NIXON'S DEAD:

On Thursday, Assistant Secretary of Defense for Indo-Pacific Security Affairs Ely Ratner made an unprecedented public statement by a serving senior U.S. official. In testimony before the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, he stated that the island of Taiwan is strategically "critical to the region's security and critical to the defense of vital U.S. interests in the Indo-Pacific." 

Ratner defined Taiwan's strategic importance as deriving from the notions that it is: a "critical node within the first island chain," "integral to the regional and global economy," and a "beacon of democratic values" in contrast with the People's Republic of China. In other words, he defined the island as a strategic location of value to the U.S. precisely because it is militarily, economically, and politically distinct from China.

This statement is hugely reckless, because it clearly implies that, in fact, Taiwan should be regarded primarily as a strategic asset to be kept separate from Beijing. That clear implication amounts to a direct abandonment of the U.S. One China policy and the understanding reached with Beijing at the time of normalization.

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