RSS Feed MenuNow I have seen everything. Patrick J. Buchanan has finally given up on Quemoy and Matsu, not to mention the ghosts of Douglas MacArthur and General Chiang Kai-shek. In a Feb. 2 column, Buchanan calls for American retreat from bases in Japan and Korea. Perhaps even more amazingly he urges an end to American arms sales to the Republic of China, Taiwan, lest we offend the People’s Republic of China.
Is it worth a clash with China to prevent Taiwan from assuming the same relationship to Beijing the British acceded to with Hong Kong? In tourism, trade, travel and investment, Taiwan is herself deepening her relationship with the mainland. Is it not time for us to cut the cord?
Not so long ago, such views would have had marked a writer in Buchanan’s eyes as an Owen Lattimore or worse. Not one of Pat Buchanan’s former presidential employers would countenance his stance. Richard M. Nixon, the dark prince, who went to China to weaken Russia, would not run from Delhi and Seoul. Ronald Reagan would look at free Asia and rejoice and expand.
The man who used to know why we lost China owes Harry Truman a big apology. What next? A Buchanan column in praise of the Spanish Republic?
Carney // Feb 5, 2010 at 9:25 pm
This is a valid criticism.
There is of course a valid answer, which is that the Cold War is over, and we no longer face the prospect, which was extremely grave and serious at the time, of Communism attempting a slow motion world conquest. In that context, for both principled and pragmatic reasons, simply allowing any part of the world to fall to Communism was a dereliction of duty.
But today the Beijing regime is if anything a conventional authoritarian state at this point with only a veneer of Marxism retained for the sake of minimal continuity, and dealings with it can be had on a conventional Great Power to Great Power basis, rather than in the context of a planet-wide struggle between two multi-national and universalist ideologies.