history of Earth, circa 1970.

As I said, my outlook on human nature has been altered profoundly by events of the past two years. If America HAD gone after the communists big time in 1948... and LOST... well, where would freedom be today, if at all?

Andrew:

The point isn't them, it's us. I have no problem with withdrawing from the world and letting the Chinese have Taiwan, the Koreas, Japan, etc. It would just hasten China's collapse. Nor is there any national security reason to conduct the war on terror. The Islamic world is too backwards to threaten us.

The worst possible option is your vision of Cold War II which destroys our own society in an unnecessary ongoing confrontation with inherently weak rivals.

We may not come to terms here, but I would just again mention that ANY serious such "arrangement" with China must categorically include the utter removal of the Northe Korean regime from the face of the earth. Given the psychotic nature of that threat, it is worth much to neutralize it, and I don't see the US aong being able to do that.

With that in mind, I wonder if that is an unspoken part of what Kristol writes about. If it is NOT, then it's a bad deal.

Andrew:

So what are you sayiong, we let them have Taiwan if they get rid of Kim Jong-Il? Kind of like the Gulag was justified because Stalin fought Hitler?

Andrew:

I don't see how defending Tiawan strains our military much further. Nobody is talking about taking on the Chinese army, and General Abazaid isn't requesting more submarines for the occupation of Iraq.

The attempted invasion of Tiawan (if it happens in the next 5-10 years) would take about a day, and at the end of that day the Chinese navy would have ceased to exist.

That's a reasonable anology. It's contrary is, whoudl we have categoricaly refused help to Stalin because of the gulag? That's the proper moral course.

And that morality leads to the fall of Moscow, which leads to Nazi occupation of Eastern Europe and Russia, the transport of Eastern Front combat troops to the West, which is now facing a much stronger Nazi army, opposed by the English and Americans alone. Maybe now Hitler pours more money into his jets which then clear the skies of the allied air force. Maybe he gets his nukes earlier. Myabe he supplies Japan in a way that becomes a force multiplier for his own efforts.

Any way you add it, our cutting off the Soviets could easily win the war and all of Europe for the Nazis. Is freedom now better off? When the Soviets won, at least we had all of Western Europe. What do we have under that scenario? (Not to mention that I think Germans would be much more effective totalitarians than Russian Marxists.)

So what do we do? Cut off the Soviets for moral reasons and lose the war? Or cynically help them and save freedom for ourselves and Western Europe, and hope we can continue the battle on a stronger footing down the road?

These are hypotheticals of course, but valid ones I believe.

I know you've played Risk, of course. Damn cynical game, that. Do you want to be friendly, or do you want to win? One caveat is that if you do lose at this Risk, your drinking buddy that you're playing against will put a bullet in your head.

Time to roll the dice.

Yes. We should have left Hitler and Stalin to slug it out.

China is not doing anything until at least 2008 because they are hosting the Olympics that year and they are not going to screw it up over Taiwan because they want to look good in front of the world community, or whatever. And what exactly would they accomplish by going to war over it? Better to keep the issue alive just like the Arab regimes use Israel as a scapegoat to keep their people's focus away from themselves. Just a little saber rattling that will be quickly forgotten about.

When Orrin says Islam is unable to threaten "us" I assume he means to bring down the nation as whole. But it is very capable of threatening "me" and my daughter-in-law just barely escaped from the attack on Sept. 11.

Therefore Islam is my enemy, and I am its enemy. Not a fair fight, I admit, but they started it.

steven den Beste has a fairly good analysis today about why China cannot attack Taiwan.

He's certainly correct that China cannot mount a military expedition against Taiwan. But it could bully its way over, as it is trying to do. Bush's craven behavior in the plane attack must have persuaded Peking that if it can frighten the Taiwan Chinese, it's already spooked the US and can waltz in.

Andrew-

Umm...interesting thoughts but delusional. China probably wouldn't be able to get better than air parity over the straights even before american intervention. It doesn't matter if the chinese send 4 million soldiers equipped with inflatable water wings across the straights, they are no where capable of mounting an amphibious invasion.
The only thing the reds can do is try to blockade, isolate, and bombard Taiwan into submission, and the american public will demand action.