Bob Sutter: Why the Taiwan Straits are Quiet

Bob Sutter, a former prof of mine at George Washington, where you can be taught by the best minds of the CIA and the Congressional Research Service, recently published this analysis of cross-strait affairs in the Asia Times.

Why it's all quiet on the Taiwan Strait
By Robert Sutter

Overshadowed by the difficulties facing US policy in the Korean peninsula is the success of relatively quiet but effective US diplomacy in East Asia's other major hotspot, the Taiwan Strait. Interviews with officials in Washington, Taipei, and Beijing in May-June make clear that the US diplomatic interventions in late 2004 were critically important in changing what up to that point were weakly constrained moves by President Chen Shui-bian and his allies to pursue assertive pro-independence initiatives that China said risked war....

Technorati: [Taiwan]