‘Encirclement’ and ‘containment’ effectively have become Biden’s default foreign policy, Alastair Crooke writes. The key to China’s security riposte to the U.S. is linked to two words that go unstated in U.S. formal policy documents, but whose silent presence nevertheless suffuses and colour-washes the text of the 2022 National Defence Authorisation Act. The term ‘containment’…
Recognizing Taipei isn’t an insurance policy against US meddling; it’s a guarantee that US meddling will become institutionalized to the detriment of that country’s people. Those governments who begin practicing comparatively more independent policies risk being punished despite still recognizing Taipei exactly as Nicaragua’s recently was. China reopened its embassy in Nicaragua on New Year’s…
The last article on the Taiwan issue in NEO focused on the referendum held on December 18 2021, on four questions. Of those four questions, only one has any real foreign policy implications, touching as it does on the relations between Taiwan’s current leadership and Washington, its main supporter in the international community. The referendum…
As 1991 turned into 1992, America appeared to have arrived at the apogee of its national power and world prestige. President George H.W. Bush had just sent an army of half a million men to expel, in a 100-hour campaign, Saddam Hussein’s invading army from Kuwait. The world, including Russia, China and Iran, had supported…
A Kyodo News agency report on Friday cited Japanese government sources to the effect that Tokyo and Washington have drawn up a draft joint operation plan that would enable the setup of an attack base along the Nansei island chain in Japan’s southwest in the event of a Taiwan contingency. According to the report, the…
Discussions of war with China over Taiwan often assume a short, regional war won by superior American technology, after which things go on approximately as before. A few observations: First, overconfidence is an occupational disease of militaries and militarists. Wars very often fail to proceed according to the expectations of the aggressors and not infrequently…
