Opinion National Interest PoV 50-Word Edit

ThePrint On Camera Videos In Pictures

Society & Culture Around Town Book Excerpts Vigyapanti The Dating Story

More Judiciary Education YourTurn Work With Us Campus Voice

Opinion National Interest PoV 50-Word Edit

ThePrint On Camera Videos In Pictures

Society & Culture Around Town Book Excerpts Vigyapanti The Dating Story

More Judiciary Education YourTurn Work With Us Campus Voice

Will Trump’s dance with China nudge South Korea & Japan to cross the nuclear threshold?

The growing reluctance of America to risk fortune and blood to defend distant allies could end up making wars not only more likely, but unimaginably more lethal.

The portrait hung in a windowless hall, swaddled in purple velvet: Taiwan’s élite Republic of China Military Academy, earlier located in and named after Whampoa, is the cradle of modern China, but few knew of the idol that looked over this secluded temple. Ernst David Bergmann—a Berlin University organic chemist whose name was removed from a foundational textbook by the Nazis and who fled persecution in 1933—was well known as the first chairman of Israel’s atomic energy commission. He was counted by President Shimon Peres as one of the seven founders of the state of Israel, and was widely known to have sired its nuclear weapons programme.

Early in 1988, the political scientist Yitzhak Schichor was ushered into the hall in Taiwan’s Kaohsiung, and discovered the scientist had another, secret child: “No one volunteered any explanation as to why such a shrine—for this is what it was—had been dedicated to Bergmann’s memory. Needless to say, I did not dare ask.”

This week, on the flight home from his summit meeting with President Xi Jinping, President Donald Trump announced he had delayed a $14 billion arms sale to Taiwan, as a “negotiating chip.” “I may do it, I may not,” Trump said. The president reiterated his claims that Taiwan “stole our chip industry,” and appeared to suggest geographical distance made the island indefensible.

Few Taiwan leaders doubt what this means. The Taiwan Relations Act, passed by the United States Congress in 1979, promised to make available “such defence articles and defence services in such quantity as may be necessary.” The so-called Six Assurances made to Taiwan in 1982 promised that the United States would not consult with the People’s Republic of China on arms sales.

Taiwan, though, has long worried just how far the United States would in fact be willing to go to defend its ally. Following China’s nuclear tests in 1964, Taiwan—like South Korea and........

© ThePrint