January 6, 2017 (Joseph Thomas - NEO) - President-elect Donald Trump's "accidental" phone conversation with Taiwan's President Tsai Ing-wen was neither a gaff nor a decision Trump and his advisers unilaterally made.
It is merely the latest evolution of US foreign policy in Asia Pacific amid the collapsing "Pivot to Asia" policy pursued under the previous administration of President Barack Obama.
Looking from an even wider perspective, both Trump and Obama's policies are merely the latest iterations of US policy over the last century aimed at encircling, containing and dominating not only China's rise upon the international stage, but in achieving, maintaining and even expanding American primacy over Asia.
The Washington Post in an op-ed titled, "Trump's Taiwan call wasn't a mistake. It was brilliant," would admit:
US policy in Asia Pacific is predicated on decades of Washington presumptions that it, not any actual nation residing in Asia Pacific, should take and hold what US policymakers themselves refer to as "primacy" over the region. However, gradually over time, China as well as many nations described as "allies" of the United States, have incrementally moved out from under the long shadow cast from North America across the Pacific.
It is merely the latest evolution of US foreign policy in Asia Pacific amid the collapsing "Pivot to Asia" policy pursued under the previous administration of President Barack Obama.
Looking from an even wider perspective, both Trump and Obama's policies are merely the latest iterations of US policy over the last century aimed at encircling, containing and dominating not only China's rise upon the international stage, but in achieving, maintaining and even expanding American primacy over Asia.
The Washington Post in an op-ed titled, "Trump's Taiwan call wasn't a mistake. It was brilliant," would admit:
The phone call with President Tsai Ing-wen was reportedly carefully planned, and Trump was fully briefed before the call, according to The Washington Post. It's not that Trump was unfamiliar with the "Three Communiques" or unaware of the fiction that there is "One China." Trump knew precisely what he was doing in taking the call. He was serving notice on Beijing that it is dealing with a different kind of president — an outsider who will not be encumbered by the same Lilliputian diplomatic threads that tied down previous administrations. The message, as John Bolton correctly put it, was that "the president of the United States [will] talk to whomever he wants if he thinks it's in the interest of the United States, and nobody in Beijing gets to dictate who we talk to."Use of the term "brilliant" here is, however, inappropriate.
US policy in Asia Pacific is predicated on decades of Washington presumptions that it, not any actual nation residing in Asia Pacific, should take and hold what US policymakers themselves refer to as "primacy" over the region. However, gradually over time, China as well as many nations described as "allies" of the United States, have incrementally moved out from under the long shadow cast from North America across the Pacific.
