For too long, the West has cowered when Beijing huffed and puffed about Taiwan. Trump is finally calling its bluff.
Chris Murphy, a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, thinks Donald Trump has just put America on the road to war.
In reality, the opposite may be true. The president-elect may have taken the first steps to stabilize East Asia.
On Thursday and Friday, Mr. Trump spoke over the phone with his counterparts in Pakistan, Kazakhstan, Afghanistan, the Philippines, and Singapore. Yet by far the most controversial, and consequential, conversation occurred on Friday, when he exchanged pleasantries for 10 minutes with Tsai Ing-wen, the Taiwan leader.
Trump spoke with Tsai without consulting the White House or the State Department. He also bypassed the American Institute in Taiwan, America’s liaison office in Taipei.
Critics jumped at the lack of coordination. Senator Murphy, in a tweet, called the phone conversations “major pivots in foreign policy w/out any plan.” And then the Connecticut Democrat dropped this line on the public: “That’s how wars start.”
Murphy, by raising the prospect of titanic armed struggle, could not have been thinking of Trump’s conversations with Rodrigo Duterte of the Philippines or Nawaz Sharif of Pakistan. The president-elect may have made a few misguided comments while discussing affairs with them, but these mistakes were innocuous.
(Excerpt) Read more at thedailybeast.com ...
