By Ray McGovern, June 2, 2022
I flunked miserably yesterday when asked to explain what this current generation’s “Best and Brightest” think they are doing in messing with the One-China policy that has kept the peace for 50 years.
We led off with Democratic Sen. Tammy Duckworth’s meeting with Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen in Taipei; Duckworth said the purpose was to “emphasize our support for Taiwan security”. Tsai went further in spelling this out:
“The U.S. Department of Defense is now proactively planning cooperation between the U.S. National Guard and Taiwan’s defense forces; we are looking forward to closer and deeper Taiwan-U.S. cooperation on matters of regional security.”
I sidestepped a question as to whether U.S. China policy is devised and run by lunatics.
On second thought, Biden’s foreign policy advisers Blinken and Sullivan, for example, seems to represent the same species of lunatic we’ve seen before.
I am thinking, of course, of what used to be called WASPS. That was one acronym/moniker used to describe the privileged, white, Ivy-mantled species of lunatic — like McGeorge Bundy and Walter Rostow — “exceptional people” — the kind who left three million Vietnamese dead only five decades ago. It turned out that their brand of exceptionalism-tinged-with-hubris could not even entertain the notion of being defeated by what were called “bare-footed brown feet in pajamas” — and communists, to boot!
Reality check: Biden’s economic policy advisers seem to be of the same lunatic species. Worth a read is Susannah Patton’s op-ed in today’s NY Times, China is Winning in Asia. Biden’s Plans Won’t Change That, https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/01/opinion/us-biden-asia-china-economy-influence.html .