America Is Headed to a Showdown Over Taiwan, and China Might Win
A new Council on Foreign Relations report is a strong warning about Biden’s looming first foreign-policy crisis.
Taiwan’s navy, on point.
Photographer: Chris Stowers/AFP/Getty Images
The world has now endured upheaval by a pandemic for a full year, and the aftershocks will continue long after most people finally receive the vaccine to Covid-19. Thus, you may say, this is no time to frighten the horses by highlighting another peril. However, just as nothing says that if tragedy strikes a family once, it cannot do so again — ask the Kennedys — so fate can be mean on mercy, when it comes to epochal threats.
The Council for Foreign Relations has published a new report by two respected public servants, which urges the imminence of the risk of conflict between China and U.S. over Taiwan. That territory, 90 miles off China’s coast and inhabited by 24 million people, is not a nation, but for decades has been an unofficial American protectorate.